It seemed quite trivial, after my first game, to just go one better…but I now know it's not quite that easy. Just getting to the "bubble" is becoming an ordeal. After five games it now seems that my 4th place was beginners luck as I've not managed to beat or even equal it. SharkScope classes my form as TILT
The first thing I've noticed is that I'm getting dragged into all-ins that I think I can win, only to find-out that luck is either not on my side or that my pocket was simply not as good as I thought. Did I really need to get into that position? It certainly seems that instead of playing for peanuts, a few well-timed all-ins would allow me to play less hands. The problem is that when I put the scenario into an odds calculator afterwards, I realize that most of the time I was the wrong side of a coin-flip. It seems clear that to be able to win consistently you have to avoid this.
I'm also overvaluing a pocket-pair. Having an actual hand in the pocket is giving me great confidence with pre-flop betting, except that more often than not after the flop I seem to be in no-man's land. I also think I'd prefer to be all-in with suited connectors than a pair too; when seeing five cards there just seems to be more possibilities.
One of my other numerous deficiencies in the game still seems to be evaluating my stack against the rapidly increasing blinds of a turbo game. So I tried a non-turbo game...Wow, was that boring!? Not only did the game seem to take forever, but there seemed to be very little urgency to win a pot; consequently the whole game seemed a bit subdued for my liking. It’s amazing to think I found that first game too fast, as I now think the game-play could be a bit faster! What really annoys me are those people, generally on large stacks, that have clearly buggered-off for a while, so when the betting gets round to them they take their entire countdown to just fold. You just need a few people in a hand doing this and the game-play really suffers.
In order to turn my form around I’ve consulted with an “expert” on poker. I’ve been given a couple of URLs regarding “card classification” and its association with your position in the hand. It looks intriguing, but actually at this point I’m willing to try anything!