The Grind?

My last few months of poker work ethic have been straight up pathetic. Looking over my rake back per month I average around 28,000 hands a month. This is extremely lazy. It took a bloodbath at 10 20 to spark a fire under my ass. In one session I was down near 13k in 30 minutes. I finished the day -7k. The next few days were spent playing an asston of hands and grinding it all back. On top of playing more hands, I began playing early mornings and found that the games on Full Tilt around 5 am are the softest I've ever come across. This morning I woke up at 7 before my alarm even went off. Haha I don't know what the hell has come over me. This week I've played near 18,000 hands already and still have a few days left to go. I have high expectations for myself this year, and those won't be achieved playing 28k hand months. Recently I have also nitted up quite a bit. When stuff goes to crap on the felt, it works best for me to just play a tighter more solid game. Although what I have started doing is opening a wider range range early position if fish are in the blinds. Then I just avoid the regulars mostly and play pots with fish in position. I have toned down the 3betting significantly too. When I am firing on all cylinders and everything clicks flawlessly, then fine play like a maniac. But when stuff doesn't go my way, its no use just banging my head into the wall consistently.

This morning I saw Clarkatroid playing at FTP. In the 2+2 forum he posted a graph of his last year which included 350k profit, 1 losing month, and very short break even stretches. I always get bitter when I see something like this. My natural reaction is to say, "Why did poker chose this man to run so good?" Then I started thinking about some other players who seem to crush games regularly. This guy I know Linecrusher at Bodog just kills it consistently. And another 2+2'er Recallme does very well. Everyone bashes Recallme saying he's not that good, and has just been lucky. All these players I listed just play a solid tag game, and do so versus very soft competition. The games are still well alive and very good...at certain times of the day. After listening to the Tommy Angelo interview at deucescracked, I really have to make sure to keep my life in order, maintain a balance, and let poker rise with the tide of everything else positive in my day. I want to make an effort to play in these early morning games and weekends as well. This means going to bed early, getting up early, and not getting so trashed on weekends so that I can play the Saturday and Sunday afternoon games.

Now for some talk about what I have been doing on the felt. I ran like crap at 10 20 and continue to. Screw it. I am going to continue to play 2k HU because I have a large edge over the opponents I am sitting with. If it does not go my way, I will keep coming back, that is all. Lastly I vowed to start c/r'ing the river lighter. So I just started doing it, and got looked up pretty light in a lot of spots. Eventually I figured out which spots I got more credit in, and it seems to be working very well so far. Here are some examples.

This one is versus a mediocre regular so I decide to defend a suited ace which is not standard.

5 10

Button: 1500
Hero (small blind) 1200--- As3s

Btn opens I flat in the sb and c/c A27, I c/c a turn bet as well on a blank, then check shove a river Jack. My logic is that he will not bet AJ three streets. So he has AQ/AK, sets, or crappier two pairs. I am pretty sure he only calls my river check shove with the sets.

This hand was based on some history. My opponent was a good TAG and had seen me go for the river c/r once with a monster, but I missed. So this looked like a good spot to try it as a bluff. I am still not so sure about this one though. Also I had been taking alot of c-bet flop and check shove turn lines. This makes an even stronger case, for me getting to the river here with a big hand.

5 10
1k stacks effective

AKs utg and I open villain calls on the button. I c-bet a 992 flop and check a blank turn to him intending to give up. I told myself a while back I was going to stop barreling paired boards. When villain checks the turn, I doubt he ever has a 9, nobody is this tricky in my games. the river is a complete blank as well, 99236. I check and he bets 2/3 pot. I do not even know how I thought to c/r here. In the middle of 8 tabling I just did it with out even thinking. The guy tanked and folded.

The last one is a limped pot. I stabbed at a flop with a flush and straight draw 78s on J94 and a good regular called me. The turn was a Q and I c/c here because I have too much equity to fold, that Q likely helped his range, I do not want to get raised on the turn, and a river T makes him top two a lot of the time which he will value bet, but I will have the straight. Important to note is that the turn brought another flush, backdoor diamonds, while I had spades. The river was a low diamond. He bet and I c/r'ed 145 to 445. He folded after thinking a few seconds. Let me know what you guys think of the river bluffs, just because they worked doesn't mean they were good.