Week 16

Bankroll is down to $5,443.

I played a session Monday after college, didn't run very well at all. I had a fish cooler me twice for 100BBs each in the space of 3 hands, and then hit and run. I didn't feel like I was playing that great anyway tbh.

On Tuesday Party launched their new software which fucked up SpadeEye so now I can't table select. I opened up a few tables just to try out the new style, I didn't like it very much, at least it's possible to go back to the "classic" view. I cashed out $500 as well.

Aaron (aejones) has just launched his new site, www.memoirsofaejones.com, for his audio files. He'd agreed to sell them to me individually before but we were both on holidays and lost touch so I PMed him again to see if I'd still be able to get them individually. He said it would be a bit of hassle but he'd do it and also offered to give me a substantial discount if I got all of them together since I'd inquired previously. I decided to take him up on the offer and get them altogether, it's putting a pretty big dent into my bankroll but I'll still be able to play 200nl and I don't really want to keep annoying him for each new chapter. I also played a $55 tourney on Stars.

Wednesday I watched a video and was able to get the $4k over to FullTilt to pay for the audio files, I listened to two of them. It's pretty difficult to keep concentration without something to watch and I can't read forums, etc. without having to rewind the audio every couple of minutes to pick up what I missed. It probably would have come out a whole lot better as a PowerPoint video, even if it was only a few different slides with summaries or whatever. Content is obviously excellent even though these first two were on preflop play which tends to be fairly dry and boring most of the time. I've also heard a lot of it before from various sources so it's, mostly, nothing groundbreaking but I guess it never hurts to have the fundamentals drilled into you again. There are, of course, one or two little gems which should have a significant effect on my winrate though.

Thursday I watched a video and listened to another two chapters of the audio files. Chapter 3, playing 3bet pots, was........thorough. That's probably the best way to describe it. It goes way beyond just dry texture vs. wet texture. A high boards vs. Q high boards vs. 9 high boards vs. etc, rainbow, two tone, mono tone, good cbet spots, good barreling spots, reacting to raises, bet sizing, how to play different hand strengths, typical hand ranges for villains in different spots, perceived ranges and probably some other stuff I've already forgotten. It was almost always brought back to balancing and reasons why given for the majority of things. I had to rewind several times because I'd constantly miss stuff.

Chapter 4, playing 3bet pots without initiative, was really good as well, possibly the best one so far. The conference calls aren't up yet but I'm really looking forward to them.

Friday I listened to chapters 5 and 6, which are on postflop play, and tried to get HoldemManager working with the new Party update but now I can't get HoldemManager to turn on at all which is fairly frustrating.

On Saturday I reinstalled the earlier version of HoldemManager. Party are after fixing their hand histories so it should work again as well as putting a player list in the lobby so hopefully SpadeEye should be updated soon. I listened to chapter 7, psychology with gp333 as a guest, I'm usually not big into the whole leveling thing but it was still really good. I also listened to chapter 10 on leading and dealing with leads since I had another coaching session with Tri that evening and that was one of the topics we were going to discuss.

The coaching session went well, we talked about the article he'd sent me called line variations, stuff on river checkraising, minraising/gayraising and donk betting. We looked at a few hand examples, discussed any questions I had and got into a big argument on 3betting. Our next session is on 3betting (and probably postflop play in 3bet pots as well) and, even though I've got 3bet theory coming out my ears at this stage, it will be nice to hear more of his thoughts on it as his approach is different to the one I use and both BobboFitos and aejones recommend (although their opinions are slightly different on some parts). So even though I had a big argument with him on it I'm going to try and keep an open mind about his approach even if I don't adopt it myself.

On Sunday I installed the update for SpadeEye and put in a decent session which went well. I listened to chapter 8, deep play with BobboFitos as a guest, and then put in another small session.

Next week I hope to finish the audio files and get through the conference calls which should be up soon. After that I'll go through the audio files more slowly and start taking some notes. It should be much easier to find things I want to ask about or have elaborated that way. It'll also make it easier to revise and refer back if I have it in print. Hopefully Party manage to not fuck up their software for a little while so I can actually get some hands in.