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So having played a few hands and reminded myself how frustrating this game can be I guess its time for a quick review:
Hands played : 2214 (2NL FR)
Result : -$4.21
Its obvious looking through Holdem Manager that the figures are not generally that helpful due to the sample size. However, after some scrutiny it appears my leakiest action is flat calls on the flop, where i have lost far to many smaller pots. Adjustment of this action, by not calling any mid pairs, or top pair bad kicker, and the odd draw with bad pot odds would have left me break even which seems like a decent improvement, assuming I'm also right about a few other errors made on individual hands worth a total of around $3. The flop calls saw no significant wins, but instead a myriad of 5/20bb losses.
I think my psychology was often that I was probably ahead at the flop and didn't want to give that up, however the poor showdown value of my hands left me with folding to any action as the only real option at the turn/river, which would almost always also see cards that further weakened my hand. There would surely be occasions where my hand strength increased, but obviously these are not common, and even where they do happen there is a seems to me a limited range of hands that my opponents would have paid up for to any significant action, and when they do pay up I'm probably exposing myself to the risk of having 2nd bests a lot of the time aswell.
Floating the flop to bet the turn is also obviously a valid enough move but I strongly suspect that I am almost totally unable to determine the right situation for this at the moment.
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Interestingly, all this led me to think a lot about the value of raising rather than calling in many situations in general earlier in the hand, especially with position. I think I have a lot of fear about getting burnt with TPTK hands by playing too fast and getting too much money in early so I tend to call bets rather than play the hand aggressively. Its hard for me to gauge, I seem to get burnt on these hands alot more often than not, yet at the same time I frequently observe large pots being won by such hands. Maybe I'm better to raise in spots like that, I can probably push some better hands out, give weaker hands the chance to make a bad call and find out if I'm badly beaten all with the one flop action rather than cautiously calling my way through multiple streets with no idea whats going to happen.. the idea probably needs some testing I suppose, and as always it will depend on so many other factors.
Speaking of raising, -
In this hand I didn't really know what I should do, I only have 4 hands on villain.
NL Holdem $0.02(BB)
SB ($0.98)
BB ($1.81)
UTG ($0.36)
UTG+1 ($1.61)
Hero ($2.06)
MP1 ($2.01)
CO ($0.66)
BTN ($2)
Dealt to Hero A K
fold, UTG+1 raises to $0.10, Hero raises to $0.28, fold, CO calls $0.28, fold, fold, fold, UTG+1 raises to $0.68 Now what?
Is this a fold? I feel like with the caller there is no way I'm not facing big pairs here, the caller probably has a small edge on me with a lower PP, anything up to QQ, and the raiser could easily have AA/KK and even if he doesn't I still don't see myself being ahead so I think it seems like a fold..
But thats what I thought later after I burnt the money..
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All that aside, I managed to tackle a relatively new chopin etude the last few days, its been on my to do list for a while as I quite like it but it did my head in a while ago when I first had a go. The chopin etudes are a set of extremely ballsy technical studies for piano that are a bit of a staple in the diet of the average concert pianist. There are 24 of them in total. These pieces of music changed the way piano was thought about when they were written, pushing the barriers of what was physically possible and can take the better part of a lifetime to thoroughly master. I can play a few of them well, and a lot of them badly..
Check out the pretty blond girl playing the one I'm working on here.. I won't be playing it that quickly for a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43mvd1lKd3k
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In other news, due to my wife's chronic inflammatory pain condition called Ankylosing Spondilitis we have decided to go through a kind of detox diet for the next two weeks. This involved consuming only juice/smoothies filled with more fruit in a single dose that I would like to eat in a week. Today was day one. I could use a slice of bread and something meaty right about now.
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