First two months recap, always keep improving

This year has been quite a rollercoaster to far, but in a good way. I'm glad I learned some valuable lessons the hard way in my first month so I could quickly kick myself and get my game back on track. I don't even know how my play degenerated so much in January. I started by running a bit bad, then I played more weak-tight, which worsened my results, which made me play even more weak-tight. The last session was a total trainwreck, enough that I had to take a break and figure out how my solid game had devolved to such a mess. Kids, don't let this happen to you :





This was mostly 100NL, with about 15k hands of 50NL in the middle. Ugh. I knew I could do so much better, but I guess I was still stuck in year-end Supernova-grind mode where I played like a nitty zombie. Fortunately, I picked up my copy of Small Stakes Hold'em and suddenly remembered what solid poker was all about ; controlled aggression. Coupled with what I learned about mid-February on my preflop leaks & new techniques on focus & flow-state, I was able to completely turn my game around and get some solid results :



This month started with about 15k hands at 50NL and the rest at 100NL. Notice the difference in redline alone, which is such a huge part of poker at the small stakes & beyond. Even though the redline isn't the be-all end-all, I think it's a good indicator of your reading skills/aggression and generally solid poker. It's funny how everytime I play well, I magically run good and when I play bad, I run bad. I think this is even more evident in my last 1k hand which I mentionned in my last post. That last 1k my concentration was gone but I still played it to "finish the session".

Did I run bad? I went all-in with KK and lost to AA, I lost 2 40bb stacks 4betting AI with mid pairs to a higher pair. But was that really bad luck or bad play? The KK was 150bb deep with a nit reraising my UTG raise, something I could have easily avoided by flatting PF to setmine. And while both 40bb stacks were against aggressive re-raisers, those were players whom I had 4b pretty aggressively over the session (and them always folding), making it that much more likely they were 3-betting tighter against me. These are the situations which look like bad luck but in reality, a lot of these spots can be avoided with solid reading skills/understand table dynamics, small things you don't pickup when playing half-heartedly.

Thus I came to a very important conclusion ; volume will never be my primary focus (which means I will never try for SNE). I've always been happier as a poker player when I felt I was playing solid, but this month I learned some key skills to playing great poker with peak concentration. While I do want to play more in the future (44k hands in a month as a pro is pretty abysmal volume), I don't want to make hand count a priority. Just as I don't look at my results often (usually every 15-20k hands), I don't want to get concerned over how many hands I play over a session.

In practical terms, this means focusing on my health & energy levels (going to bed/getting up at reasonably early hours, eating well and generally having a balanced lifestyles), and making sure that each time I play poker I consciously direct my efforts toward playing in a flow-state. Then I can play and not be concerned by anything but killing the game until I feel my concentration waning (which usually happens around 6k hands).

If I can succeed in doing that, i'm 100% confident that my winrate and results will take care of themselves and I will be a much happier/fulfilled poker player in general. In short, despite my low volume, this has been one of the most important months in my poker career and I look forward to playing the best poker I can in the coming months!