So this past weekend I played more hands than I've ever played before, logging over 8000. Even I have to admit, that's a lot of hands.
Unfortunately, I had happen to me what usually happens to me when I play an overabundance of hands in a rather short period of time--I had very mediocre results. Given the limits I now play, and my definition of mediocre results, I still managed to win well more than I make in a week at my job, but relatively speaking, it's still a rather meager showing for an 8000-hand stretch.
As I've proven to myself over and over again, I have my best results when I play two- or three-hour sessions, with no more than two sessions in a day. Any time I try to stretch beyond that--playing six hours in a sitting, for example, or eight or more hours in a day--my bottom-line results are nowhere near as good as any equivalent-length stretch of playing time that instead took three or four days.
I think part of the reason I played so much was simply that I really didn't have anything better to do this weekend. It's also a nice little escape to just sit there doing something you enjoy. Unfortunately, there's a thin line between playing strong, profitable poker and just being a LAGgy, break-even goon and I crossed it.
Just for the record, and so I have it in writing for every time I want to just sit there and play poker until 5AM three nights in row, I played nearly 7000 hands of the 10/20 six-max on party, compared to almost 11,000 hands played previously and saw my overall VPIP numbers increase from about 21% to about 23.5%, my PF raise go from just under 15% to about 16.5% and my AF go from 2.78 to 2.90 (meaning the first numbers were where I was at after 11,000 hands, and the second number is where I'm now at after about 18,000). In other words, during this past weekend I was seeing the flop significantly more than I was used to, raising (and reraising) preflop significantly more than I was used to, and being much more aggressive during the entire hand, which is a very good recipe for overplaying oneself into mediocrity.
One of the hallmarks of a good player is being able to pick and choose the correct strategy in just about any situation, it's not just blindly betting and raising some more in every situation, and yet there I was donking myself to death. My winrate shows this, as it dropped from 3.2/100 to 2.2/100. I have to admit, I saw more two and three outers come in against me in heads up pots than I can remember for a long time, but I still think I left a lot, and I mean a lot of money on the tables.
I know, I know, poor me only made "a lot" rather than "a whole heck of a lot" of money playing a stupid card game this weekend--woe is me--but, really, if I want to be a serious player playing and succeeding at big limits, I have to remain focused at all times. I can't let up and play on comfortable, aggressive autopilot.
In other news (also of the woe-is-me variety), I was talking with someone today about poker. Okay, not just anybody, but someone from work. Now, I love to talk about poker, so as soon as the subject came up, I was off and running. He'd never played online, so I was giving him some advice on what to do, where to go, etc, and he seemed to pick up on the fact that I'm a pretty serious player. So the inevitable question came up--"How good are you?"
Er...well...
Seriously, how does one answer this question? No one's going to say, "I suck," but I also can't give the opposite answer and not look like a complete arrogant asshole. I considered a few answers but none seemed appropriate, especially in a cube-farm where there are perking ears over every wall. I didn't really mind giving a more accurate answer to this particular person, but I really didn't want to share that much information with every single coworker. So I kind of flaked, giving a really vague answer that probably sounded really stupid, something along the lines of "well, better than people who have never played, worse than Phil Ivey" and it luckily ended at that.
Oh well.
Finally, in baseball news (yet again of the woe-is-me variety), I think it's pretty apparent that the Astros simply cannot score a run against any of the top dozen or so pitchers in the NL. Perez, Mulder, Hudson, all made Houston look like a little league team. Looking down the Astros lineup, it's really not a surprise--honestly what surprises me is that they seem to be able to score a decent number of runs against the league-average pitchers. My guess is that will end soon enough, and we'll really get a taste for how truly awful the offense is.
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