Oh yeah, been reading some more blogs and watching more videos at PXF too. I actually just read 'The Standard Play' by Fox (http://www.pokerxfactor.com/problog/view/100143/) and there were a couple of points he made that particularly resonated as things I think of as well. I'm going to excerpt one particular paragraph that I think lots of players don't give enough credence to:

"In a few threads on the forums and some comments I've received on my videos I've noticed that a lot of people are stuck on "correct" or "standrd" plays. While I have always thought that it's important to have default plays that you alter according to the situation, trying to fit your game in to a "correct" mold is the negative side to that, and often results in players being left behind as the game changes. We don't want to be doing what all the other sold players are doing, we want to be tearing up those solid players and staying ahead of the learning curve."

I wrote a piece a while ago for Pocket Fives I titled 'Moving Beyond Harrington' and it dealt with ways to exploit the standard Harrington style play everyone was using back then. If you are a serious poker player (which obviously I am) you owe it to yourself to keep up with what the 'standards' are, and then work on ways to beat them. I'm constantly trying to think of new ways to attack what I see people doing at the tables, and am never content to just play the game in a bot-like fashion.

I also wanted to post everyone to Rex55's blog (one of the newest PXF pros). I'll link to her latest post: http://www.pokerxfactor.com/problog/view/100141/ and hopefully that will work for now. I find that a lot of the stuff she writes reminds me an awful lot of the stuff I was writing just before I went from being a decent winner in some of the bigger games to exploding through on the amazing run that was late 2005/early 2006. I find that most of her posts deal a lot more with the mentally tough parts of the game like staying in a winning mind frame and handling beats, and very rarely deal with hands or anything (although from her PXF posts, she knows how to talk about those things as well!). It's a lot different than the things most people write, and I think it would be VERY helpful for people to read if they find themselves struggling with the mental and/or emotional aspects of the game.

Lastly, I've started watching more videos lately again in part of my effort to keep more on top of things in the poker world. I've watched the first two parts of Bax's latest $50 video series, and they're some of his best work yet. There are lots of live poker/WSOP stories for those of you that dig those sorts of things. The main thing I think most people will find helpful though (although it isn't necessarily stressed heavily in the video) is how Bax plays when he gets a big stack early, and how he adjusts to the other stacks around him. I've always felt that Bax was one of the best big stack players in the game, early or late, but watching it shows you why. He knows how to find +EV spots to use his stack, and at the same time doesn't just go spewing it off with tons of raises into guys who have 15-20 BB stacks or set mining with 22 from early position when everyone at the table is too short to make a huge difference in his stack. I'm sure lots of the other recently released videos are good too, but that's the only one I've had time to watch.

-Rizen

Well, I meant to update this 4-5 times a week, but I'm still going to be holding myself accountable. We'll cover MTTs first. I played 37 MTTs this week, which looking at the number itself is kind of surprising. I've shifted to playing more cash lately, but I used to play between three and four hundred MTTs a month. I'm on pace to barely crack 125, so I used to play between 75-100 a week. The lack of volume is partially due to cash games, and partially due to their being a lot less tournaments worth playing than there used to be, at least from my perspective.

I didn't play any of the 1ks last week. Overall my ROI was -38.93%, which over such a small sample size is pretty meaningless. Historically, I've been profitable over every 300 MTT stretch I've ever played, but there have been plenty of 200 MTT stretches where I've actually had a negative ROI. Most of my results this week came from the 65k guaranteed on Full Tilt I took 7th in for ~$2150. I also showed a pretty good profit in the $50 50k guaranteed tournaments this week, but everything else was in the red. I actually felt pretty good about my MTT results this week, so as long as this week doesn't become a trend, I'm fine with it.

In cash games, I played about 8,500 hands last week ranging in limits from 2/4 through 5/10. I had a 1.83 BB/100 win rate, and was profitable at every level except (ironically) 2/4 6 max and 3/6 full ring. At 3/6 6 max, 2/4 full ring, and 5/10 6 max I was profitable, with oddly enough my win rate being highest at 5/10.

