Marathon Session (from before)

It's been awhile since I updated the blog. Finals are over, final projects are done, girlfriend is out of town.... this all means that it is prime time for poker. I got very excited about this and ended up playing a LOT in one night. I posted about it (with a graph) on the CR forums as well as the BBV forums on 2+2. Here is a link to the CR post

So I swung down 9 buyins and then won 9 buyins back in about 4 hours of play. Since that day things have turned around for me completely. I have been absolutely killing the games. I can't give complete stats because I'm on my laptop at home rather than my desktop at school where I usually play, but here are the stats from the last few days:

Total hands: 965
Amount won: $246.20
PTBB/100: 25.51
VP$P/PFR: 21.14/14.51 with total aggression factor of 2.50.

I have been playing extremely focused and I am running decently. I've been reading a lot of forums lately (and the comments from you guys on this blog) and I think it has really made a big difference. I have a postitive mindset and have been playing MENTALLY TOUGH (haha thanks for the tip). I always like to be able to say that I am at my all time high for poker winnings (which I can say 99.9% of the time) but I am still not there yet. I will be soon at this rate though.

If I had to pick one thing that has changed in my playstyle over the past week it is the ability to lay down hands. Since I was running bad (and playing bad a lot of the time) I always felt like people were trying to rob me and steal my pots. It made it impossible for me to make folds. I think I would subconciously feel like "well they can't have it everytime" and find myself calling down light and playing big pots with small hands. If I thought that there was a chance I had the best hand, I would call 2 or 3 bets with it rather than realizing that the risk was not worth the reward. People say that in order to be a good poker player you have to lay down the best hand sometimes, and I had forgotten that. Now I can fold top pair confidently. Confidence is an important concept. I had lost mine, but it feels really great to have it back.

Good luck at the tables guys, and happy holidays.