Good and Bad

I played some poker yesterday and things did not go well whatsoever. I played two sessions. The first session had me getting raised pre and postflop almost always. A few coolers and suckouts and I needed to take a break as I felt negativity creep into my brain. The second session was another tough one, where I just got decimated by more brutal coolers and suckouts and I ended up dropping 5.5 BIs. I reviewed many of the hands with my friend Brodie and we did a sweat for some of the second session. Here I will list some good and bad things from the session.

The Bad:

• I definitely tilted, in particular during my first session.
• I made a couple of poor river calls, need to find that fold button more often.
• Started to feel a lack of confidence in my game.

The Good:

• Despite the tilt in the first session, I made a good quit and went to some things not related to poker.
• In the second session, I was very good about not getting too down and I maintained the REM process throughout hands, even going so far on some hands as to say my thoughts out loud.
• I may have found some of my problems. My turn and river aggression frequency is too low. I may trying to bluff catch far too often instead of just value betting my hands. This would definitely explain why my bad runs don't have near the difference in EV as many people see - I am simply getting outdrawn before the money goes in instead of after.
• I have a plan to see if this is the case. I will go through Holdem Manager and do a filter of hands that I win and lose where I take a pot control line. I need to see if I am getting outdrawn and I should be charging people and I also need to see if I am losing too much value with my made hands. The turn isn't woefully low, but the river sure is, so I will look into spots where maybe I should fire as a bluff and spots where I should be getting more value.
• I am watching more videos now during my lunch breaks again to improve my game.
• I am going to make a video and put it up for a review from friends to see if maybe they can spot some flaws in my thinking.

I made a good quit yesterday and I did not let the beatings affect my play. However, I need to get better at not even being affected in the first place. Quitting when feeling tilted is an important tool to have, but the reality is that it is without question a crutch. It is analogous to holding in extra blockers if your offensive line sucks in football. Sure it might help protect your quarterback a bit for the time being, but the underlying problem of a shitty line has not been addressed. The problem still exists, it just is covered up and minimized. This is important for sure, but it is more important to fix the source of the problem. This I will work on.