Coming Together

I think I am going to wait awhile after a session before I blog. My emotions tend to come through the blog and that probably isn’t very enjoyable for the reader.

Well, I spent some time today bouncing things off Ryan, one of David’s assistants. I actually met Ryan at the expo this past summer and actually had spent quite a bit of time talking to him about the poker training. He is one of those people that you know is a good person inside. I think his two most defining characteristics are youth and enthusiasm. He is at the bottom of the totem pole at Ari’s training center and he is doing it for the experience, not money. I say that because David does not pay him and he is not allowed to play online poker, or at least he was not this summer. Crazy, huh?

Anyways, I emailed over some hand histories from a couple of tournaments and we decided to review a $26 buy-in $17K guaranteed tournament on Full Tilt. I have mentioned in an earlier blog that one of the toughest things about tournament poker and learning David’s system is that everything is read-dependent. You must forget about what your hand is and look at the situation first. Of course, when you are losing, the doubt starts creeping in and your confidence can really take a beating. Ryan confirmed for me that I am playing very well, but there are a few more leaks I could plug, mainly blind versus blind situations. For example, I had a situation come up where I had 82o in the BB when I was 17BBs deep with five limpers. Instead of open shoving hoping everyone would fold, I bet half my stack, and got one caller who of course hit a set with his small pocket pair. Had I shoved, I believe he would have folded too and I would have chipped up nicely. 82o? I know. Again, the situation was right for what I was trying to accomplish…I just didn’t execute it correctly.

We also agreed that some of the concepts are simply not applicable at the lower buy-ins. Granted, I can still use most of them, but I need to be more selective when I am making moves, because players at the lower buy-ins just do not fold. I made the adjustments before I played tonight, and right away found my session went much smoother than normal. I decided to play the $12.5K on Full Tilt and made a great run, finishing around 60th where I unfortunately spazzed out and donked off my stack on a draw when I was 8th in chips. Dumbass. Other than that, I played very well, executing well timed bluffs and even winning a couple of races. I am looking forward to playing all weekend.

Tomorrow the team will be playing in the $3500 WPT event. http://networkedblogs.com/p12137608 I wish everyone the best of luck.

Also, I noticed tonight that Daisyxoxo is in the lead again for Bluff Online Player of the Year. Every time I sit down to play a poker session, I swear I see him at a final table or rapidly approaching one.

Well, I am going to go read for a bit and call it a night.

Good luck at the tables!