How often do you *really* play your A game?

[kenewbie]

After some serious tiltage last night for the first time in 3 months, I had to sit back and think about my play a bit.

When all is said and done I think about 20% of my losses came from tilt, the rest was just beats. They where painfull ones, but still just beats which I'm normally pretty good at dealing with.

Another big percentage of the loss probably came from me trying to incoorporate pieces of my "a game" into a field that had me pegged as a slotmachine. Raising not so decent hands first in from the CO into thight blinds works great when you have a solid table image, not so much when people have seen you drop 25BB in 20 minutes and play way too many flops.

Now this is the part where I had my epiphany. When things started to go to hell, thats the point when I tried to alter my play for the better. That just isnt right. In a perfect world I would play my best game all the time, but I realized I'm usually on cruisecontrol. Probably as much as 70-80% of the time I just play on rutine without really thinking. And I'm not talking about easy hands or standard situations, I'm talking about sessions at a time. The only time I know for sure I'm always giving the game my full attention is in short handed games or tournaments.

So, my question is this. How often do you really play your A game? When I play my best game I take advantage of every situation I see, thight blinds, loose limpers, people playing Axo, people who steal blinds, people who are agressive on draws, people who are passive on draws, autobetters, and so on. The list is long, and the abillity to proccess as much as possible of this information and take advantage of the texture is what makes a good poker player. Most of the time, however, I dont even try.

k

[Webster]

I can tell you when I play my C game. Right after I have a couple Pina Colitas and start playing 3 tables. LOL.

Talk about miss clicking - YIKES!! Session did not last long.

I swear playing 3 tables I have less leaks post flop. BUT - it could be because I'm in a "I should teach this game - how can I ever lose" streak.

Otherwise I feel I always play my A game.

[radek2166]

I like the slot machine analogy. To me it seeems if you raise alot with hands and position you are supposed to raise from people take that as a licences to reraise you.

I find myself in alot of big pots ask entity. Part of it is I feel I am going to raise and I get reraise dI cap the puppy. Probably has something to do with my childhood.

Looking at PT stats As I move up in levels my VP$IP goes down. I think this has to do with the better play of the other players.

When at lower levels .05/.10 my VP is around 25%. I think I can out play alot of the fools post flop.

I played with a guy yesterday turned a flop out of the SB. Guy told me I was an idiot cause I beat his Pocket Q's. He was the idiot cause he did not raise preflop.

He raises I fold. Its that simple too many people try to be fancy at the low levels. Thats where alot of their loses come from IMHO.

I have learned not to be fancy just play and they will follow.

Just my cent and a half.

[scotnt73]

good post.

i play my A game when i am first back from a week long break. and over the next 2-3 months ill slowly go back to cruise control until i have a big losing streak. then i take a week off. read one of the big poker books again. rinse and repeat.

i dont think this is the right way to do things its just the way i do them. when im winning its hard to tweak things to play better because when i tweak my game i usually lose for a while until i get the hang of the new concepts. so when im winning im thinking if it aint broke dont fix it. but when im losing ill take the time to revamp my game from the ground up.