[Poker] Goodbye For Now

Hi guys. This is a pretty sad day for me, as I realised it really is for the best that I put poker on a backburner for a month or so. While university is not my main life plan at the minute, I've spent the majority of the last few years of my life aiming towards it, and to come out of all of that with absolutely nothing to show for it, and no backup plan other than PLO, would be a terrible situation to find myself in. So, sadly, I won't be playing, studying or writing about any PLO for the next month. My goals for this month in poker will be reconsidered going into June when I can come back to this and properly focus. Until then, mathematics will take the wheel. My next (poker related) post will come the day after my last exam most likely, when I can properly submerse myself into 30 hour grinding weeks. I cannot wait.

Hopefully see you next time! (Provided you remember I exist)

Seacombe

[Poker] F***ing Up Upwards In Stakes (My first PLO5Z stab)

So, in my procrastination routine of today, I decided it was time to clear up my laptop. It's an old laptop, with loads of software that I'll never use again, along with a lot of stuff I've never even heard of (hand-me-down hype), and recently its been even more depressingly slow than usual, especially PokerTracker (which is ironic for reasons I'll explain). So, I opened up the control panel, and started uninstalling everything I didn't want or looked as if it was something my dad had previously used for work. 

This is where I came to the SQL section, I knew my dad had done loads of work in SQL for his last job, and there was a lot of software left over from that. I went trigger happy and decided to delete it all. Little did I realise that within the mound of SQL software, there was postgreSQL, which is the database software PokerTracker uses. Long story short, after lots of talking to support and moaning to anyone who would listen, I realised I'd just deleted my whole database. About 40,000 hands, gone. All of the hands I'd tagged to write blog posts on, gone. All of the hands I was going to do the sweat review session with, gone. I was devastated. How was I supposed to know if I should try and steal now? How do I know if they're 3betting me light or just with AAxx? My months of grinding the PLO2Z pool and building up reads felt pointless.

Eventually, I managed to reinstall postgreSQL and got PT working, on a new database. Luckily the majority of my settings/HUD were all kept, I'd just lost all of my hands. I decided to play a bit to start rebuilding my hand pool.

While playing, I realised something. I was playing against a pool I had no reads on. I realised this felt a lot like how it would feel to move up stakes. I was rebuilding a database for a stake I really didn't want to be spending much longer in. I'm not sure if it was a bit of tilt that made me think this, but I didn't want to rebuild to just have to rebuild again. I was over-rolled for PLO2. I felt good about my game. I decided it was time to stab at PLO5.

Nowadays, I usually play 4 tables of PLO2Z. That is due to being comfortable at the stake - I have detailed notes and lots of hands on the majority of the players there. Decisions are made considerably easier so I need less time to make them. I am also comfortable with general bet sizing and player tendencies. I am not in PLO5. For this reason, I decided my first stab would just be playing 1 table of Zoom. 

I played well, I ran hot. Obviously this is a tiny sample size and is just about an hour of playing one table of Zoom, but I'm still happy with the result. Only having one table to think about meant it felt like I had an eternity to make every decision, which really helped make me feel more comfortable at the stake. It was also weirdly nice to see a lot of the people who I saw a lot of at PLO2 who suddenly disappeared (I guess I know where they went), almost like seeing an old friend, who used to take all your money when you didn't know anything about PLO. Okay, maybe not the most relatable metaphor, but you get my point. I drew a couple of conclusions from my first PLO5 session:

1) People fold their blinds like 90% of the time to a button open.

2) People aren't that much better than in PLO2. At times, it almost felt as if they were worse in PLO5.

3) The small blind not being half of the big blind makes people fold way more in BvB situations. 

I'm going to play a lot more hands and see if this turns out to be true. I'm really not well rolled for PLO5Z at all, I have about 20BI in my roll. If I lose 10 of them, I'll take a few days, review every hand, think about all my alternatives, do some sweat review sessions (which I'm still yet to explain what that is, I'll get around to it) and if I think I'm ready to go again, consider firing another student loan barrel. Hopefully it won't come down to that and I can go on enough of an upswing to keep me decently rolled. 

Since signing up for RI1, I feel considerably more confident in my game. I've watched a lot of training videos, and read every PLO thread posted in the past month or so. Maybe losing my whole database and every note I've ever made was actually a good thing for me.

Hopefully see you next time!

