Thoughts From The Grocery Store

When my wife and I go grocery shopping, I'm the designated cart pusher.  As is always the case, when I'm not doing something I get bored.  So when she is checking prices, or when she goes somewhere and says "I'll be back" I need something to do.  We went shopping yesterday and I had a pocket notebook with me.  I wrote down some things that I've learned or been thinking about that I need to add to my poker arsenal.

1.  I need to add a 3-bet stat to Holdem Manager 2.

I use HM2 to keep statistics on the other players when I'm playing online.  I started with the basic two or three stats that most players track on the heads-up display.  I'm tracking eight of them now.  Some players track as many as 20 while playing 10 tournaments at once, but that's way beyond my capabilities at this point.  I'm slowly adding them states, one at a time, as I get comfortable with scanning more and more numbers.

I decided to add the 3-bet statistic ("3-bet" is a poker term for reraising.)  I'm not good with 3-bets at all.  I don't use them much postflop, but more important, I think I fold to 3-bets way to often.  There is a lot of information out there about the optimal way to play against 3-betting.  I need both to learn study that, and I need to pay attention to c-bet percentages when I play online.  I \need to know how often I might expect 3-bets from a certain player and then adjust my play accordingly.

2. I need to pay more attention to the Rule of 5 and 10.

That rule says that you should play speculative hands only if they are between 5 and 10 percent of your chip stack.  I won't go into the reasons for that, but it's a good rule.  I'm always looking for a spot to play suited aces, suited connectors and small pairs and I think that I play them pretty well most of the time.  The problem is that sometimes when I'm shortstacked I don't pay enough attention to what percentage of my stack that bet is going to cost me.  I need to fix that.

3. I said in a previous post that I intend to devote 40-50 hours a week to poker, with 40 being the absolute minimum.  One of my favorite quotes comes from financial advisor and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey:

"I know a lot of millionaires.  I don't know anybody that got rich working 40 hours a week."

That's very important, but I also need to concentrate on how those hours are apportioned.  As a part-time player I had way too many weeks were I would play poker for 15 or 20 hours, and only one or two of those hours were study time.

Numbers like that are not going to get me where I need to go.  I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen again.  I just checked my Poker Time Sheet, which is a spreadsheet that I keep on Open Office. My percentages are currently: playing 62, study 28, administrative 10.  That's what I want my numbers to look like almost every week.

I will report my numbers at the end of this week.