I had my first session with El Nino yesterday. It begand with about 80-90 minutes of him watching me play on 4 tables, asking me why I did what I did, and making a few comments about ways I’d need to adjust. After that, I think we had about 40-50 minutes of pure discussion and planning. The 2 hour session ended up being closer to 2 1/2 hours. He didn’t charge me anything extra, or cut anything short because time had expired.
I was really amazed with how he looked at things. Within a few minutes of getting myself seated at 4 tables, he had already picked up on several traits among my opponents that I hadn’t even thought about. He was extremely clear and easy to understand as he was giving me advice. I was particularly impressed as we played through a hand that I normally would have folded, when he said, “He’s probably got something like King Jack.” I ended up winning the hand at showdown, and a moment later, Poker Tracker revealed that my opponent was holding King/Jack offsuit.
During the discussion at the end of the session, he explained some of the comments he made and questions he asked during the play time. He also made a few suggestions to get me started on breaking out of the ultra-nit image. He went through a few things on Poker Stove and suggested some ranges of hands that I could add to my current range in various positions. He pointed out a few stats in Poker Tracker and showed me what my stats should look like if I’m applying everything correctly. Everything he said made perfect sense, and nothing seemed like it would be difficult to implement.
At El Nino’s suggestion, I played my first session today at 10NL instead of 25NL so as not to lose a lot of money if I completely screwed up. I also dropped down from my normal 10 tables to 6 tables, and then eventually went up to 8 tables. I had prepared earlier a new chart for myself with my new ranges, and I was ready to give it a shot.
I ended up playing about 1300 hands, which is a small sample, but I did extremely well. I ended up 3 1/2 buy-ins ahead, with a win rate of 13.45 BB/100 hands. That’s about 3 times my normal win rate at 10NL. It’ll be interesting to see how it holds up over the next few days. I’m still not sure if I’m going to do 10NL for another day or two, or give it a shot at 25NL. I can see very clearly from my stats though, that most of the money I made throughout the sessions came from doing what I was advised to do.
I’m super excited and anxious to see what happens as I’m able to learn more, and add more to my game over the next few sessions. I’m thinking the graph for March is going to look really good.
May the fish be with you…