I've also realized that using my old very tag aggro style I was losing a lot of value and only getting called by hands that have me beat. For example, lets say that I have AK in position in a reraised pot and the flop is Kxx. Using my old style, if my opponent leads into me, I would almost always raise him up there. Although it may be possible that an opponent would stack off light with perhaps QQ or JJ in this spot, it becomes increasingly rare the higher you go up in stakes, which is probably why in the beginning of the month I had a rough time in 3/6nl. Now, I've been just calling the flop lead much much more often. Then I would either bet the turn, or perhaps check the turn and value bet the river. This line, gets looked up much more often by hands like QQ, or JJ thinking that they are good on the river. Whereas, my old style, I was often only getting action from hands that had my hand crushed, like a set.
To balance my play, I've also been floating people a lot more in position. Playing against all the regulars in 3/6nl, I have started to realized just how strong position really is. This is especially true when you know people can fold hands and won't stack off light. Before I was 3 betting a lot OOP, and just getting into awkward spots, because I knew people were playing back at me light, but there wasn't much I could really do playing a bunch of reraised pots OOP. Instead, I've been countering this by really tightening up my 3bet range OOP, however, I've opened up my 3 bet range in position, so that I can play bigger pots in position. These are two things of a bunch of things that I've been working on and thinking about.
I played a ton today, and I'm glad to say that I've finally gotten positive results for this month. I think that all the thought that I've put into my game was one of the large reasons why I had such a monster session today. It felt great, especially because I've been consistently losing for most of the month. I think that this may be the most I've ever made in one day for cash games. So, here are my results for today.
Although, I'm sure that I caught a lot of hands today, I don't think that I ran exceedingly well. I checked my hands on PokerEV, and I'm actually running $300 below expectation. I know that's not much at all, but it's nice to know that I'm not sucking out. I've also lost $600 on AA today. But below is a graph of my month so far. You can see that I went on a pretty bad down swing. Although I may have run bad during that stretch, I think that I played even worse. During that downswing, I was only thinking about the 20k month I had last month, and I basically thought I was the shit. I was making too many moves and I thought that I could outplay everybody post flop. It also didn't help that I just moved up to $3/6nl, and I was basically spewing money. Well, it took close to losing $8k for me to reevaluate what I was doing. It was a learning experience, and I've definitely gotten much better from it. I'll also remember this the next time I get a monster month, and continue to remind myself to play good solid poker.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1574641
This is an example of something that I didn't do as much before, but I'm doing more now. Now, after I bet the flop, I decided to check the turn behind because at first I thought BEWdragon was on a flush draw. I wanted to give him a chance to bluff it and build the pot. Now, if he was on a flush draw, my turn bet would probably push him out of the pot, however, checking in this pot allows him to bluff it, or from his point of view, semi-bluff it with the flush draw. Now, I checked the river because I again wanted him to bluff at it. From his point of view, it looks like I have a one pair type hand like KQ, KJ, K10, perhaps even a pocket pair like QQ, JJ, TT. Now, if he has nothing, I think that an aggressive player would very likely bet this river. There is almost no way that I have a flush, because what flush would check this river, after checking the turn. It would be quite hard for a one pair type hand to call any sizeable river bet. Even an 8 would bet this river. So any hand that would call me if I bet would also bet the river, so I'm not losing any value there, IMO. However, if I bet, almost no hands would raise me on that river for "value". But at the same time, if I check raise him all in, after he bets, he is getting such a great price on the all in call, that he has to call with almost anything that he bets the river with. Before, I would most probably just bet the river because I would be afraid that it would get check through. Now, I'm more interested in maximizing value.
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