Thursday, June 7, 2007

Isolation - expanding your mindset!

Recently I decided to try and be more aware of my hidden bad habits. It is hard to read over hand histories, pretty boring matter of fact. It is much easier to for me to learn from current activity.

One thing that I picked up on is most of the time I just am donating to the pot. On top of that, very few big hands result in big wins. On some days, on cash tables, I can win about 20% of the hands I am dealt. The winnings though are not consistent. Long term I had a few good runs, but over all I was not consistently profitable.

I decided to apply some of what I have been learning. Stop calling blinds from early position with speculative pocket cards. Stop calling big post flop bets just because I have top pair. Do not chase straights into flush chases, weak flushes into trong ones, or even flushes into paired boards. I am winning about 10% of the hands dealt. At the same time I am seeing less flops, limiting my small and larger loses, and getting the most out of my wins. If you think about it, on a 10-player table, the odds are you should win 10% of the hands. The problem is only a few of those wins are big enough to make your session profitable.

By isolating my game, I have trippled up my bank roll over the past week. My SNG and MTT play has been stagnant, my cash game is where I have vastly improved. My SNG game is where I fell apart at the beginning of the year. Looking over sharkscope, I went from over $250 positive to over $200 negative in a short period of time. I was playing over my head obviously. When I first moved up in stakes I was winning big, for the stakes I play. The better players just figured me out and took shots at me as I would go all-in a lot.

Another way I have isolated my game is to be much more aware of what others think of me. I am on a table right now where one player figure's if I raise, or call any raise, I have a top 25 hand. Another thinks I will raise or call with anything from suited connectors to two overcards. Table presence is great when playing for larger stakes but can hurt you at lower stakes. Having everyone fold to your pre-flop raises is not very profitable on a 10 cent ante table. Sometimes I isolate my game by taking risks slow playing a big hand. I have enough discipline now to muck even pocket Aces when it appears someone caught a better hand. For the most part though, I play big pocket cards from 5x to 8s the BB, whatever the magic number is that session to isolate or get everyone to just fold.

Take some time and look over where your game is weak and where it is strong. Avoid the weak areas and maximize the strong ones.

1 comment:

RGC2005 said...

When my game gets stagnant I switch sites for awhile. Sure my game does not improve beyond 2BB per hundred but I stay profitable.