Yesterday I made it out for my first round of golf this summer, man thats sick.. I'm usually out at soon as the golf courses open but this year just really haven't had that much time with the move and all.  Anyways I golfed yesterday with a few of my cousins at a kick ass golf course.  It was called Bond Head Golf Club, just a beautiful course with insane views.  I actually didn't strike the ball that badly either for my first round out, but not playing all the time really makes it tough to be consistent.  I would pretty much go birdie, par, double, triple then start to spin.  So I'm looking to get out more this summer because yesterday really gave me the itch to play all the time.

As for poker, June was a good month except for the last few days of it.  Which really sucks to end off a month a losing note but I really wasn't playing that good.  During one of my losing sessions I starting thinking, 'shit, I'm really just on cruise control right now'.  I pretty much was just watching tv, surfing the internet and playing hands as they pop-up.  In all honesty at lower limits you can sometimes be a winning player by just doing that if you have the fundamentals down.. but I'm not playing to just grind out a living.  I'm playing to get better and move up stakes and be a great player.  After that session I really sat back and started to think about how I wanted to continue to play poker.  In my eyes, there was 2 ways that people go about it that play for a living.  The first is to find a limit you're comfortable at, find your winning style and basically grind a good living.  There are a lot of people that do that and make really good money.  For example a player might just play 1/2NL (200nl) for 4-5 hours a day and make about 100k a year.  I have a lot of respect for guys who are able to do that and don't have the itch to play bigger games and try to make more money.  The second way to go about playing for a living, is playing with always having the intention on moving up to the next limit.  For example playing .50/1nl (100nl) and planning on moving up to 1/2NL as soon as you have enough money in your bankroll.. then after you beat 1/2nl, move to 2/4nl and so on.  This style is definely more stressful yet a lot more enjoyable.  It gives you drive to keep getting better and keep moving up.  You can set goals to reach and when you reach them its not only very fulfilling its very profitable as well.

So when it comes down to it I think I'm better suited using the second approach.  Like I mention I do have a lot of respect for guys who just grind out a living at small stakes, but I think for me I'd just get way too bored and probably lose interest.  I've always had a competitive nature so wanting to move up and beat bigger games will be a great challenge.

This month I moved down a limit to play a few sessions to start focusing on hands and working out some kinks.  Luckily I was able to book some pretty decent wins and got some confidence back.  During those sessions I actually played some really good, well thought out hands.  I made some well calculated bluffs and extracted good value on my made hands.  I'll post some of the hands below.






This isn't a standard hand for me but this player was playing pretty wild so I used my position to exploit him. On the flop I'm calling to make a play at a scary card on the turn. When he check/raises me I know thats a good spot for him to bluff me, knowing I have to fold a wide amount of hands in my range. I also saw this guy play a hand earlier against another player where he just called with an over pair in that spot so I feel like his range is pretty polarized here. Luckily I was right and took down the pot. And look at his name!.. he had to be bluffing..lol



Here's another bluff I made in kind of a similar blind battle spot. I had some history with this guy and was able to pick up some really good reads on him. This hand kind of comes down to timing tells. It doesn't show in the replayer, but I have notes on that guy that when he he makes snap raises he's usually weak. I used that info to my advantage and took the pot away from him on the turn.

Let me mention one thing about bluffing... Bluffing in poker is something that rarely needs to be done. Many people think you need to be bluffing all the time in poker to be a winning player and thats completely untrue. To be honest I'm rarely trying to pull off big bluffs unless I have a really good read like the hands posted above. A lot of player have this syndrome where they try and win every single pot they are in and will just try anything to do so. Trust me, you don't need to do that, its fine to fold and give up pots if you know you don't have the best hand.. or even when you KNOW your opponent has a semi-strong hand and you try to bluff him off it, then justify it by saying "well I knew he only had pocket 8's, I was trying to represent an over pair" Now by saying that, there are strong player out there who can make profitable bluffs a lot of the time, but for the average player who finds themselves losing a lot... you should probably tone down on the bluffing and you will see your win rate increase.

Alright I'm going to head for a swim before I start my session so I can wake up.

Jay