Week of 2/17-2/23

I said in an earlier post that I'm not going to mention weekly results very often, and I stand by that.  A week is way too small a sample size to worry about.  But last week went well, was interesting, and is worth mentioning.

I always try to get in at least 40 hours a week, and I seldom succeed.  Last week I was close, with 36.5 hours.  The hours were proportioned pretty close to what I shoot for, which is 25 hours playing poker and 15 hours studying.  I was a bit under in both categories.

Financially it was a good week.  I was up $29.37.  If I can have more weeks like that while only playing $1, one-table tournments, it should set me up for bigger and better things down the road when I have a reasonable bankroll to work with.

I'm playing two tables most of the time, and my brain isn't fried yet.  Despite having good results so far, it's going to be a big adjustment, and there are things that I have to work on.

The big problem is that I'm too busy watching the action, and figuring out how much to bet, to take many notes.  Long-term, that's not a good thing.  If someone is a particularly good or bad player, I need to know that, along with the details about what I saw.

I had an opponent today that was very tricky. I had trouble figuring out what his bets meant, and he twice caught me with much better hands than I expected.  Now that I have that note, I'll be on guard the next time, and probably avoid playing pots against him with marginal hands.  Part of being a good poker player is figuring out who the good and bad players are, then trying to play more and bigger hands against the weak players, and fewer hands (and seldom out of position) against strong players.

If I don't have time to take notes, that's a problem, but it should (I hope) get easier after after a while.  I don't react, I analyze.  Making faster decisions will be very difficult.  I can't imagine what goes on in the head of someone who is playing 24 or more simultaneous tables.

I remember an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data was listening to and analyzing nine symphonies at once.  When Riker walked in, his reaction to the cacophony was priceless.  That would be me trying to play 24 tables.  If you've seen the movie Scanners, my head would probably explode just like that.