Day three: It's Alive

8 hours. +$465.

The most astonishing thing about live poker is how much more profitable it is. Everything about live poker says it’s should be less profitable:

Despite all this, I estimate I make just as much money on one live table at I do two-tabling online at the same buyin.

I am very happy with my play today, for the most part I think I played extremely well. There were a few problems, but even those are things I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t playing well in general.

Some notes:

I’m a lot more creative with bet-sizing now. Not too long ago I almost always made pot-sized bets. When I moved up in limits, my aggression started to be a liability. I transitioned to half or three-quarter pot sized bets, to make it more difficult to counter.

After reading Lederer’s chapter on leverage in The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide I am much more aware of the impact of different sized bets. I’m transitioning from trying to make a “big enough” bet, to trying to make the most profitable bet.

For different players, stack sizes, and situations, the best bet size will vary wildly. I am really enjoying the mental challenge of trying to figure it out.

On a related note, I’ve noticed I have a tendency to space out when I’m ahead. Once I feel like I have an edge over the table I get lazy. Sadly, when my concentration goes, my edge diminishes, or even disappears entirely. I can only imagine how much money I’ve lost that way. It’s not enough to play a positive EV game, I need to be playing with the highest possible EV.

When I am concentrating though, my reads are much more precise. It’s not enough to identify the general strength of the hand; pair less than top-pair, draw, etc. If you can identify what possible two cards can make up their hand, you can make much better decisions. Hopefully I can find an example hand to point out the importance of this sometime.