Don't have time for a huge post today, but I think I'll be posting a lot more frequently soon. I'm definitely getting back into poker in a big way.
First off, I attended a WPT Boot Camp 2-day cash game thing a few weeks ago. My wife actually won it for me in this online contest. That was great, because it costs almost $2000 and I would never have bought that for myself. She was looking into getting me a 1-day thing, but entered and won the contest.
The camp was actually really good. It started off slow. The one instructor was not enthusiastic. He started the first day a few minutes late, complained about how early it was, it was weak. And the course material looked really basic. I was thinking, I'm glad we didn't pay for this.
Luckily throughout the day it got much better. The second instructor Nick Brancato was fantastic. He was really insightful. The slides were worthless, but as I listened to Nick I was frantically writing down notes so I could remember everything he said. He talked about some CRAZY things that I would never think of. And it wasn't crazy like, crazy aggressive (although they do recommend playing pretty aggressive when you are in pots, which is what I figured). He had a lot of out of the box ideas, even about folding or not playing hands that you would ALWAYS play. Also just talking about the mental aspects of the game, having a game plan and just executing on that. It was really awesome. The first guy got better as well, but he just wasn't nearly as good as Nick. By the end of the first day they lay out a strategy for you and it was pretty exciting.
The second day was even better. No slides, and we just sat around a table playing. They would deal out hands, we would play them, and we would walk through the decision making process for all players at the table. I was again frantically taking notes. I took literally 2 small notepads full of notes, and ended up writing on the back of some of the pages too. At the end of the second day they talk about PokerStove and how to use it, which was also great. I never really learned much about it or how to do things with hand ranges, so that was really insightful.
Everyone else in the class was clueless, except for a few people. It was mostly old people. That surprised me, but then again it's not too surprising when you take into consideration that the class costs thousands of dollars. It's crazy though how you can tell NOBODY is going to get anything out of the class. I took TONS of notes and I'd say 99% of the useful information I got was from listening to these guys talk and writing down their thoughts.
Watching people play the hands was insane. They lay out a SUPER simple strategy to follow - raise with 5% of your hands in early position, 15% in middle position, etc. But from hand 1, people are doing things like raising with Q-3 suited, calling raises with hands that you should clearly not be playing, etc. I couldn't believe it. I thought there might be mistakes later in the hand for sure. But especially when they give you a VERY simple strategy, like only raise with X hands, and you aren't even playing for real money, how do you not do it 100% right or at least try to do it 100% right? Same thing with betting. They said if you are going to raise, raise this amount. But people would be betting/raising WAY different amounts for no reason. Just try to do it the way they are suggesting! If you aren't even going to try, why did you put up the money and come to this thing?
I'm really hoping that this turns my game around. Results have been good so far, and I have been having a lot of fun playing which is really important. I've also been reading a GREAT book called "The Mental Game of Poker" that they recommended. It's really helping me stay off of tilt and understand a little more about how I can improve my game.
Playing the Aria tournament tonight! For now we're just having fun and I'm drinking a lot while I play, which I know is bad. But after this week my wife is getting back to school and I'm going to really focus on playing sober, sticking to this strategy, and trying to execute perfectly. We'll see how it goes!
