Smooth

Well, I took Wensday through Friday off from poker, then picked back up Saturday. The bad news is that my game is getting a little sloppy. I have been making some bad calls (made a REALLY bad call last night for $20, but that is only the worst amoung many) and missing some value bets trying to get in a check raise against the wrong type of villans. On the other hand, I have been doing REALLY well with my value betting. I have been mixing in a lot of "raptor" betting with some pot size betting and I have been sizing my bets to build pots of the size I want better than I ever have. Outside of just paying attention and knowing what pot size I want to create, what has really improved has been my getting out of the mindset that I must bet X amount of the pot to prevent them from having correct odds for a portion of their range. In thinking about their range as a whole and sizing my bets, I am finding myself getting a lot of 3 streets of value from hands AK/AQ and other random hands. I have actually had relatively tight fish pay 3 streets with J high. Now, I am not winning big pots here, but when you attempt to steal the blinds with 54s your not really looking for a big pot. However, getting 3BB pre-flop, 3 on the flop and turn, plus 4 on the river is a DAMN nice pot for bottom pair.

Another aspect of my game that has really improved is adjusting to smaller stack sizes. I have been usuing larger 3 bet sizes in many situations to set up a favorable SPR post flop. The down side is that I have probably taken down a few pots pre-flop where I was a pretty decent faovrite. But to me that is preferable to playing in an odd situation where any C-bet makes it gross to shut down. The plus side is that often I can just C-bet all in. Having an SPR tailored to the player really makes post flop easy. Dry flop? Shove and take your fold equtiy. Crush that flop? Check a street and see if you can induce. Hit the worst flop ever? Check fold. I don't mind loosing the extra 2 or 3 BB that I added on pre-flop for all the times it makes me more money on those rare situations that you have to give up.

Anyway, all of this is probably just a long way of saying it's a good month so far. I have been running over 6BB/100 for the last 5.5K hands. I am color coding a lot of players so table selection is much easier. At the beginning of the month I was just looking for 3 short stacks, and I really didn't care where they were. Now I am looking for 3 short stacks, no aggro on my left (although I will deal with this if their are enough fish) and I have good position on at least 2 fish. With the auto table selector at FT, it is so easy to get 10 good tables going now. I know and am thankful that most regs don't table select well, but once you have the basics of TAG play down, no single skill will help your win rate more than table selection. I understand the reason so many people think they want to play the best players at their level. Getting experience playing better players for cheaper. The flaw in the logic is the cheaper part though. I don't sit in games I don't feel I have a BIG edge in. Sometimes this means I have a good (or even better) player at the table with me. Sometimes they even have position. And these are the times that I improve against better players. But I am still sitting at a table where I have an adge ON THE FIELD! And yes, as I move up, I will still have to learn how to adapt to better players. But so what? When I am learning, I will be playing at a higher limit. BUT I AM NOT LOOSING MORE! I will still be sitting at a table where I feel I have and edge. So I will actually be making more while I learn how to play against better players. So, good table selection means you make more when you play, are able to move up faster, and you still get to practice against good players, but you do so in situations where you are still going to be profitable. Maybe I don't learn as much today, but moving up faster means learning faster in the long run, much more so than playing the best players at X limit.