First Few Days

Save for Later

Well it is certainly nice to be back and writing, hopefully whatever mystery readership I had is still out there, otherwise this is just a fancy way of me talking to myself. So I have been slowly trying to re-integrate myself into the game. Playing free money has changed some of what I was adapting too and playing against so I am making adjustments. For those who haven't played on the free money side or haven't in a very long time, let me refresh. First, take everything you understand about the game and flush it, going to be useless. Okay, not really true. But you get where I am going. The average opponent you will face on the free side is going to be very loose and appear very aggressive. In reality there is a huge element of wrecklessness that is backing up the play. So why bother you say, well the biggest benefit I found was that you get very good at picking up on value ranges because they love to get to showdown to show you how clowny they are playing. It doesn't take long to figure them out and start to exploit the hell out of theme. I took my Pokerstars play money roll from 2000 chips to a little under 400k in a month playing against these nuts, so picking off value ranges is a key skill and this is a good place to develop it. What I have found though is on the Lock Poker side people are T-I-G-H-T. Like 6-7 years ago tight. These are some simpler adjustments to make, but adjustments none the less. I have started to turn into a 3betting fiend as people just love to fold to it. Anyone who starts playing back at you really isn't getting fancy yet, or so I have found in the small stuff. It is all pretty much a "what are my cards" game there and my BR is loving it. I decided to play some cash to get back into the swing of it and have been playing 6max NLHE and PLO. I have to say that my NLHE game is taking a little longer to adjust that I would like because I have to undo where I am convinced they are trickier than they are. I am up about 1.5 buyins from NLHE which is pretty slow for me at this point, but whatever positive is positive. The adjustments and results will come. PLO on the other hand has been a dynamite experience. 3 buyins up last night at my first real session of it and couldn't be happier. Along with that I have to say that I am really enjoying the Halowax series and played an HA tourney on Lock and managed to get to the final 2 tables out of 130 or so runners. If you haven't or are still pondering about diversifying your games I highly recommend it. I took my Black Friday break to work on PLO and Stud and am really seeing the benefits of taking the time to learn the fundamentals of the game. My sessions are substantially more interesting with a couple of different games going on in them and I am staying a lot more alert and focused because of it. Give it a whirl, try out PLO it is fun for the whole family (doesn't hurt that Halowax is a pretty engaging guy in the vids and is a solid instructor so give him a watch).

Last note before I sign out, if you haven't checked out BourbonFTW's first vid, I highly recommend it. He is an incredible player and very solid thinker, check him out. I am looking forward to more from him! This is the Gman signing out for now, enjoying being back!!