A post I've wanted to write for a long time (LONG)

[sweetjazz]

I'm a mid-limit player and certainly the 10/20 and 15/30 are far from impossible to beat handily. But I played several hours of a no fold 'em live 3/6 game. I counted about 10 times when I made a bad or highly questionable decision (over 8 hours of play). This is about 1 every 25 hands (and I could be making more errors that I don't yet notice). On the one hand, it is good that I can now recognize my poor decisions when analyzing the hand immediately after the fact -- that experience is something I didn't have when I was first beating these games. There's probably something analagous that goes on at every limit -- when we first play, even if we succeed, we can't really spot where our leaks are. It's only after a long amount of play in a game can we start to reliably spot leaks (and hopefully not make them).

But on the other hand, it was disturbing to make so many mistakes. Almost all of my mistakes were pretty small EV wise and ranged from loose calls to failing to bluff at one pot where I might have been able to take it down due to unique circumstances to not value betting/raising in a few situations. If I make this many mistakes in a game that is easier than the 0.5/1 game on Party, how many errors am I making a 15/30 game?

I remember a few weeks ago having one of my best sessions ever. I felt like I had a great read of everyone at the table and was picking up on the style of every new player at the table quickly. I felt like I was consistently making good decisions. I only made one boneheaded play the entire session, calling down a turn raise with TT against a player who was too passive to check-raise the turn with a hand I could have beaten. It helped that I was runnning good most of the session, and in fact that probably significantly reduced the number of tough decisions I faced.

However, this was a rare experience. So often, I play decent but end up getting sloppy and make plays against my better judgment, or I fail to work on maintaining active reads of the other players at the table, or I overcompensate when running bad to avoid being run over.

Despite being a winning player so far, I would say that I am not much better than a half-decent player. I can crush loose small stakes games and I can beat the lower mid-limit games so far despite needing work in my game. But a lot of that is my opponents at these limits are more lazy and more sloppy than I am, not that I am particularly good. I believe that I am capable of being a much better player, but it will take a lot more work to reach that goal. Hopefully I will learn to THINK better and also develop the discipline to work on consistently applying all that I know and all my observational powers throughout every session I play. Instead of looking at how much I am winning against my bad opponents, when I am honest with myself, I realize that despite this appearance of success, I am leaving a significant amount of theoeretical EV on the table. I am not that good, but I can aspire to study more and work harder to become that good.