Seacombe

[Poker] Hand #5 - Overcomplicating Things

Hey guys, I played this hand today and I've been thinking about it for a while now. The equities in the situation run really close vs his potential ranges, and we have absolutely no reads on the player, so we have to make lots of assumptions. To show the hand, I'll be doing it in the normal style, but I've switched the PT theme to a Full Tilt theme, which I personally think looks beautiful but I'd love opinions on. I could see it being a bit heavy on the eyes after a while.

We're in the small blind vs a completely unknown player UTG, who limps. I have no reads on the player, but there are only two situations I ever really see this done at these stakes. The first being they have aces trying to play a 3bet pot, and the other being they're a weaker player. I block aces, so from the start I assume they're a weaker player. I obviously pot it from the small blind, very standard in my opinion with a hand this strong.

The flop is 869 rainbow, so we flop middle set on a straightened board. Normally I would go for a check call with this hand on this board texture, in order to keep bluffs in his range and maybe hit a boat and stack off a flopped straight, but my assumption of him being a weaker player means I don't think he's going to be bluffing at this board a lot, and will probably be calling quite light. He ends up potting it, which puts me in a weird spot. I thought this was a straight a fair bit of the time, which I have equity against, and I also thought he could be doing this with any overpair or set, especially if he's a weaker player. This is my reasoning for deciding to shove, which in hindsight I think is the worst of my three options. I definitely think flat-calling is the answer here, we keep in weaker hands, we give ourselves a chance to realise equity and stack off a straight, and we allow ourselves the chance to make another decision as oppose to just leave it upto percentage.
I actually did a lot of work using PokerJuice on this hand, and posted it around on forums, really trying to work out if I have an edge against his various ranges here depending on player type. The solution to that was that it's quite close and it really depends what his range is. If he's doing this with overpairs, I'm very ahead, if he isn't, I'm decently behind. However, I definitely think we could exercise pot control here, try and hit our card, and let them barrel with their straight or bluff.
This hand made me realise that I've been playing the style of PLO that I see when I sweat the 25/50 Zoom games that run occasionally, which involve a lot more stacking off on flops. I recently heard this referred to as "suicide poker", which I didn't really understand until now. At those stakes, it makes sense - players are bluffing often and bluffing large, and rake isn't as much of a consideration. At these stakes, I can play a bit more exploitably profitably, and the tiny equity edges I'm squeezing are run over by the rake.
I definitely think I've improved more this week than I have in a good while. The RI1 community and videos are helping my game so much, I really think its making a big difference. I've also thought of another studying method which works out well too, which I'm keen to share. I'll do a live runthrough of it as my next post most likely, or a hand where I checked back a boat on the river. One of the two.

Hopefully see you next time!
Seacombe

[Poker] Hand #4 - Bad Beat

There is literally no analysis in this hand (except maybe preflop), this hand just hurt a lot and I figured someone may as well get some enjoyment from the hand (apart from the fucker who just scooped my 180 odd BB). 

We have AAJ2 single suited in the cutoff, facing two limpers. We're very deep, we won't be able to get enough of our stack in preflop, raising won't isolate a single player that often, and we have a hand that can do quite well in high spr multiway spots, so I just limped. We end up 5 handed on the flop.

The flop is TT8 twotone and it checks to us. The chance of us firing a bet and taking it down here is tiny. I just check behind, hoping to hit a 2 outer. Not a lot to say.

We hit absolute gin on the turn, hitting the nut boat on a 3 flush board. We see a bet, a fold and a call. I see no point in raising, I'm unlikely getting huge value from nut flush here unless I let him keep barrelling, and if I am overboating someone the money is probably just going in. Easy flat in position.

The river bricks out (not that there are many cards that change the hand). The guy to my left bets pot, I put in a small raise, and he reraises. I'm singing hallelujah. I cannot wait for him to turn over the king high flush or AT or 88 as I put the money in. Finally, a big enough pot to help upswing my downswing, and cut my losses for the day in half. I pretend to think for a while and shoved. He calls so fast I laughed to myself. He beat me into the virtual pot. I already knew. Nobody calls a river 4bet that quick unless they just have it. I didn't even have to look. 

He flopped quads. What can I say? Thank fuck I only play microstakes.

[Life] Feeling Like a Grown-Up

It's funny how at the exact time poker completely flipped (I'm on a horrid downswing, still up for the month but not as glamorous as it was before), I had some brilliant moments in real life, to the extent the downswing (almost) isn't bothering me at all.

