Pics, Stats and... Videotape?

"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised" -George F. Will



Well frack me sideways, but this month has been tough. As you can see from the graph of this months hands so far, I've been running far from good. It can still be dispiriting to perform in the face of such adversity, but as we all know, if it was easy to be a pro then everyone would be one. Looking closer, you can see that there is a strong finish to bring me back to breakeven, and that 'finish' took place in just one day.

So what happened to affect such a good turnaround? You can see it wasn't a change in my allin luck (my EV stays well above my actual earnings), so it must be either running hot all of a sudden or some other change. In this particular case, I firmly believe it is the latter.

Stats from Feb 1st to Feb 15th: VPIP 22.8 PFR 14.9 3-bet 3.5
Stats from Feb 16th: VPIP 26.2 PFR 19.1 3-bet 8.3

Quite a pronounced shift between the two. While I only put in 2k hands on the final day, I think the results speak for themselves in terms of the impact of a much more aggressive style. So what happened to cause this increase in aggression? Well, I'd like to say it came naturally but in fact all I did was watch a training video on Monday detailing the best places to reraise and squeeze, then applied the advice to my game on Tuesday. I was 3-betting nearly 3 times as much as previously, and it made my life so much easier, and I daresay also helped pick up a lot of dead money. I also was focussing more on my opponents range, and trying to optimise my play into getting weak hands to bluff and extracting value from second best hands.

In retrospect I can't believe how weak-tight I have been playing over the last fortnight. I guess that was me shifting into defensive mode as a result of getting bent over nearly every time I played. The lesson I'm taking is frack them. They can suck out and run hot all they want, but I'm still going to push and fight back as often as possible, and claw back my money from their cold fishy hands. Balls to lying there and just taking it, enough is enough. Will keep you posted of course, but hopefully by judicious use of aggression and very occasional reversion to a weak tight style I can confuse and thereby crush my opponents. Who knows, I might even get good enough to move back up to 5/10!

Right, as promised here are some snowboaring pics taken from our holiday in Alpe D'Huez. I have to say first though that I'm not very good, and we didn't get many action shots. The views however were amazing, and you should get a small taste of what snowboarding while staying in a catered chalet was like....

The gang all ready to go


The view from the summit midweek


Booting up

Slowing down....

Stopped.

Smiles all round with blue skies and snowy slopes ahead....

Me and my lady:

Enjoying a well-earned jacuzzi before a well-earned 4 course meal

Enjoying a well-earned high-altitude drink(ing session)....

Yours truly demonstrates the ultimate slope safety position.

That's all folks!  ;-)
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