2012 Short Review

Hi all, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year to you all, may it bring you lots of luck on the felt.

I am not one for landmarks in time, I am not overly fussed by birthdays or new year but nonetheless the ticking over of the calendar from one year to the next is a good opportunity to review the previous year and to try and put some thoughts together for the upcoming year as such I am going to write a short blog recapping 2012.

I started this blog in 2012 and I have had a few positive comments regarding it, I thank you for those comments as it seems to me that I have given a few readers food for thought and provided different angles to consider which was my main aim (admittedly this was more for me to consolidate my thoughts on things rather than help others but if you are prepared to read my blog than I suppose you deserve a little something in return!). I think the blog has helped have a positive effect on me and my game and I intend to carry on with it in 2013 so please give me feedback as to what articles you like, what you would like further explanations on where I didn’t explain something to well and also any ideas for topics you may want me to write about. I am planning my next article to be on live casino donkaments where the structures are bad and the players are worse, this was inspired by my recent trip to Southend on Sea with a few PKR players for a meetup and crushage of the locals J

Poker was very much up and down for me in 2012, the highlight definitely being winning 2 live MTTs at the now closed Fox Poker Club, both for £4k scores, I also had 2 other final table scores for £1k a piece there around the same time.  Now that the Fox has closed it is going to be a bit more difficult to play live poker regularly but I will try to play a couple of the Genting Poker Series events and of course there will be PKR Live in London over Easter. If you have never been to a PKR Live before then I highly recommend you try to qualify, even if you haven’t played any live poker before you will still enjoy the experience.

I also highly enjoyed Vegas (of course!) but didn’t feel the best out there and didn’t get any results, however I plan to return this year but will probably focus more on the non WSOP events such as the Venetian Deep Stack simply because they are better structured than the $1,500 WSOP events although I may play the odd WSOP event depending on how the schedule looks and how I feel at the time.

The back end of 2012 has been hell for me poker-wise, I have been generally running horribly with the odd exception in a MTT here or there which has kept me going. It just seems at times that no matter how I play a hand I end up losing and in recent weeks I have felt myself getting extremely frustrated and this is definitely a step back for me as I have improved tremendously in this regard in recent months but the onslaught of bad luck has brought me to tipping point. I have been getting destroyed repeatedly by people limp calling out of position for large chunks of their stack preflop only for them to smash the flop. I’ve been calling someone down with a weak hand as I know they are bluffing only for them to spike a three outer on the river, I get it in with AK and lose to a weaker Ace and all manner of bad luck imaginable.  I know I am not the world’s unluckiest player (far from it) and that this kind of thing is very common but it is still frustrating, especially when you see a lot of players seemingly get the right side of variance all too often.

It’s not all been bad luck though, I have made more mistakes in the past few weeks than I can remember for a long time and what hurts the most is the rare times in the past few weeks where I have ran OK or well in an MTT I have frequently blown up in a hand when deep and made a huge error. Basically I have been trying to force spots where I shouldn’t be and making bad calls where I am capable of folding. Ironically in the past few weeks I have had hands like JJ/QQ a number of times in spots where the action tells me I am behind to KK or AA yet I have not folded and this was exactly the same situation that I discussed in an earlier blog entry on luck and how running bad often leads to not playing your A-game and making mistakes in those marginal spots, I have been calling too light against the wrong players on numerous occasions in spots where I knew I was dominated and this is a leak I will working on as it is something I thought I had fixed previously but the bad run seems to have meant that this has crept back into my game.

Stupid Foxy!!

I have been dwelling too much on individual hands, certainly far more than is healthy; either bemoaning luck or getting frustrated at myself for making a mistake, while analysing mistakes is an essential tool to improve your game, it rarely does any good during a session and it is important to shed the negative thoughts away to maximise your chances of playing your A-game in the next hand and the one after that and so on, I am not doing this at the moment so it is no surprise that the run-bad is still continuing. All of this run-bad has built up and is hanging over my neck so even just one or two beats into a session and I am already frustrated, the best cure for this is usually a nice win but obviously that is easier said than done and other than that a break or a change until the baggage is gone or at least greatly reduced is usually the only viable option. Just writing the issues out here will help me refocus and hopefully bring me a win in the near future J

Anyway, that is enough of the negativity, I am sure that if I can improve and bring my A-game often enough during 2013 then it will end profitably, it certainly will do for Elz who has already bagged herself a PKR Masters title, huge congratulations!

Nice payday Elz!