I found a flat - I'm moving in with my girlfriend next month. It's even more central into London than I currently am, the rent is significantly lower, the building/rooms are nicer, the onsite features are better (a gym is included in the rent), and I'm making a major commitment, which I couldn't be more excited about. I just cannot wait to move there, start my new life and finally be able to treat PLO like a part time job, which brings me to my next point;

I got a job - Mathematics tutor. Something I've had a lot of experience doing in the past, I can finally get back to it now I've moved away from home. The flexible hours is fantastic with grinding, and I love the work so its something I won't resent spending my grinding time doing like I have been with uni work, which brings me to my next point;

I just can't fucking revise - Procrastination has never been more of an issue. From grinding when I'm not scheduled to, to watching PLO training videos, to replying to literally every hand question on the PLO forum on RI1 (which I really don't think I'm qualified to do), to watching SNL's entire backlog of clips on youtube, I'm just doing literally everything I can to avoid writing a number down. Plus, the weirdest thing is, is I have procrastination guilt when I actually am revising, for not studying PLO. I guess my subconscious is telling me I'm making the right choice there. This has always been a problem with me, and I've always managed to do it all in the last minute and scrape what I need, but I'm going to try and avoid this. Key word try.

I signed up for RunItOnce Essential - I was scraping the internet for any PLO training videos that I didn't have to pay for, and realised that it was taking so much time and most of the time the videos were in shit quality and I couldn't tell what was going on. Eventually, while just posting HH on RI1, I had a look at their video packages, and saw how cheap the essential package is. $10 a month is a fantastic investment given the quality of the videos. Once poker becomes more of a priority again, I will definitely add training videos into daily grinding schedules.

So, I'm moving in with my girlfriend, I've got a job, I have a life plan. I've never felt so grown up in my life, and it's scary as fuck, but also so motivating. I'm actively excited about the idea of spending hours and hours studying my mental game, PLO theory, GTO play, posting on forums, grinding my ass off, really immersing myself into it. Over this next month or so I'm going to have to begrudgingly cut poker off a little bit, so the writing is going to slow down, but hopefully I'll find time to still be active on forums and get the occasional grind in alongside my study. (Who am I kidding, I'll grind every day, I just love it too much, even when I'm massively below EV)

Hopefully see you next time!

Seacombe

[Poker] Big Progress

This has been a very solid month for me so far. I made myself a timetable for the month, scheduling set amounts of university work each day, with another set amount of poker study. The timetable was fairly intense so I didn't think I'd have any free time to play, apart from the two scheduled hours a week (I'd go insane otherwise). However, I've been surprisingly efficient in both university and poker study, leaving me with usually about 2 hours a day to play, which I took as something I could use as a learning experience, considering its study month. I wanted to study something a bit more practical about the game, namely my preferences between cash and zoom. I came to that conclusion fairly quickly (I wrote about it in my last post if you're curious, spoiler, I chose zoom), and from there I wanted to develop the practical side of my game further. 

I realised I'd never experimented with any other form of table placing than tiled, and during messing about with cash tables I realised on my small laptop screen this would be nearly impossible to do. It was during this I started to cascade my tables. This certainly worked better, but I found after a few hours my wrist started to hurt quite a bit, so I decided to order an ergonomic vertical mouse, and as it was being delivered I temporarily switched to tiling tables.

I'm not sure why I hadn't considered tiling the tables as an option originally, but as soon as I switched I immediately felt the benefit. The tables were large, my HUD was clear, there was almost no movement of my wrist and I felt hardly any pain, I could add as many tables as I wanted, even playing odd numbers without it looking strange on the screen (a pet hate of mine), and I adapted very quickly to keeping track of the action. I was quite regretting ordering the mouse as I felt I no longer needed it, however I quickly took that back once it arrived - the Anker Vertical Ergonomic mouse is the most comfortable mouse I've ever used, but more about that in another post. 

Once I came to the conclusion of Zoom, I went back to tiling two tables, but found myself having a problem I'd had tiling two Zoom tables in the past - I focused more on one than the other. I also began to find the action quite slow, and felt I was spending a lot of the time waiting to be able to fold my big blind. I was never using my time bank and felt no pressure at all while playing. I came to the conclusion I was ready to add a third table, but tiling it made the others horribly small and I was moving the mouse around so much my wrist began to hurt again. So, I went back to stacking, and with only ever thinking about one table at a time and not wasting precious seconds moving from one table to the other, I played the best PLO of my life. To make my actions even quicker, I added fold and check as hotkeys, so I was using both hands to play. After about 3 hours playing like this, I added a fourth table. It felt natural within half an hour. I was now playing twice the amount of hands per hour I was just two days ago, which I think is quite nicely accelerating my learning process, and also helping to reduce the effects of variance, which is something I've definitely felt. 

