Better Lucky Then Good

I'm not sure what four nines does, but the ace, I think, is pretty high. -- Danny Ocean - Ocean's Eleven


I thought yesterday was a great day of poker, but today was even better. I didn't win as many pots as I did yesterday (where I pretty much won every pot I was in), but I managed to drag down two absolute monster pots to set me up real nice for the day. Even without the two huge scores, I would still have been up about $20, but thanks to those I finished the day $78 in the black. For me, this was huge.

The game of the day was again 1/2 6 Max, and this time I was getting my hand histories almost immediately, so I started playing around with PokerTracker's Gametime window. This is a pretty neat tool that Poker Nerd wrote a little "crash course" about on his blog, so I won't go into it here.

A couple of observations. I've played about 1400 hands of 1/2 6 Max, and I'm here to tell ya, the players on there are hilariously bad, at least in the morning/afternoon. I can't imagine how bad they get in the evening, but I intend to find out. Today I played 4 different tables. The average VP$IP I saw was around 60%. Yes, kids, that's the average. It was amazing the things these people were throwing money at the pot with! If you can keep the discipline to remain tight even in the face of such poor play, you stand to make some serious coin. With the GameTime window there to help you, you can find out pretty quick how the table is shaping up. Paying attention to the table texture and how others play is very important, but the mind can't remember everything. The Gametime window misses nothing.

Of course, if you're going to play more then 1 table, the gametime window is going to do nothing but create a diversion and confuse you.

Covering up my "stack" continues to pay off dividends for me. I didn't even peek at where I stood before I left a table to go to another. Closed the table first, then took the sticky off the screen. I love not having any idea where I am in a session. It's completely changed how I approach betting.

I'm trying to determine how much of my profit these last two days is attributable to luck and how much is to skill. It's tough to differentiate when your feeling bulletproof, but thanks to the hidden stack size, I've managed to keep a level head and remain unaffected by winning or losing. Hopefully I don't take a spiral just as rapid as this rise!