After taking a few days off, I sat down Wednesday night and fired up Party Poker. I opened up two of the $2/4 bad beat jackpot tables and played for a few hours, losing over $100. I had now lost nearly $600 over the last 3 days I had played. Time for a reality check.

I looked at my stats, but nothing jumped out at me. I thought about my play over this time. I could remember bad beats, my draws that never hit, and calling down with a mediocre hand at best. I was attempting to get out of my slump by turning into a calling station on the turn and river. It was costing me money. After making the move to $2/4, my stats show that I’m losing over 1 BB/100 hands. Not exactly the results I was expecting.

I figured it was time to shake things up, so last night I played a single table of $25 buy-in NL while watching ER. My VP$IP was just over 6% and this was a 6-max table! After an hour of tight play, I came out ahead…just barely. As I was waiting for some laundry to finish up, I fired up two of the $1/2 6-max limit tables. I had been killing these games before I made the move to $2/4. By the way, why doesn’t Party have shorthanded tables at $2/4? Doesn’t make sense to me.

As I played $1/2 I went back to the strategies that had been doing well for me. Tight but aggressive. Don’t call someone down unless you have a draw. Raise or fold. While watching the players, I’d make reads and more often than not, I was right on. At $2/4 I was making good reads too, but not folding. I had been calling because my clouded judgement kept telling me that they couldn’t possibly beat my top pair again. Lesson learned. After playing for about an hour, I finished ahead by about 10 BB at each table.

I think I just needed to prove to myself that I can win at this game! It’s not rocket science…just discipline.

I’ve also started using GameTime+ (via: Cards Speak), which allows you to show stats from Poker Tracker right on your Party table window. Very useful!