more coaching

I was holding off on my next coaching session until I felt I had firmly grasped and put to good use the first two sessions. After playing for about 2 weeks, I was ready for the next step. We covered a lot, and as usual, I spent a good day afterwards listening to my recording of the session, taking notes, and compiling them into an “exec summary” that I can read to refresh my memory before I play until it’s fully learned. Since my last lesson, I’ve played almost 11 hours – which isn’t really as much as I’d like, but I’ve been watching videos, reading articles, posting hand histories, studying others, and reviewing my own hand histories after each session – and honestly this takes way more time than you’d expect. Out of six sessions total, I’ve been a winner in five of them and I’m up 7 buy-ins, which is awesome.

It’s amazing how joining the video site and getting some coaching can improve your game. There are so many people out there who think they just can’t be helped by a coach. Terribly wrong…but please, don’t get one, cause I like taking your money. I find myself not able to fit all the learning I’d like to do into the time I have available. I also find myself easily playing longer sessions and instead of feeling like “Is my time up?” – I just want to keep playing.

I guess winding down from Microsoft takes about 10 months. While I always believe in my abilities, it’s nice to be putting up some good profit and feeling like there’s no where but up to go.

I’ve also noticed that “bad beats” in smaller pots don’t bother me in the way they did before. However, the big pots still get to me a little. Yesterday, I had a huge fish at my table. I had been slowly taking his money, and he doubled up (luckboxed it) against someone who had him crushed. While I hate seeing the suckout, more money in his stack is more earning potential for me. We were at even stacks with about 160BBs each. I raised to 5BB with AA, and he min 3 bet me to 9BB. Given his play, I put him on something he wasn’t folding preflop and raised to 80BB. He flat calls. If you’re going to flat call this, you might as well shove because you’re not folding on any flop. The flop comes KTx. I push and he thinks for a while. I’m just hoping he has AK. He finally calls and shows JJ. Ok, he could have folded this flop as obviously he’s beat. The turn is a 5. And the river is a J. My desk got a little fist pound from this one. Eventually I’ll just type nh and move on…but right now those 4 buy-in pots where I play it awesome am a ~94% favorite after the turn and lose just suck. As you might imagine, this session was my only loser of the week. If this hand holds, I’m a 3 buy-in winner in that session instead. Oh well…

The other interesting thing is that now when I sit down at a table, there’s almost no one I’m “scared” of playing. This is a definite change from before where some of the regulars at my level would run me over. Now I just feel like while I might lose in the short term, my studying is paying off quickly.

Hopefully by the end of the month (if not sooner), I’ll be moving up limits back to 50NL. I wanted to earn 50 buy-ins at 25NL first, even though I’m bankrolled to play much much higher. Others would say I should just move up, but I’m really focused on nailing the concepts I’ve learned. Not much longer though…

Oh yeah, and GO BRONCOS!!! 5-0. And Monday Night this week! Awesome.