Hey All,

It's been a longggg time since I've posted a blog post, or posted much at all really.

2012:

2012 was a pretty eventful year for me. I got engaged in April, and the wedding is coming up this July. I also got a new job as a Project Manager which is going pretty well so far.

Poker has consequently been on the back-burner for most of the year. That being said, I still put in some reasonable volume (~8-10k hands per month). 2012 ended out on a rough note (down $8k in December), which in turn resulted in my worst poker year since I started playing. It became clear to me this year that when you're not putting in good volume, out-running variance can sometimes take a very very long time.

Cross-roads:

I think it's safe to say that this year is a poker turning point for me. I'm reasonably past the "poker is fun" stage, and now it's come down to 10% fun, and 90% "is it worth the time investment?"

The idea of NOT playing seems very strange to me, so let's just hope the ship turns around!

2012 Poker lessons:

Avoidable Losses

-one thing I started doing in 2012 was keeping track of "avoidable losses" in my sessions. If I stupidly peeled a small 4b, and then bluffed off for $350 consequently, I'd mark this down as $350 avoidable, etc etc. Any loss where I deem "I should know better", was tracked
-I wasn't doing this for the full year, but for 9 months, and extrapolating over the full year my avoidable losses came to $18,500! This was over the course of approximately 100-120 sessions playing a combo of $200-$600nl.
-This made me realize that even $100 saved per session in avoidable losses will add up to $10-12k in a year.
-Lesson Learned: Small pots matter! Don't just focus on the big losses, 15-30bb mistakes over the course of a year add up HUGE.

Spots to fix:
-bad flop peels in 3b pots (~15bb)
-bad flop cbets in 3b pots (~15bb)
-bad spots to 4b bluff (~20-25bb)
-bad river triple barrel (~25bb)

There are tons of spots where these types of mistakes can occur. Finding a few -EV spots, and removing them from your game can help a lot.


Bet sizing

-Another spot to focus on for 2013 is bet sizing. I've been playing around with very small bet sizing lately and it seems to work well, especially in 3bet pots.
-For too much of the year I was playing around with 3/4 pot + sizing to put pressure on people, but I think that sizing just got me in a lot of bad spots and had to work too often to be profitable.
-I don't have anything concrete to add on this point other than I'll keep trying this out, the frequency at which small bets have to work is so low that it seems to be profitable so far

My main focus on the year will be to focus on those avoidable losses. I'm going to keep tracking them, and keep paying closer attention to the number of 15+ bb mistakes I feel I'm making per session. The goal is to get these mistakes down. I'm pretty positive that if these mistakes go down, my winnings will go up.

2013 is make or break! Hopefully it ends up being the former and not the latter!

-Griffey