After winning about 770 BB's in 16K hands, I went on an 770 BB downer over my next sixty thousand hands. I'll skip the obvious, I ran extremely bad. But I also played about as bad as I ever played for a 5-10K hand stretch.
I say this every year and I'll probably continue saying it every year. Do not underestimate the variance in poker, particular in limit hold-em. However bad you think it can get, it can get much, much worse. And don't underestimate the impact it will have on your game. Every time without fail when I go through one of these extended stretches of run bad, my game completely deteriorates and I start making all kinds of errors I'd never make otherwise.
I've learned a couple things from this downswing. One is that I need to start taking breaks. I played 335 hours this month which took a severe toll on my game. At one point, I misread the board three times in the span of an hour. So starting next year, I'm committing myself to taking time off anytime I start to feel burned out.
The other thing I learned is that I can't wake up and jump into high limit games. At least ten mornings this month I woke up, immediately sat in 4 high limit games and was down 5k in less than an hour. I'm always groggy and can't think straight when I wake up. It takes a while for my mind to get going and to be in a poker frame of mind. What I was doing every day would be the equivalent of Ray Allen sleeping in the bleachers, rolling out of bed and immediately getting into a NBA basketball game with guys that had been competing for hours. He'd have no shot of competing and neither do I. Two days ago, I decided not to play anything higher than 30/60 until I'm confident I'm thinking clearly.
On the VPP front I'm up to 400K which I believe puts me right on SNE pace. I'm hoping to finish by the end of September and will need to average about 150K/Month to accomplish that.
Good luck at the tables.
concentrate on making good decisons and it will turn around sooner or later. you are an elite player dont forget that.
ReplyDeleteIt's comments like these that make blogging worthwhile, thanks.
ReplyDeletehes the best FL player there is. Im not counting only skill. but also work ethic and working off the tables to get better and table selection you all know the drill. To me Tony is the best FL player there is :)
ReplyDeletea question .. why do you buy in for 800 dollars on a 10/20 table ? we know that the maximum you can put in a hand if you cap pre and all streets is 12BB right ? so at a 10/20 table that would be 240 dollar right ? I see you and spidey sometimes sit with 1 or 2k at the table. is there some particular reason for that or ?
Thanks a lot for the compliments. I do work extremely hard at my game and have a very strong work ethic. I worked a 9-5 job which was really an 8-6 job with traffic for several years so I understand it's a blessing to be able to work from home and be own boss. And as a result I push myself as hard as possible.
ReplyDeleteMy buy-in is mostly based on comfort. For me there's a negative psychological effect if I start losing and have very little money on the table. Also I think there's a very small benefit in convincing your opponents that your winning when you're not and this is why I'll often reload back to my original 40 BB's if I lose 10. I don't think this is as important as some people make it out to be. Some people go so far as to leave tables any time they drop X number of big bets because they feel their opponents are more likely to play back at them when losing. I do think there's a small grain of truth to this particularly in regard to bad players. Some bad players interpret someone as being "hot" when they're winning and as a result play less pots with that person.