January Recap

Here's a recap of January 2011 went.

Goal: 100 tournaments
Actual: 102 tournaments played (taking tonight off)

With my own money (gah! I need my bankroll back...stupid life bills)
Played 77 (43 were turbo multi-table sngs)
$1,620 in buy-ins
$1,413 in cashes
- $207 in profit

Backed:
Played 25
$3,523 in buy-ins
$1,668 in cashes
- $1,855 in profit

Reasons for Success:
1. Opened up my game from early position
2. Played a great post-flop game and chipped up nice during the early stages
3. Got out of the habit of c-betting every single flop. Picked and choose my spots wisely. My cbet % was 61.3 where it's usually around 85 or so.

Things to Work On:
1. Light 3 betting - I definitely did not do this enough. My 3bet % for January was 4.2. I need to actively look for more opportunities to attack 25-35bb stacks and close my eyes so I don't see my cards. By 6 tabling I sometimes miss these spots because it isn't part of my normal game unless I have good reads. I need to make these spots automatic.

2. Fear of making mistakes - For some reason, in backed games I'm hesitant in the close decisions and found myself taking a more passive route in the middle stages. I crushed it early when I could play all three streets, but as blinds got higher I found myself blinding out because I either didn't pull the trigger in certain spots (see #1) OR talked myself out of a shove or 3bet shove because it was close (i.e. A-rag or A-mid vs. late position raise).

3. Hero calls - On boards that were kinda scary or people potted I found myself making more hero calls than normal and being wrong. The pot odds were -EV since they weren't bluffing a high enough %.

4. Light steals - I don't think I need to open up too much, but I could use a few more steals with trashy hands when the situation is right. I ran 15.4 / 11.4 / 4.2. Part of that is because I didn't get too deep or short handed as often as I would like. I'm not going to try and force a certain stat, but if I open up a bit in the right situations I could see myself being closer to like 17/13/7 or 19/14/8.