This wasn't the only thing I did to improve the consistency of my game. I also began to structure my warmup process a lot more, as I was noticing a definite pattern in that I did a lot better when the first poker related thing I did that day wasn't playing. Before I play each session, I go through every VPIP+WTSD hand of the previous session, and both review my own play and make notes on my opponents in PT. I also make sure I'm well rested and I've had a good meal before playing, and I have nothing particularly stressful that I have to do after the session (for example university work). The extra tables, combined with the tiling structure, the reviews, warmups and study of PLOQuickPro and The Mental Game of Poker, my results have been positive; 

I'm playing well and running like God. 5k hands is obviously a tiny sample, but a 40BB/100 winrate pre-rakeback I think is something I can be proud of even with this size. Even if I was running exactly EV in my SD winnings, I'd be in a healthy profit. Also, this is the first month where my NSD winnings have been negative, which I think comes from adjustments I've made from studying/reviewing, where I realised I was losing a lot of money bluffing calling stations, especially blocker bluffing. I've calmed down bluffing, especially OOP, I'm more selective preflop now I'm seeing more hands (my VPIP has dropped from 31 to 25 from the previous month), and I'm playing my big draws a lot more aggressively than I was before to maximise fold equity. I have also adjusted quite a bit with how I play AAxx and KKxx, before this month I just did everything I could to pile the money in, but now I'm mixing it up with these hands and taking what I think is the most profitable line in the spot, given the opponents in the pot and the stack sizes. Tiling the tables is allowing me to do this a lot more, as I'm only looking at one table, and I feel I've practiced well at taking in all of this information quite quickly.

The point to all of this is that I think I've defined the structure of how I'm going to play PLO from now on, which means I can focus just on the games and studying while knowing I'm doing it all in the most efficient way for me. I'm also going to slightly edit the way I move up stakes, as previously I was employing a 50+10 system, with 10BI for the next stake as a stab. I'm going to change this to 40+4 for now. I think 40BI is plenty, and 4BI playing 4 tables is obviously quite tight, but I feel like I could beat the stake, and while still in the 4BI realm I would be playing very tight, using it as a learning experience of the stake. I would also only move up in a spot where I'm feeling confident in my game and am well warmed up, probably though playing PLO2Z for an hour or so prior. Exciting stuff. 

So, that's it for me. Next time will either be me discussing my first time playing PLO5Z, or another hand review if anything interesting pops up. Unfortunately, most of my hands have been quite standard recently.

Hopefully see you next time! Seacombe

[Poker] Zoom vs Cash

Hey guys, just wanted to discuss this issue a bit. It's something I've been debating with myself for a while, and I think I've finally come to a conclusion about what's best for me, after chopping and changing for the past six weeks or so. Naturally, my sample size isn't massive enough to properly decide which is better for me in terms of results, but I have thought about it theoretically. I want to discuss both of them with both pros and cons and come to my conclusion.

Pros for Zoom - There are quite a lot of pros of Zoom. The first one is ease - it is very easy to sit at a table or four and start straight away without having to wait in any queues or join partially full tables. This leads me to my second pro - which for me is massive - when there is a decent pool size, you always play six handed. I really struggle adapting my game to shorter handed PLO and feel I play far too tight and straightforward. The third pro is that opponents will struggle to develop reads on you (of course this is a double-edged sword) and you can repeat exploitable plays without expecting to be exploited as much. Lastly, there is a certain consistency to Zoom. If I play 12 hands of normal tables compared to 4 Zoom tables, I'll see roughly the same number of hands per hour, but with Zoom I know I will always be playing 4 hands, whereas with normal tables, sometimes I'll be seeing 10 flops at once, and sometimes I'll be sitting on my arse.

Pros for Cash - The main one that everyone seems to be so keen on is table selecting. With Zoom, you sit where you're sat, and you can't control the opponents you're up against as much, whereas in normal cash tables you can take your time and choose the most profitable spots. The other major argument is that Zoom is very fish-friendly, in the sense that it allows impatient people just playing one table for fun to be selective about their hands preflop.

