Giraffe:
November 2011
Online: +$262
Live: -£58 (lol donkaments)
FPPs: +$300ish (ignore the RB line on the graph)
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Total: +$450ish
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Hours played: 38.5 hours online between Nov 11th and Nov 30th, which I'm pretty happy about given I work full time.
Overall November ended up being a pretty frustrating month; getting back into the swing of things after a long hiatus is never easy, so I guess it wasn't totally unexpected. I felt very confident at 50NL but seemed to be playing poorly when I took a shot at 100NL - however I think towards the end of the month I started playing much better and got off to a flying start in December:
#winning
Obviously I'm running hotter than the sun this month but I've also been playing excellent poker (and I feel I'm pretty objective about how well I'm playing). I think the single biggest thing I've improved at since the start of November (and since my many previous shots at 6max) is starting to really nail down some game theory.
GTO? GTFO.
Many people will disagree with this, but I think learning how to construct balanced strategies is actually very important, even at uNL/SSNL. I'm not saying you should actually play close to GTO (game theory optimal) as there's still plenty of room for exploitative adjustments, but it's a good idea to understand how to play ranges rather than hands.
As a corollary it helps tremendously with keeping your frequencies in check - rather than spontaneously deciding "I feel like bluff raising this flop", forcing yourself to think about how your range looks on that board texture and making a decision whether to bluff raise regulates your frequencies much more reliably. Human beings are terrible random number generators.
As for exploitative play I think it's still a good idea to ask yourself "would I be deviating from a balanced strategy?" If the answer is yes, you better have a damn good reason to make that adjustment. If the answer is "I don't know", you're probably ought to go brush up on your theory a bit more. I've probably saved myself a good few buyins worth of spew by stopping and saying "wait... I don't need to defend/bluff with this hand to prevent myself from being exploited, and I have no additional information that says I should".
Onwards and Upwards
My plan for December is to grind as much as possible and re-evaluate. Might be a bit difficult to get that much volume in around Xmas but I'm hoping to have about a $6k BR so I can start taking shots at 200NL. For the time being I'm going to start taking shots when I have 30BI for each new level, moving back down at 25BI. It's more aggressive BRM than I'm used to, but it's certainly nothing crazy and I plan to stick to it until I start withdrawing money each month.
After New Year I'm hoping to start a thread in the Poker Goals & Challenges forum, which should provide a bit more motivation, as well as allowing me to post a lot more hands and small updates which I wouldn't want cluttering up this blog.
I'm also planning to start revamping this site over Xmas and New Year - just got MonoDevelop working on my desktop so I can start playing around with .NET. Hoping to write this using ASP.NET MVC, which we've been using recently at work with a lot of success.
Anyways, until next time, gl gl
- HappyPixel
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