another year, another transition

Hoopster81 · #1 10-05-2006, 07:05 PM

I started playing full-time a little over a year ago. I was 10-tabling $50NL full-ring and bonus whoring the majority of the time. I wasn't making much, but I was certainly making enough to pay my rent and cover my small living expenses.

Then, almost exactly a year ago, the Party skins split. When this happened, I lost $300-400 / mo in those reload bonuses, and knew I had to make some changes to make it work. I always had read people say that 6-max games were where it was at, but I was too content at fullring/too much of a pussy to try it out. The day after the skins split, I started playing 6-max and played a hand of full-ring since.

I 8-tabled the 6-max games in the beginning, but moved to 10 and then 12 fairly quickly. I typically ran at 16/12 or so. Playing that many tables (for me anyway) made it real tough to get any kind of reads (other than all the HUD stats) and forces you into a pretty weak-tight style. However, I was playing so many hands/hour and there were so many fish playing at Party, that I made good money. I moved up limits pretty fast and have been playing a mix of $400NL and $600NL for a few months now. I built my bankroll from nothing to about $120K today.

My goal since the beginning has been to make as mouch money as possible. I don't care about playing high level poker just to play it. I don't care about running crazy bluffs on 2+2ers just to do it. I just want to make as much money/hour as I can. Period. For a long time, I think nitting it up on Party and playing max tables with great game selection was the way to do that. However, I think those days are over. Even if Party wasn't going away, I have found my style has become less profitable in the last few months. Now, this is probably due to a few things. Better TAGs, less fish, etc. Regardless, the loss of Party is obviously a bad thing for a player like myself.

The first law of nature is adapt or die. I think it is time for me to make some significant changes to my game. Starting today, I am going to drop tables (I'll start at 8, but drop more if I feel need to) and develop more of a 22-24/16-18 game. Hopefully, the learning curve will be steep and I won't drop too many buy-ins in the process.

Anyways, I had just been thinking about this all day, and wanted to write it out. I would appreciate any comments/words of wisdom from former nits who made this transition or other people who can imagine what it would be like.

Summary: I only care about maximizing $/hr. For a long time, I believe the best way to do that was to nit up the Party games. Now those days are over and I think I need to really work on opening up my game.

aejones · #2 10-05-2006, 07:10 PM

In regards to this post, I feel you and I are complete opposites. Not in a negative way, just in a fact of life way. I just want to warn you not to get too fancy or too laggy too quickly. That happened to me, and while it was "super sophisticated" and I was reading and talking about hands from higher stakes games, the plays I was using simply were profitable enough at 400/600.

It's fun though, no doubt about that, and profitable if used with some caution. Good Luck.

Hoopster81 · #3 10-05-2006, 07:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
In regards to this post, I feel you and I are complete opposites. Not in a negative way, just in a fact of life way. I just want to warn you not to get too fancy or too laggy too quickly. That happened to me, and while it was "super sophisticated" and I was reading and talking about hands from higher stakes games, the plays I was using simply were profitable enough at 400/600.

It's fun though, no doubt about that, and profitable if used with some caution. Good Luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the reply.

One thing I wanted forgot to mention in OP is that I feel my game has always suffered from much too low wtsd%/too high w$sd numbers.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to decrease my natural weak-tight style/mentality?

JKratzer · #4 10-05-2006, 08:46 PM

nice post. i can relate to what you're saying, and while i don't have any real suggestions what aej said is a good starting point: don't go overboard. loosen up preflop a little but play your same basic postflop game. adjust one step at a time and don't forget how far your specific style has gotten you - no need to give it up completely.

DJ Sensei · #5 10-05-2006, 08:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
nice post. i can relate to what you're saying, and while i don't have any real suggestions what aej said is a good starting point: don't go overboard. loosen up preflop a little but play your same basic postflop game. adjust one step at a time and don't forget how far your specific style has gotten you - no need to give it up completely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely take it slow. Add a few more openers/reraises, play a bit to see how you need to play them, then add a few others, and so on. If you jump into a more aggressive style quickly you will spew mad stacks.

Hoopster81 · #6 10-06-2006, 02:08 AM

Thanks for the words everyone.

Just finished my first session and ran at 20/15 over 8 tables for ~6 hours. It takes a little more concentration (in large part because I can't just fire out c-bets 100% like I was used to), but I think I will be able to adjust. I certainly got a lot more action on my big hands because of the looser image.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll be posting a ton of hands in the near future as I work on it.