I also played ~1300 PLO hands mostly at 1/2 with a win rate of -.23 BB/100. PLO is a pretty high variance game, and I got my money into a 250 BB pot with 75% equity during the sample, so a 500 BB swing will do that to you. I'm feeling a lot better about my PLO game, but it does still have some work to do. I feel I really have a pretty good idea when it comes to hand selection and position, but my feeling on when to c-bet or not and some trickier post flop spots I think still needs some work.

For cash games I've been REALLY focused on table selection more than anything else. I've been using 'TableTracker' that comes with Poker Tracker 3 to help on table selection. It basically brings all the tables up in a list then puts your poker tracker stats into them and helps you sort the tables by average win rate, average VPIP, or whatever. I've actually heard that using Hold Em Manager and some other table selection tools is better, but I've already bought PT3 so I've been using it for now.

I'm going to cut this off now as I'm expecting a phone call to do an interview, but hopefully more updates from me this week.

-Rizen

Really not much has happened poker wise since the last post. Thursday is my traditional night off so I didn't play then. Last night we had someone watch the kids for us and went out and saw 'Dark Knight' (which was excellent BTW) and had dinner. I did put in a few short cash sessions, but that's been it. Tonight I'm going over to a friend's house to watch the UFC (and possibly Affliction) fights, so I may get in some cash afterwards but probably no MTTs tonight, but I'll be playing the full slate of Sunday MTTs tomorrow.

Speaking of cash, I did some research while I was in Vegas on some of my cash results and found some interesting things. When looking at my full ring stats, I see a pretty normalized curve. I as go up in levels from 2/4-5/10 (I have 10/20 and 25/50 samples too, but they are both < 10k hands so I don't really count them) my win rate in terms of BB/100 goes down a little each level I go up, but my hourly rate improves (since making 3 BB/100 at 2/4 is the same dollar amount as 2 BB/100 at 3/6 and so on). When looking at my 6 max game, my win rate was going down at a bigger rate as I went up from 2/4 to 5/10. Enough of a rate that I was actually making more money hourly at 2/4 than at 3/6 or 5/10. This is a reason it's important to put ego aside in poker, if you can make more money playing in a lower game (even if you can beat both games) then often times it makes sense to do it. After looking at all that I'm going to stick to 2/4 6 max and 5/10 and 3/6 full ring for a while, and evaluate again after about 10k hands. Then I might put in 10k hands at 3/6 and see how the win rates match up. 10k isn't really enough for definitive answers, but it's enough to start drawing some really basic conclusions.

Additionally I've been putting in some time at 2/4 6 max PLO. I started out running pretty good but I've been on a pretty nasty downswing (and making some mistakes) the last 3k hands or so. I'm finishing out 10k hands at that level but unless I hit a serious upswing over the next 3k hands or so (I'm at 7k now) I'll probably move down to 1/2 6 max for 10k hands just to get more experience and make sure I'm not making any fundamental mistakes. My downswing is within the normal realm of variance and I don't feel like I'm getting outplayed, but any time I go on a bad run I like to drop down a little and focus on the fundamentals and make sure I haven't introduced any leaks into my game.

That's it for now.

-Rizen

I love the World Series of Poker, but when it's all over with it always feels great to be home. One thing I like to do a lot after the World Series is some self reflection. The last few years (including this one) by the time I get home I'm burnt out on live poker. I love live poker, but 6-7 straight weeks of it is a bit overwhelming, and quite honestly live poker moves a lot slower than I'm used to and my mind tends to want to work a lot faster. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as I'm able to channel that at the table to constantly focus on what other players are doing and pick up things I'd never pick up in online tournaments. That being said, it takes some effort to maintain that degree of focus for that period of time, and it can be a little mentally exhausting.

