10,000 hands and counting

Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 08 October 2010 / 2 Comments

Viva Espana!

For once in my little fat life I have managed to stick to one discipline long enough to obtain a decent sample size of hands, 10,124 of short-handed Hold'em to be exact. It has been a really strange affair so far, crushing one minute and being crushed the next.

When I first started playing poker most advice on the forums was to play 10,000 hands and then you should have an idea of your overall game, however, the last 10,000 hands I have played have resulted in me not having a clue about my playing style, if I am still winning or anything. Confused.com.

During the 19 sessions I played during September, only three of them resulted in me actually losing and I had won over 13 buy-ins from just over 5,600 hands. Although I was obviously running well, hitting flops well etc, my adjusted EV stat was almost bang on, I was also playing well and getting my money in as a massive favourite. The only complaint I could have had was my non-showdown winnings were horrific but at my stakes you simply expect this to be the case. Life was good.

Notice how I said life "was" good, because October has turned everything completely on its head and I simply cannot do anything right. I've played nine sessions and only emerged as a winner in two of them for an overall loss of almost eight buy-ins. Now 8BI is nothing in the grand scheme of things and playing a 28/24 style against these fishes is going to throw up some pretty big swings but it is extremely frustrating how matters simply changed overnight! On September 31 I was considering moving up a level, now I am shaking my head at how things are going.

I'm around three buy-ins under EV but that's not the be all and end all. I've lost two buy-ins playing suited connectors incorrectly, though half of that was due to this hand. I raised UTG with 7d6d and only the rather tight small blind called. The flop comes down 7s-6h-Jc and I fire a standard continuation bet, only to see villain raise. I come over the top of him and he shoves. Getting 3,000,000 to one, well really good odds anyway, I call and he has pocket jacks! My 0.2% equity to a split does not appear and I stack off. Meh.

I guess I need to look at some of my hands where I am losing 20-40 big blinds, rather than the ones where I am stacking off as these are the ones that will grind you down to a halt. Big pots are usually created with straight forward hands, like AA into KK, set over set stuff like that but the 20-40 big blind ones usually see you give up on the flop or turn for whatever reason.

My English teacher always told me to finish any writing with a positive so here it is. You may remember from my last post that I had a mini trial at EPT London as a live blogger for PokerNews. Well, they have only gone and asked me to be part of the live blogging team at EPT Barcelona in November! Can I get a ship it? Super excited and shitting myself at the same time as this will be a very popular stop and entrants are capped at 1,000. It will be madness but I am sure by the end of Day 1a I'll be up and running like a pro!

Well that is all for now, until next time, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Comments (2)

1. Rossi | 10 October 2010

   Nice one mate on the getting to be part of the live blogging team and a trip to Barecelona.

   Will you have to get time off work for that?

2. Yorkshire Pud | 12 October 2010

   Hi mate, thanks for the congrats. I'm self employed so don't have to worry about work, though I will need to plan around being in Barcelona.

   As the tournament generally diesn't start until 1200-1400, I could quite easily get most of my work done in the mornings so it shouldn't be a problem