As you may have guessed by the relative size of the paragraphs, I've chosen to focus my efforts on Zoom. I truly think fast-fold poker is the way the game is going to go in the future with the player pool growing (and potentially growing much more as it becomes legal in more states across the US) and thus becoming more fishy. Zoom is a fish magnet for not only its fun, easy demeanor but also because its so much harder for regs to seek out the fish and exploit their weaknesses. While it is definitely more difficult, from playing 4 tables for significant hours with a group of fish in the pool, you build up a set of HUD stats on them, which can be a glancing way to identify fish fairly easily. Also, to compensate for the difficulty of note taking, I just make notes on players in hand review sessions through PT. This is much better for me as I can be more thorough and I'm not just frantically typing "4b KKxx xb wet boardjfnsdjfn" before the next table appears.  It is also something I doubt a lot of the "regs" at my current stakes do - I see the same people pretty much every day and over a few hundred hands on them they're usually significantly losing players who play the same style of game every hand because they don't think anyone is paying attention. The volume of these players will only increase across all of the stakes as both PLO and online poker in general grows. These past 4 days I've been very committed in going through every hand I play and making concise profitable notes on my hands and reading them before getting involved with an opponent, and playing 3 tables of PLO2Z stacked I've had this as my result; 

I do honestly feel a lot of the success I've had these past 4 days comes from my reads. I've been massively adapting my game to my opponents, calling a lot wider when appropriate and folding a lot tighter when appropriate. To anyone with any poker experience (or sense) this seems like a very obvious thing to do, but I think its even more important in Zoom, simply because nobody else is doing it at these stakes. If your opponents aren't at all adapting to you, you can adapt to your opponents completely, as they have no apparent variance in style. Of course, this isn't at all true for the higher stakes regs, but I'm not there yet, and I'm sure I'll come back with another discussion when I am. 

So, if we can identify the fish when we come across them, of which there are a higher amount per head than in normal tables in my experience, we may lose our preflop equity edge on them, but we keep our postflop edge. Considering equities run close preflop in PLO, we will never be absolutely crushing our opponent pre, and even if he is being very nitty, if you offered me the situation to play IP vs a nitty fish with a 45/55 preflop equity disadvantage with a solid set of notes/stats, I'd take it every time. This is a position I've found myself in a lot, playing in position with a smooth distribution hand against someone who cbets every flop and gives up on almost every turn, profiting from well timed floats. This is an especially advantageous spot for us, as if we were on a normal cash table, he may have the chance to adapt to us floating him on every flop, but as its Zoom, the chances of him recognising us and remembering this is much less, and if he is, we've probably mislabeled him as a fish. 

To summarise, I prefer Zoom, not only for the pros listed earlier, but also because of the reasons most people seem to dislike it. It is also definitely worth mentioning that because most of the better players prefer normal cash, this reduces the average player ability in the Zoom pool, thus increasing overall edge. 

Sorry for the longer post, I just felt this needed discussing considering deciding which I preferred was one of my goals. 

Hopefully see you next time! Seacombe

[Poker] Hand #3 - Mindset Comparisons

Hey guys. I've been going through last month's hand history and I found one hand that I would play very differently now. I think it's quite interesting to discuss improvements within my game in a bit more depth, by talking about my old logic in this spot and how it compares to my new logic. This hand comes from a PLO2 table, against a maniac and a quite passive player, who seem to switch roles partway through the hand, leading to an interesting dynamic.

UTG raised full pot. He was playing a 70/40 with little positional awareness, so I decided to 3bet to isolate the weak player in position. The small blind flat calls - my reads on him from his stats are that he seems quite loose passive, playing 60/0, however this is only over a 20 hand period so it isn't set in stone. The way I played this hand made me think I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to this, or I just struggled with how to adjust to it. UTG calls, and we go 3 ways to the flop.

