Bad Week

Blather.

My first week working towards my goal of earning 300BB at the 1/2 tables went poorly - I never seemed to get things going, and fell back into the red. I think it's both a string of bad cards, and bad play on my part. I'm hitting the books and reviewing PT to try to find out what I am doing wrong.

It's depressing and humbling. I thought I had got a handle on playing limit, and had reached a point where if I played patiently and waited for reasonable cards, avoided talking myself into playing bad starting hands out of boredom or excitement, and then bet aggressively when I was likely to have the best hand, I would slowly and steadily build a profit. I've tried to do that, but it's not going according to plan. Good cards seem few and far between, and aren't holding up for me.

Poker is not a simple game, though. I know I am the type of person who would like to find a simple formula that I can follow over and over to grind out a profit in the long run. The obsessive-compulsive in me couples with the boring uncreative tendencies to seek out the big red button I can push over and over that will pop out food pellets at regular intervals from here to eternity. Unfortunately it's not going to work like that, is it?

The games seem harder than they used to. It's only $1/$2 on Party, but I have difficulty finding games with VP$IP greater than 22%, and it seems like every table I get onto has 3-6 players marked as "Good Player - Tight Aggressive Solid". I still hope that it's largely because I am typically logging in at 4am ET because of the time differences and only the hardcore players are up and working, but maybe I just suck.

Feeling a bit down, I dropped onto a $.50/$1 table last night to play a bit without racking up more red in 1/2. Suddenly it was like I remembered Party being. Lots of idiots calling with absolute crap, chasing to the river with nothing to show for it. I can handle that. I think I will drop back to the lower level for a while, try to erase my red figures for that category in PT and then come back to 1/2 when I feel a bit more confident. I know that I will have to aggressively search out flaws in my game, consider new strategies, and play my opponents if I want to beat this game. But did I mention that I am lazy, too? It's not going to be easy for me.