Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 12 October 2009 / Leave a comment

I joined my first training site over the weekend, Deuces Cracked, and I must admit I am massively impressed but at the same time a little depressed too. I'm impressed because of the sheer quality of the instruction on the videos but depressed because it has made me realise how low down the food chain I actually am.

The main reason I've never joined a training site previously is mainly due to their costs, which usually contain a sign-up fee. However, Deuces Cracked allow you a free seven day trial if you sign up as a member with them so sign up I did and got to downloading videos.

The first one I watched was Foxwoods Fiend playing some nosebleed stakes with Jay 'Krantz' Rosenkrantz commentating alongside him and it completely blew me away. The thought these guys put into each and every hand in unbelievable. Every single action as a solid reason behind it, even if it is simply a fold and they can read hands and put people on almost exact ranges with apparent ease.

It is difficult to apply HU cash game strategy to HUSNG as in the latter you are never really deep stacked enough to make certain plays, nor do you play that opponent enough to build up some metagame, unless they accept your rematch several times in a row which is unlikely from my experience. However, some of the facets of HU play are the same so I am looking forward to try and apply what I have learned to my game in the next few sessions.

Talking of my game, I have now played 70 HUSNG this month, which although much less than I had anticipated, is still a fair amount by my standards and considering I was dying for a week and I only play one table at a time I'm pretty pleased.

My aggressive bankroll strategy has seen me move to the $10.50 games but I seem to have hit the wall for some reason here and I only have a 2.6% ROI from the 26 games I've played at these stakes. I don't think it is the skill level of my opponents, although saying that I did run into six players on Saturday night that were 8-11% ROI winners over significant sample sizes, though again I fared OK against them.

I'm starting to wonder if it is because I have a bonus I am keeping my eye on and simply playing for the points rather than the money which I was doing at the $5's and $2's so I could move to the $10's? I'm not sure. Maybe it's just variance catching up on me after running like God for the first 40 or so games. Time will tell I guess. I still have an ROI of 16.4% over all my games and I'm still in profit at each stake but I need to win a few more $10's and soon, even for just my own sanity.

It's looking unlikely that I'll be able to play tonight or even tomorrow as baby Pudding is teething and doing it very badly indeed. He's been really off with his sleeping for the past few days but he's certainly not impressed at all at the minute and he's been crying for the past three hours as he needs to sleep but can't. I hate seeing babies poorly as there is so little you can do and they look at you as if to say "stop it hurting please daddy!"

Well that seems like a good spot to end this entry so I will do so. As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!