The good thing is though, all of that time at the table almost without fail teaches me some new things every year and also often reminds me of things I may have either forgotten about or hadn't paid enough attention to lately. Ironically this is often the way things go down, but something seaanchor said to me when I ran into him at Foxwoods this year really rang true at the WSOP this year. He actually just repeated something to me that I told him in 2006 when we were both deep in the main event. He said 'Man, I remember back in 2006 when you were telling me about how terrible this player was and you said 'I want to get into pots with THAT guy'. I didn't really understand what you meant at first, but now I get it.' I know, doesn't seem like a big deal, but in 2006 I was referencing how much I wanted to get involved in pots with the gentleman in question because he had significant flaws in his game that I could exploit.

Playing online so much, it's easy to get into a rythm or start to play more formulaic, and get away from some core poker concepts that are critical to playing your best. One of those core concepts that is so important that I'd gotten away from lately is always identifying where your chips are going to come from and why, and then going out and getting them. It's something I preach in my PXF videos, but something I myself had gotten away from lately. I'd been so focused lately on improving my hand reading skills and position poker playing I started to leave out a core poker concept. Obviously this revelation didn't help my results at the WSOP out, but I do feel it improved my play tremendously. I was building quite a few big stacks early in tournaments by exploiting the bad players and doing things that made them get their money in horrible, they just got there unfortunately.

That's not the important part though, the important part was despite the constant beating I was really enjoying going to the tables every day again because I'd felt a light bulb go off and one of the great things about this game we play is learning something new (or rediscovering something old), putting it to work, and watching it succeed. It's like you unlock a whole new room (or in this case, open a door to a room we haven't been in in a while) and have a whole new area of your game to discover (or rediscover).

I learned a lot of other things, which I'll talk about over time (if I talk about them all now, I'll run out of things to write about here!). Another key self reflection I've made, and I actually made it with the help of a new student I've taken on on a temporary basis now that my kids are older to see if coaching is something I have the desire/time to get back into is accountability. It sounds simple, but the reason I created this blog back in the day in the first place was because I knew if I had to put my results and thoughts into words every day it would force me to be a better player. It was a way of holding myself accountable.

One of the easiest things about poker is that you can always chalk your failures up to 'chance' or 'luck' and dismiss them easily, in fact that's what most losing players do. The tough thing about poker is holding yourself accountable, for both your plays and your results. No one else is going to do it for you, you have to do it for yourself. When I created the blog I honestly didn't think anyone would ever have the desire to read it (or that I would eventually be writing a column in a major magazine and have a book published!). The reason I created it was putting my results and thoughts down on (virtual) paper put them out there for the whole world to see. For me, knowing that if I made a dumb play I would have to then relive it in writing the following day was a deterrent to doing dumb things, and was a motivator to play my 'A' game at all times. That may or may not work for everyone, but it did wonders for me.

With that in mind, I want to get back to that. My kids are getting old enough that I have a little more free time, and I want to dedicate at least some of that to improving myself both as a poker player and as a person. I'm already running pretty long today, but in the upcoming days I'm going to walk you guys through some of the stuff I do to keep my game sharp and improve it, and I'm going to be post a lot of my various results. Unfortunately in the past, posting a lot of dollar amounts has gotten me into trouble. I'll post amounts for tournaments, and some generalizations for cash games, but I'm not going to post exact stats as I often have in the past. I'm going to post weekly as well as monthly results, although I will do them in terms of ROI and BB/100. This sort of 'self accountability' is part of my plan to make me better as a player. Reviewing hands periodically will be as well. I'll get into it more in the upcoming days, but over time this blog has gone away from its original intention and more into a sort of 'fan site' for lack of a better way to put it.

I've also already begun my exercise and eating plans since I returned, although I had those in place since about October of last year, and those of you that saw me at the WSOP this year that haven't seen me in a while may have noticed that there was significantly less of me than there was in 2007, although I'm still not at my goal. As previously stated though, my goal is more of a lifestyle change, as I believe a healthier lifestyle leads to a clearer mind, better decision making, and overall just being happier. I am a big believe in the power of positivity both in life and at the table (which I'm sure I'll go more into later), so I'm always striving to make positive changes in both my game and my personal life.

That's enough for now.

