2000 Hands Down. I Think Im Gonna Be OK :P

Dude I was just doing some tourney results checking and holy shit. Congrats to Wild Bill and GeneD for the great showing at the IP in Biloxi!!!! And Shack reg Frank who keeps pop'n out big finishes all year.

Well I've played a good bit of $20/$40 Fixed Limit now but not as much as I wanted to. I would say I have played about 2000 hands so far and broke even. I had my nice starting streak and then ran into a wall and then went on another streak. When I filter my results for $20/$40 its funny because I have 5 wins in a row then 5 losses in a row and then 7 wins in a row. My losses are bigger than my wins unfortunately. I havent really had a typically big win yet. I really feel like I am just getting comfortable with the game and the stakes. I have also been reading whatever material I can find like Johnnie Chan's Limit Cash game book and the Limit sections of Super System. There seem to be more calling stations and tricky bluffers in these games than balanced players so its definitely a good game. I left a game today because it was more tricky players and it was short handed and since I had somewhere to go in a couple hours I decided not to risk such a swing prone couple hours. I would hate to lose a few pots and then be late to my thing or not even go because Im determined to win back to even. That kind o f thinking sometimes gets you even or up but being in the chase your loss mode also drops my level of play often into full steam tilt. I look around at the terrible players who are getting lucky with 9,7 offsuit and think that it should be me this time. That's the kind of thinking I have avoided these last 7 sessions.

Some peoples in my circle are puzzled by this desire to play limit. They dont like not being able to protect their hands. I actually prefer it. Im so sick of trying to protect my big hands and get out flopped by J,7 suited or getting gutshot. NL is so much about traps and bluffs and to tell you the truth thats really not my strong suit. I have trouble with really aggressive players. They are usually better at reading me than I am them which is why they play such aggressive styles. My strong suit is patience. When I was playing online my VPIP/PFR was always good but I was always struggling to get my aggression factor up. In Limit I actually like the players who would rather bluff than check out. Usually I am playing passive against these guys which only encourages them to attempt moves. Often I have to pay off real hands but I feel like its a good strategy against them. By me looking like I dont want to play a big pot I make more than if I take the lead back from them. They are fairly used to these grumpy old men playing back at them and then getting to decide what to do. Maybe I will change my tune one day. I am pretty new to the game. It may take them sometime to exploit me back. But at this point I like having the ability to control the pot size. Strangely enough I dont seem to have the same attitude in tournaments. I think I have done well in tournaments overall. Now by tournaments I mean the 200 dollar nightlies. I dont play the bigger buyins. I have played in two $500 buyins and done nothing special but its really not enough to mention. Of course NL tournaments are totally different than cash games. The blinds going up really hurts the call to trap play since less people see the flop plus the no reload factor. They dont run many $200 tournaments here. They have a daily $60 which is full of landmines. Whatever. I have way enough on plate trying to grind out a win rate at this new Limit stake.