Fixing my game

It’s been a while – but I’m still alive and by some miracle survived a poker depression and am still playing! Not that I ever wanted to give it up, but I’ve reached a point – well-known to many poker players, I assume – where I wondered whether I should give up on poker, because it sure as heck seemed to have given up on me!

I’ve been keeping track of my tournament playing since October 2007. At the end of February I’ve played in 50 tournaments (buy-ins between $60 and $200), and cashed in 21 out of the 50, which by my standards, are pretty decent.

So then I decided it’s time to ‘fix’ my game. Most of the time I make it to the money and/or get to the final table as short stack, on the odd occasion I’ll end there with a decent stack, and that bothered me. There must be a way that I could change my game to accumulate more chips along the way. I started reading – poker forums, book, strategy articles, basically anything poker I could lay my hands on. And along the way I tried to apply that to my game - of course with disastrous results. In March I played in 15 tournaments and cashed in only 2, which made March the first month I didn’t show a profit. April didn’t start out better – I was completely lost, and my game went down the drain. Clearly what I tried to apply, didn’t work with my playing style or my personality and I couldn’t pull it off. I felt like a complete idiot at times. I played online and suck-out after suck-out (which I believe most of them were because I put myself in unfavorable situations) just added to my despair.

I had to rethink it all as well as my approach to this game I’m so passionate about. I had to evaluate – why was I able to win before and not now? Obviously changes I tried to make, didn’t work for me.

I came to some realizations – I believe (now) that there is a place in the poker world for players like me – players that are not super-aggressive. I am not the kind of player that can pull off bluffs like it’s second nature, and now I also know that in order to be a winning player, I don’t have to be.
Selective aggressiveness works much better for me, and instead of looking for opportunities to pull off some creative plays, I need to wait for the opportunities to present themselves to me. And sometimes it doesn’t happen until late in the tournament, or at all. And that’s ok. There will always be a next time.
I have to play within my comfort zone, and as cliché as it sounds, I have to detach my emotions from my decision-making while playing. Trying to ‘get’ someone is most likely going to backfire. There’s a very dangerous gray area where ‘playing the player’ often turns into you being the one getting ‘played’ - by your own actions.

Bottom line - if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it!