-Rizen

Basically played 3 hands the first level. i did steal the blinds once or twice, but these were the key 3. In the first one a fairly active player raised UTG+1 during the first orbit. I had AK in middle position with 19k in chips and he had made it 1600. i decided to smooth call for deception and because it would be really awkward for me to make it like 6k if he bet on the flop. the flop was K-2-3 rainbow. He checked to me and I checked behind to try and get a little value out of his pairs between 3 and K. The turn was a Jc that brought a back door club draw on board so I bet 2500 when he checked to me and he thought for a while before calling. The river was a Q, which i didn't really like but he checked to me so I bet 5k and he folded bringing me up to 24k, good start to the day.

About an orbit later it's folded to me in the small blind with A-T. The big blind was pretty active but somewhat short and was seeing lots of flops. i made it 1750 and he called. Flop was 9-5-3 with two spades. I had the As and that's a pretty raggy board so I bet 2500 and he raised to 10k with like 500 chips behind. I thought for a while then folded and he showed me A-9 of diamonds. Unlucky flop but i got away from it.

I picked up a few pots between all this and was sitting about 17.5k when a new player to the table opens in middle position to 1500. I have A-Q directly to his left. I'm presented with somewhat of the same problem before, but there's 15 mins left in the level now. He came to the table with lots of ante chips so I figured he was fairly active and I smooth called because I wanted to gamble a little to build my stack before the blinds went up. Flop was A-J-8 with two clubs. he checks to me so I bet 2500 and he thinks for a while then calls. turn is an off suit 5 and he checks to me again so I make it 4k with 10k behind and he thinks for about 2 minutes then calls. River is a 5 and he leads into me for 5k. I really don't think a 5 is in his range unless it's A-5s and my best guess is he has A-T or A-9 and just got counterfeited and is making a blocking bet into me to not have to call an all in on the river to a probable chop. He could also have a busted spade draw or T-9. I have 9725 left so I just stick it in because I think he's got a worse hand most of the time, but he had A-J and I'm out.

I could look back and wish I'd re-raised but really that's being results oriented. With a 17k stack I really felt like I should take a little risk for the double up and I also didn't want to re-raise then face a flop push which A LOT of the players at my table were doing, and my stack was really too big to just shove. I like the way I played it, but there was a certain amount of risk to it. Most likely if I re-raise pre-flop he mucks and i drag a 2500-ish pot but I would rather give myself a chance to win a big pot with a 30ish BB stack.

It's been a good series in the fact that I feel like i've improved my game a lot and learned while I was down here. It's been a bad series in terms of results, but with the exception of a very small handful of events i've always gotten my money in really good for big pots and they just haven't held. I'm debating going home tomorrow instead of waiting a day or two, so if you don't see a blog update for a few days i'm probably on the road.

-Rizen

I'm still in. I finished the day with 19,925 in chips. It was kind of disappointing since i had almost 42k at the end of the second level, but once I moved tables around dinner my new table was very active and I kept getting run down. I think i only won one pot that i saw a flop on in the last 4 hours, and it wasn't for lack of trying! I managed to stay afloat with some steals and re-steals, but it was a struggle at times.

The good news is that in a tournament run everyone goes through bad stretches, and as a poker player it's really how we handle the bad stretches that define us as a player. Anyone can handle it when things are going well, but staying afloat when things are going poorly and giving yourself a chance to get back into it isn't a skill that a lot of players have.

I keep reminding myself that in 2006 I finished day 1 with 23k in chips and by the end of day 2 I was top 5 in chips, so it's all about hitting your stride at the right time. In 2006 the structure was worse too so we went into day 2 at 400/800 blinds and this time we'll be having 250/500 blinds, which will give me plenty of time to pick my spots, and even pick up chips without having to commit a significant portion of my stack. Winning the first decent sized pot I play will be key though, as losing it will probably put me into re-steal stack mode while winning it will allow me to keep playing poker.

I have a lot of things I want to talk about actually, but going to cut this short for now. Just realized I hadn't updated everyone so thought i'd let you all know where I stand right now.

-Rizen