September Recap – October Goals

Matt | September 30, 2010 | Comments (0)

It’s been a bit too long since my last update, so here we go….

To start off with, September has been my busiest month ever since I started working for myself over a year and a half ago. This is due to me picking up other projects in addition to my own grind (work + poker) which already consumed quite a bit of my day to begin with.

One of the new projects I’ve started in September is the task of coaching other players new and/or struggling in the micro 18-man sngs. Despite being somewhat time consuming, I really can’t regret taking on this extra workload. I have found that by coaching other students and sharing my thought process in addition to listening to theirs that my game has improved as a result. Even if I don’t agree with why my student may do “x” in a situation, I still learn why he/she did it. This leads to me having a deeper understanding to how other players may think in similar situations, therefore enabling me to quickly recognize and counter their actions. Not sure if this makes sense (I probably f**ked up explaining it..), but the point is that my game has improved while helping others to improve themselves.

The other project(s) I’ve taken on in Sept has been more website/affiliate related. The sites aren’t mine though and I can’t disclose what the sites (urls) are….but they’ve been keeping me busy…

Aside from being busy, September has been a stressful month for me. Ever since I started playing backed and receiving coaching I’ve never experienced anything more than a hiccup of variance here or there. Well, lol, I started off this month playing @ 50% in the $6/18s (dropped down from $16s to learn to play more tables at once) which lasted for about a week. After a brief chat w/my coach/backer, we decided that I should go ahead and move back to the $16s as well as add the $27/18s to my grind. Bad timing… … Once I started to load some $16s and $27s I found myself losing every flip, bubbling every other game and having days where I was losing $xxx for the first time and pretty close to $x,xxx within a matter of a couple weeks. This is really nothing when you think about the games I play (4 $27/18s puts you in the hole pretty quick)…but seeing as it was my first real downswing, it’s just been sick to deal with. I’ve reviewed countless hand histories as well as have 2 of my coaches review my hand histories to more or less give me a sanity check – just make sure I’m still playing well enough to win. Just sucks to go from being really confident about my game to questioning every play I make (std or not), watching every race (something I stopped for the most part) and even tilting at times – something I have never really done before.

If the above didn’t make my September long and stressful enough, I got an email today stating that PokerStars aren’t taking my kind anymore….players from WA state aren’t allowed to play on their site anymore. This really hinders a lot of my long/short term goals…but I’ll figure something out. In the meantime I’ll just play on Tilt.

Ok, so that’s pretty much everything that’s been going on with me since my last update. I think I’ll close this post off w/a list of my goals for October….

1,500 min/2k max games – This might be harder to do since I have to play on FTP now and my std games (18man turbos) don’t ever load. So, now I got to play 45 man non-turbos and 90man KO turbos…both are games that take considerably longer to complete…
Review 5 hand histories before each session
Stop watching races
Work on my emotional state when I play. I really, really want to get to a point where I’m like ‘meh’ each time I face negative variance. I don’t want to tilt or explode out of my seat when I’m 3-outered on the river (ZOMG RUFU**KING SRRS STARS????) for the 4th time in a row. << Not sure if that’s familiar to anyone….
Start working out. Ideally I’ll work out at least 4 times a week + improve my overall diet.
Take breaks from the computer more frequently.