Gobble Gobble
Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Although I haven't posted much, I have played a lot of poker this month. I haven't been losing but I haven't really been been lighting it up either. The numbers paint the picture:

Party/Intertops $2/$4 Holdem, July 1 - November 1: 3,938 hands, $494 won, 3.14 BB/100 hands
Party/Intertops $2/$4 Holdem, November 2 - today: 2,406 hands, $157.50 won, 1.64 BB/100 hands

MY VP$IP is down to 20 percent for November, vs. 23 before. But my pre-flop raise percentage is up to over 10 percent in November, vs. about 8 percent before. But my overall aggression factor is 2.15 in November, vs. 2.29 before.

I can't believe that my tightening up preflop is a bad thing. I'm pretty much following Miller's "tighter game" guidelines. I think what might be happening is that I have been playing at looser tables than before (I have been putting less effort into trying to find the most tight-passive game I can find), and not adjusting to the no-folders. Or I could just be running kinda cold.

Interestingly, I actually thought I was losing at $2/$4 Hold'em in November, but really I was losing at Stud. What happened was I was playing Hold'em a lot, and treading water a lot of days, and in between I was dabbling in Party/Intertops $1/$2 and even $3/$6 7-Stud, and having some really wild variance. After 2-3 weeks of this, I knew I was losing a little overall, but I mistakenly thought I was winning at Stud and losing at Hold'em.

I guess since Party went to storing hand histories on one's hard drive, I had gotten less diligent about importing hand histories and looking at my stats. Normally that's not a big deal, but in this case it took a look at PaokerTracker for me to realize where I was winning money and where I was losing money. In this case winning a bit at Hold'em and losing a lot at 7-Stud.

So no more 7-Stud at Party for a while -- if I want to play Stud I'll play at Paradise. It's funny, because I was only ever barely able to beat the Party .50/$1 Hold'em games. Ultimately I stopped trying, went over to Paradise, and built my bankroll at the Paradise .50/1 games, then came over to the Party $2/$4 games, where I've been winning. It may be that I need to do something similar for Stud -- build a bankroll at Paradise's tight-passive games before tackling the loosies at Party.

The other interesting thing that happened to me was yesterday I got a call from a guy at Absolute Poker, and he offered me a free $10 plus 20 percent on my next deposit, so I said OK. Is poker telemarketing the next big trend for online poker? I played at AP a little last night. Their lobby's gotten a little nicer-looking and it seemed there was a bit more traffic. It was a real shock playing against tight opponents, though. I'd gotten so used to Party that it felt really weird, but also fun, to raise and successfully steal the blinds.

OK, I gotta go. Got people to see, turkeys to brine . . .

posted by James at 1:30 PM