OK, well seems like I’m on my biggest downswing ever. It’s a little embarassing to say but I’m down about $30k this month, strictly playing tournaments. I really didn’t think it was possible to be stuck $30k in just one months time playing only tournaments, but it happen. My bankroll has hit an all-time low and is really starting to reach an uncomfortable level especially if I’m playing all the high stakes tournaments. So I’ve decided to discpline myself and go back to my roots of applying bankroll management. Bankroll management is one of the most important things I’ve learned on my way to becoming a great poker player, it wasn’t an easy obstacle to get over but with the right discipline and commitment it pays off big dividends in the long run. I’ve made the wise decision to cut rebuys and turbos out of my daily tournament schedule. Rebuys are very valuable because of the super deepstacks towards the later levels of the tournament but to play rebuys effectively you must be willing to spend a couple buy-ins to build a nice stack, overall I’m just not comfortable playing rebuys if I’m not willing to spend more than three buy-ins including the add-on. Turbos are great ways to make fast money but involve a high level of variance due to the fast structures, during a downswing I think you should do as much as you can to keep your variance as low as possible. I’ve also included all the high guarantee $26 buy-in freezeouts to my schedule again, these fields are monstrous and the level of play is pretty bad but it’s small buy-ins in exchange for really good value if you happen to make it to the top 3 places. I’m trying to keep my volume of play online the same, which means still playing about 8-10 hrs a day but just replacing some higher buy-in tournaments with lower buy-ins. It’s really frustrating for me to go down in limits but I know it’s what I have to do to keep myself from going broke. I have withdrew a good portion of my bankroll to make some other investments and should be receiving those back soon as well as my return, so even if by chance I do lose my whole bankroll I do have a backup bankroll.
For anyone who has sweated my play for the past couple weeks you would know how bad I’ve been running. For those that don’t know I’ve been running so terrible it would make anyone throw up if you were to view my hand histories. I’m not sure if this is normal to have such long and detrimental downswings but hope it starts to look better soon. I’m losing virtually all my races when it’s all-in pre or even if I just try to play postflop, getting all my big pocket pairs cracked, losing all 60/40 and 80/20 percent situations, not hitting any of my draws, and not even getting my fair share of suckouts even though it seems all my opponents are giving me bad beats. I have made one final table this month and have bubbled the final table several times, but more times than not I won’t even cash. I’m sure this feels like it happens to everyone who plays online but for as much volume I play online it’s that much more frustrating and costly for me. I’m pretty confident if I get through this downswing, good things are in store for me in the near future, the problem is surviving till then without losing my bankroll or my mental sanity. I’m not throwing in the towel and don’t think I ever will but am definately taking the right steps to discipline myself and also studying to optimize my own game and fix any leaks.
Oh yeah, if anyone is wondering we did not make it on the Face the Ace show nor did we even get the chance to play. It almost seemed like they were trying to keep the show strictly at an amateur vs. pro level and not semi-pro vs. pro level. We did get a free trip to Vegas for four nights and hotel accomodations, a chance to eat lunch and conversate with some big name pros like Erik Lingren, Erik Seidel, Huck Seed, Chris Ferguson, etc., a chance to be part of the audience, but it definately was not worth the time. A chance for a million bucks and TV time is going to have to wait for a future opportunity.
I’ll still be playing on the virtual felts on a daily basis trying to grind my way out of this hole, so wish me luck, I’ll need as much as I can in these hard times. On the brighter note, I did find someone to back me for the WCOOP events coming up in Sept. on Pokerstars, so hopefully I can run good there and ship a big win. GL to me!
. Pretty sick play by David but not surprised judging from what I know about his game. I could’ve found a reason to fold but he played it so good that I felt priced in. This hand pretty much prevented me from making a deep run in this lucrative tournament. I also ran deep in the FTOPS ME placing in 92nd out of 5300 players, but of course I didn’t cash for that much. I made one play on a guy late in the tournament that costed me half my stack and a deeper run in the ME, ironically, that guy ended up winning the whole thing. It’s bittersweet that I contributed to his $453k score and ruined my chance at it, but then again it was a friend of a friend, so I wasn’t too disappointed in giving him most of my chips. Other than that, there’s nothing else eventful that has happened.
(three of a kind, Sevens) and won 12,064 (6,112 net)
(a straight, Seven to Jack) and won 75,996 (41,248 net)
(a full house, Jacks full of Aces) and won 12,118 (6,209 net)
Worst comes to worse, I’m hardly even cashing to recover some of my losses.
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