The flop is a good one for me. I flop top pair, a gutshot, the second nut flush draw and a backdoor nut flush draw, with an effective SPR of about 3. My perceived range also hits this board very well, as I hadn't been 3 betting very much so it probably looked like aces. The loose passive player donks, and the maniac folds. I'd not seen either of these happen before on the flop, so I assume it threw me off a bit. I think my logic of flat calling the donk was that I had a good draw and I didn't want to scare away action. However, in hindsight, the small blind had been very passive on every flop so far, and for him to donk into a board which hits my perceived range so well is bizarre. I have two theories, the first being that he's not paying attention to how often I'm 3betting and trying to blow me off a hand. This seems quite uncharacteristic. The second theory is that he's flopped something and wants to go with it. This makes no sense as my perceived range flopped the nuts here, so he mustn't really be paying that much attention. A set makes sense trying to protect from a flush draw or wrap, however its very unlikely he has AAxx as there's only two aces left. I have outs against all of those combinations with my flush draw + gutter, and if I raise the flop I have a good fold equity as I'm repping aces well at every point. He could also have a flush draw or wrap himself, which is uncharacteristic for him to donk, however unless he specifically has the king high flush draw, I'm crushing it and even if he does I'm holding outs, and I have top pair so I'm ahead. I also block a lot of wrap outs with my QJ. So, unless he very specifically has a set or two pair plus a king high flush draw, my equity isn't terrible, and with all of those hands I have fold equity if I raise here from my aces repping. I think the answer here is to raise full pot and commit myself, giving myself a good chance to take down the pot there and then without having to hit my draw, and also often having good equity if they call. There is an argument for flatting to keep bluffs in his range, but I don't think I can do that when my hand is mostly drawing and I may end up just having to fold to a few barrels anyway. Plus, it keeps in his entire range, making decisions on later streets much more awkward. Even if he is bluffing, aggression on almost any turn card will get rid of him so I don't make any more money from the hand. However, I flatted, and here we go.

The turn completes my flush, and the small blind checks to me. I think he's giving up with most bluffs here as it'd be hard to get a set of aces to fold here against your average PLO2 player, so bluffs are in his range. I also think he may consider check calling for pot control with a set, or consider check shoving with a flush. I elect to check back here, thinking I was being trapped. Now, I would be betting small here, about 20-25BB. I'm definitely getting called by worse with this bet as it looks quite weak, and worse is also check jamming, for example weaker flushes trying to get it in against a set of aces, or a set semibluffing the flush. I don't really think he has the king high flush here a lot, especially with the line he took on the flop given he's so passive, I think we'd see a check call on the flop most of the time. Plus, there just aren't that many clubs left in the deck, so it's less likely than the other options. I think he definitely has the king high flush here sometimes, but the SPR is about 1 and he definitely gets it in here with worse more often than he does better. I should be betting, but I didn't, and we see a puke river. 

The board pairs on the river, and he bets near full pot, committing himself. Considering I thought he had two pair or a set on the flop, most of the time he's just made a boat or quads. I folded, which I don't particularly mind, because the way I played the hand on earlier streets set this up to be a difficult decision. However, I need to be good 33% of the time to make this call. I left bluffs in his range by not betting the turn, and he still has weaker flushes, with now added fold equity from the scare card and from the fact my check back on the turn looks so weak when the flush completes. I think he bets the river a lot simply because of that without paying a huge amount of attention to what the river card is. In my mind his range is fairly split between flushes and flopped two pairs. Most of the flopped two pairs just boated, considering I block an ace. Am I good here 33% of the time? I think it's impossible to say considering we don't know enough about the player to know how often he's doing this with bluffs - this is the first river he's seen with us at the table. So, to make a proper decision, we have to resort to raw equity. 

I gave the villain a 15% RFI  range preflop. This may seem questionable, but he was being very loose pre without a lot of positional awareness. 12% may be more appropriate, but it doesn't change the numbers very much. On the flop, we give him a flush draw and 2 pair plus, which makes sense in my opinion with his street actions. We are 68% in his range, so if this range is accurate and if he is never ever bluffing, we are profitable calling off. We may have to narrow down his range to stronger flush draws than just any of them, but I think the times he's pouncing on the weakness shown by our turn bet compensates for this. In hindsight, I like calling.

So - what message can I take from this? The main one is not to be thrown by something I don't expect. Consider why villain may be doing this, consider why I wasn't expecting it in the first place and how it contradicts the reads, and help to use all of this to define a range, and go from there.Another message is quite a big morale booster - as you may have read, March wasn't my best month, but this hand was exactly a month ago today, and from writing this analysis I feel as though I definitely am improving. Even if I am wrong with some of the stuff I've said here (which I'm sure I am) I'm certainly thinking on more levels than I was a month ago. I probably had the longest HH review session of my life today, about 2 and a half hours, and I caught myself making a lot of stupid errors. The plan is to continue to review in large volume over this month, and try and take one interesting spot from each review and write about it. 

Hopefully see you next time! Seacombe