Some (slighty expensive) experimentation

This is a week of experimentation for me. After a weekend visiting friends, suffering a courageous defeat in the first round of our poker night, and borrowing Doyle Brunson's Super System from Steve, I was in the mood to try mixing up my play style a little.

So, Monday night I put in a fairly long session, trying out a more agressive style, including trying to pick-up the smaller pots with a bet when I thought people were unsure on the strength of their hand. I also tried to play two tables at once for the first time. This was for a couple of reasons - I'd considered multi-tabling before as I means to stop myself getting bored and playing marginal hands just for some action, and also I'd received a $20 bonus from PartyPoker on condition of making a certain of party points by the 14th and I thought two tables would help build them up a bit faster.

So, a few different things that I tried, all of which added up to a fairly meaty $15 loss! A third of that was admittedly just on getting sucked out on with all my money in the pot while holding a pair of Aces. The other cretin was holding QQ, and called me on a rags flop with no flush or straight draws for him, only to hit a Q on the river! That doesn't account for the rest of the money I threw away though.

Looking back I think the following things were wrong with my play:

1. I carried over the very loose play of the weekend's poker game to the cash tables


2. Playing multiple tables is a bad idea if you're playing more hands than usual, because then most of the time you're splitting your attention across both tables at once


3. Putting in bets to steal the pots did work a surprising amount of times, but then when I got called or raised against I was far too reluctant to drop the money I'd already put in - not a good combination


4. Because I was splitting my attention I kept rushing some of my decisions without properly considering my opponent's potential hand / outs

So, all in all not an auspicious start to a new playing style, but I persevered and played another session last night. This time I played just one table again (I looked at the amount of party points I picked up from my lengthy double table session and realised that making the points requirement for the bonus was pretty much impossible without taking the rest of the week off, or jumping up to a higher level table, which I'm nowhere near ready to do!) and I reduced the number of hands that I played in the first place. And, it worked pretty well, ending the session up by $4.70.
I really am appreciating the pick-up tactic, I've been taking down a good number of small pots, and even managed to win some fairly big hands by representing a flush or a straight.

So, feeling good again about my game overall, despite having another $10 to earn to make up for Monday's experiment! The only way is up!*





*DISCLAIMER: Poker winnings may go down as well as up.