The good news is that, with one glaring exception, I'm playing better and getting better results. I've cashed a couple times at The Big Game Room since my last blog. One of the dealers even said that he noticed I was cashing more often.
One of the cashes was my best profit to-date in a live tournament: 5th of 40, $35 entry, cash of $155. That's a profit of $120. I cashed a live tournament for $165 a few years go, but the buy-in was higher, so the June 28 tournament was my most profitable live tournament to date.
Keep in mind that I have ADD as your read the rest of this.
The bad news is that I'm having a very hard time concentrating at the tables. I'm learning more and more, with very few chances to apply that that new knowledge at the table, and isn't seriously messing me up.
I've been playing out-of-turn quite a bit and making a lot of other silly mistakes. It's to the point where I'm getting to be a joke: "There's Clif, I wonder how long it will take him to open-fold his big blind again."
So my most profitable live tournament was the most frustrating I've every played. I was so confused and frustrated that I was fighting back tears. I wonder how high I might have finished if I had not made all those mistakes. As wierd as it sounds, there is too much in my head when I'm trying to play.
Basically what I'm doing is what is called in football "going through my progressions." In football (the American kind) the quarterback goes through his progressions by looking for his #1 receiver, and if he's not open, then he looks for his second and third options. After a while, that routine becomes almost automatic. If the quarterback takes to long, he winds up on his back.
That's what happens to me. I'm going though my progressions, figuring out which of the new things that I'm studying apply to the current hand. I forget about doing the things I already know how to do, I take too long and make dumb mistakes. That has to change.
If things are going welI, I might work on just one new thing, such as watching the table for someone who likes to play a lot of speculative hands like small pairs and suited connectors. But that's all. Just that one thing. The rest will have to wait. I have to stick with the things that are automatic for me. Reading a new poker book and learning new strategies or doing anything else new will have to be put on hold.
I'm going to cut way back on the studying and spend more time with administrative and trouble-shooting tasks when I'm at home. Today I'm working on getting my records my records in better order. Tomorrow I'll probably try to figure out why I can get to my blog on the desktop computer, but not on the laptop. As much as I love to learn new things, especially where poker is concerned, I have to slow that way, way down for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment