However one tell that I have noticed is the use of the auto-buttons.  Now this is not a tell for all, but it has been very useful for me in a number of situations.  Especially when you have position on the player.

If someone doesn’t have a hand, they simply look at their cards and then hit the auto-fold button.  This is a tell, not when they auto-fold, but when they don’t.  You can be sure that they have something if they usually auto-fold and then decide to think about the hand.

Just something to keep in mind

I am playing too many hands, any paint I think is good, but the fact is that it is so easy to be out kicked, or have a flush on the river, or a bigger two pair.  Something like Q8o looks good to me these days when I am on the button, so I am thinking that I am going to lose the money.

At the lower levels I will be able to discipline my play and will not really have to worry about the lose of my bankroll to the same point.  At the level that I was playing I could have one session that I lost 20% of my bankroll, even though my roll is not at the level that I really care about.

Once I am winning again at this level, and have my vp$ip, w$sd and w$sf at the levels that I, and the “experts”, think are at levels that show the right discipline, I will move up one more level for another 500 hands or when I feel that I am back on track.  From there I will be able to analyze where my bankroll is and whether or not I should be looking to moving up a level, or start building where I am at today.

After this current session that I am playing I will post a quick summary and will show the points where my discipline was lacking.

# of Hands: 185
VP$IP: 24.32
Net from SB: 4.8BB
Net from BB: 29.1

Net Amount: 1.7BB

The hand count is something that I am going to have to work on, which is going to be hard since like I said here, I am on a major downswing that is sapping my confidence fast. I still haven’t thought of a way to change things, it is not that I am playing too much, but it may be that I am not playing enough.

I am still not sure.

I will have to simply do some more reading. I may decide that it is time to try another game for size, maybe NL or Omaha. But I think that the more likely is to drop down one more level so that at least while I am working on the game my bankroll won’t be taking such a noticeable hit.

One of the things that I am noticing is that I am still on the downward bankroll march. I know why, I think, but I have to work on getting into the right frame of mind BEFORE I start a session. I thought that I knew why, now I am not so sure. I will work on some postings this week on my last few sessions. The last one being today. And today was BAD, I am not sure how bad yet, or where it is that I am leaky, I am going to have to pour over my logs to figure that one out. I do know for one thing that I was runner runnered twice and lost most of my buyin. I have a feeling that may have tilted me, and also at one table it meant that I really didn’t have enough money to do much with.

I think that after I finish posting my last few sessions I am going to have to take stock. Maybe read some of my books again to see if I can get some idea what I am doing wrong, and some ideas on how I can fix it. I may come to figure that this is simply one of those dreaded downturns and I simply have to play through it, I am on the bad side of variance. However I don’t think that I really have the experience to know that for sure, I could simply just be a fish/donkey.

So, Super System 2, here I come. Maybe Jennifer Harmon can give me some limit poker guidance. I have also joined up at StoxPoker, so I am going to peruse there and some over at the TwoPlusTwo forums. Maybe I can read some bad beat stories, or, maybe even better, some success stories.

One of the things that  I mentioned before was my hope to lose less money from the SB.  Well I lucked out on a couple of hands where I limped with small suited connectors and hit hard on the flop.  Made a lot of money on them.

And below you can see my stats for this session.  I will be trying to post them in this format, I am not sure what the best format is, or what kind of information what people want to find out about.  Anyway, let me know what you like, or care about.

# of Hands: 146
VP$IP: 25.34
Net from SB: 5.1BB

Net Amount: -5.6BB

There are a few poker blogs that I read, one being the Tao of Poker and another is Party Poker Blog, and the quote above was re-posted by the latter, and I simply thought that it was way too good of a quote not to spread around.

I do not play enough live poker to say that I have noticed this at the table, but since the huge blow-up of poker being on TV and how everyone and their dog can now play online in their underwear, the exposure is huge. Now one of the questions you ask someone new you meet whether at a party or where ever, right after you ask if they are on Facebook but that is for another day, is that I ask if they play poker. If they do it opens up a topic of conversation, and even if they don’t they will ask you about it. This is a great way of starting a conversation instead of the two of you just standing there. This is especially useful if you are introduced by a mutual friend who then decides that they need to go to the can or gets into a conversation with someone else. Something that has happened to me more than once recently.

So next time you are at that house party, try bringing it up. You never know, maybe a game will start spontaneously and you will have found a new bunch of buddies.

Anyway, let me know what you think about it.  Like. Hate. etc.

If you like you can find it here.  There are a lot of other great, clean themes there and they even have a theme that you can use to start your own.  Check it out.

However we are not on Session #3, which is about another 100 hands combined at 2 tables.  One table I did good the other I lost slighty, but was doing really well except for one shitty hand where a maniac drew a 8 high flush on the river when he was hold A8o in the big blind.  I will post the entire hand history later when I figure out the way that I want to display particular hands.

Now on to the graphs.   The first is my session data for December, the last two are for my most recent sit-down.

This graph shows the same thing but is by the hand so it shows trends much more easily for such a short time period.

I think that I am doing better at choosing the hands that I want to play, and bleeding money from the blinds.  I am currently at a loss of 23.4BB from the Small Blind, and that does not include the Small B linditself.  I have only lost 1.7BB when I am in the Big Blind and I would like to bring the amount lost from the small blind down some.  I know that over time you are always going to be negative from the blinds, but I want to limit that to the best of my ability.  You already have to give the money away, that is the purpose of the blinds, but you don’t have to be giving more and more away.

I will add the amount lost from the blinds to the things that I update so that everyone can see how I am doing with it.  I hope to get the SB down to 5-10BB by the end of December.

It almost drove me to be much more loser with my hole cards, but luckily I have a short cheat sheet with starting hands and their odds that I like to play with. This is something that I will ahve to post another time. It is great if you want to play tight, but it can also be a detriment if you are playing at a relatively tight table. As the rule of thumb goes, the tighter the table the looser your play and visa-versa.

Anyway, I think that PokerStars is going to notice a jump in VP$IP, especially in the lower limit games where the players are a lot less disciplined anyway.

So what do you think about the new software?

One other thing that I am forgetting is pot-odds. I am not betting when I should and then letting others draw out on me, and I am calling when they have hit. At the low limits that I am playing you can expect to have some “maniacs”, I am just hoping that I am not going to become one.

My goal for the next 200 hands or so is to bring my self back to even money at this level. I think that this is possible if I play fewer hands and only play premium hands in the blinds, and that means folding from the SB more often.

I will report back after my next session where I should have about 100 hands and should only be down 15BB if I have my way

Since we are still in the beginnings of December I think that I should get some poker goals out of the way so that when January comes around I will have something to come back to.

Well the first thing is that I am going to be sticking with full-ring .25/.50 limit at PokerStars. There should be less variance in this play and I should be able to build my bankroll somewhat. Currently it sits around $80.

My hands-played goal is going to be a measly 1500 hands. This should be easy, but December is a very busy month. So 1500 hands I hope to build my bankroll to $100. It doesn’t sound like much but if you looked at my last two graphes you will see that December has not started out too good.

The only other goal is to re-read a couple of poker books that I own. I will talk more about this later this week.

Besides, I don’t want to water down my main blog with poker.  I think that I have enough interest in poker that I am going to be able to write a lot about it.

The biggest thing I think is that it is going to be slow going making this place “look” good.   But I am sure that if the content is here, the people will come…..right?

Anyway, I have some posts that I am going to re-post here, and there are some on the burner that I am going to be adding in the near future.  One of my plans is going to be to review some of the poker books that I have in my library.  There are a number, some good, some you should read from the library, and others that you should avoid at all costs.

Hope that you enjoy the place, and be sure to add the RSS to your reader.