Thursday, September 07, 2006

Multitasking poker: not a good idea

Yesterday on Pokerstars, I played three simultaneous tournament tables of Razz, Horse, and NLHE. I placed 6th/16, 24th/48, and 7th/16, respectively. Too much mental gear shifting blew my clutch.

Then, I played at the $1/$2 limit table and 50¢/$1 limit table simultaneously, and lost $40 and won $14.90, respectively. For the day, down $42.30.

Today, not great, but not as bad. -$4.65 overall, with two Horse tourney losses (9th and 10th place), and a -$1.15 at 50¢/$1 limit.

Also tonight, I've sent in my money for Poker Tracker registration. I'm hoping it'll be able to show me where some of the holes are in my game.

2 comments:

Trestin said...

I can relate. After work yesterday I sat down in three simultaneous H.O.R.S.E. tournaments. It was chaotic, but I only timed out on 2 hands total. The mental overload was definitely going on, but I think it forced me to play hands correctly, instead of overanalyzing them.

How did you like the free trial of the poker tracker software? Think it's a decent investment?

travisl said...

Playing multiple micro-limit Horse tournaments works pretty well; you are correct in that you end up just going with your starting hand rules, and not spending a lot of time thinking things like "I'm in the cutoff position, I've got 2AQ in stud, that's two good cards, so maybe if I raise I'll scare out the button and a blind and have position." Nope. You look at 6AQ, see that you don't have at least three broadway cards, and toss it.

I liked the free trial enough to buy it. It's a deep, complex database tool. The 1000 hands is enough to get you a feel for the software, but not really enough to do a great statistical analysis. I highly recommend you try it, then decide.

You'll be able to tell if it's useful by the number of posts in the next few weeks that I make referring to it.