Thoughts on a failed video

I made a 46-minute video last night for workshop review. For some reason, the sound did not get recorded, though :(. The sound settings had also reverted back to the default install. I changed them back to my settings, did a test, and it worked, but I'll have to record another session. Hopefully in the next couple days.

It's just as well that it didn't record, probably, and it was a good practice session to get some thoughts articulated. It's a little bit different than a sweat session in that you can't ask, "What do you think?" And knowing that multiple people may see and hear it, my thinking was all over the place. I also had a couple guys on one table berating me for taking too long, which has never happened before. Maybe I don't spend enough time thinking about my decisions regularly! As far as I was aware, I never dipped into my time bank, but it was either a coincidence or else I really did slow down from normal as I was talking through hands.

I happened to have a tough session, which I have mixed feelings about not being able to post. On the one hand, my sub-optimal play would be brutally revealed :). On the other hand, I actually think for the most part my thoughts were OK, but it would be good to get confirmation on some tough spots. I've noticed lately that I'm more and more confident analyzing hands after the fact (my own as well as responding to posts), but I don't feel that confidence at all during game time, and it doesn't matter whether I'm up or down. So, I think in the end that I either am making the correct decisions (most of the time) or at least I'm pretty sure where I went wrong. But I would expect if that were true that I would actually be feeling more confident at the tables about my decision making, so it's likely that I'm missing some stuff.

I ended the session down a BI (played a bit after I stopped recording, but I think that's about where I was at during the video). I would have been up had I not stacked off 150BB with an underset. When he pushed the river, I had a feeling I was toast, but I made the call anyway. Here's the hand.

I would have also been in good shape results-wise had I not been immediately to the left of a 63/0/2.1 dude who ran sick hot against me, and then gave distributed it to the rest of the table. Here's a hand I double-barreled him after recently joining the table (it was less than 20 hands because I had no stats for him). I think it's OK with no read and a turn scare card: me aggro.

Here's one for a little comic relief, too. The same guy, plus one other loose-passive on the table were both sitting out for a while, and the table looked like it was going to break up. But I wanted to hang around in case they decided to come back. Sure enough, they did, and this was the second hand against Mr. 63/0: my ace-high is good on the river, right? At the time, I think I had ~50 hands on him, and his aggression factor was 4.5. I said on the turn that I thought my ace-high might be good, and I would call a small bet. I followed through, but the plan may be wrong, even as aggro as he'd been. Nice that he got max-value from that, anyway.

So, there were certainly some questionable spots, but I also made some decent plays. On a couple tables, I was OOP to some regularish seeming TAGs, and controlled them OK. I stayed out of huge trouble, but felt a bit under attack...but I don't think anything more than decent players picking up cards when I'm not hitting. Not fun, but I'm really trying to not let it affect me....pretty well for the most part.

I'm tempted to drop in stakes or drop a table to compensate for the video distraction, but I also want to get feedback on the game that I regularly play. Matt blogged about nailing basic TAG play so that your cognitive capacity is reserved for non-standard or creative situations. I don't have my ABC poker nailed yet at game time, making it difficult at times to keep up with four tables if I've got action on more than two. So, I know I sacrifice a bit of winrate from that, but I still want to get feedback on what it is. And dropping down changes the texture of the game for which I want feedback. Hopefully, as I make more videos, the process itself will affect my game a lot less.