Now first off I have to warn you, this post will be me ranting on and I expect this to be fairly long. This week has been one of those weeks where I started off really good at the beginning of the week and then came that downswing. This swing hurt me in a way different from any of my downswings, well almost from any of my downswing. Coming from a heads up background I know a thing or two about monstrous downswings and more so I know how to keep my cool majority of the time during this period. However, in heads up it’s a bit more expected compared to when I play 6-max and full ring. However, this downswing hurt me because I didn’t expect this to occur in full ring as much, but now anything is possible right?
Now before I go into posting my graph and hands, there is something that I have to say and get out. I feel personally this is an important step for the world to see because what I do to handle this and how I perform and feel to me is the key to being a successful poker player. It’s easy to show you the countless number of weeks where I’m just winning and even with this downswing I’m still up for the month, so I know personally that this isn’t abnormal or anything but I’ve been here before and for every time, I climb out of the hole “fairly” easy. I say easy in the way that no I just don’t shrug it off and be like “aww well another day” but I say easy as in as long as I’m playing the way I should, I overcome these in days. The only thing that really sucked about this week, is the days where I had a lot of time to play, was the days where I experience the downswing and I really been trying to focus on putting in some hours and personally when I said this affected me differently is because of this. I never was the type to put in large amount of hours playing poker and it’s something I personally been trying to improve on, but I feel a cloud of insecurity hovering over my head when I try to attempt long hours of play.
Read this if your downswing is due to “Run Bad” poker
Now on to some graphs and hands:
We can see I had 4 days of the swing and possibly continuing. For those who may wonder I want to say this:
Did I tilt any at all? Yes
I’m only human, however, I do go over my hands and I decided to separate what my bad play cost me during this period in general and I totaled $67. It’s still a lot and I will never justify my bad play nor will I just sit back and ignore it. So personally I need to make sure I’m not the reason for my downswing and stop it as soon as possible. Now being up $200+ to swinging down to -$400, $67 really is a small amount, which says a lot.
Why didn’t I just stop playing?
My goal was more hours and I personally felt like some of the things I saw happen shouldn’t happen all the time even though I kept getting a dose of that medicine.
Did you doubt yourself?
This is a bit tricky, I don’t doubt my game, to be honest I try not to show it but because I do a lot of studying and I focus more on +EV part of poker I am really cocky with my skillset, however I did doubt my ability to ever being comfortable with playing long hours and even being able to play poker full time like I really want to in the near future.
Now comes the part that makes my belly turn. This week, I’ll show you a few of my hands that I lost and give my feeling about the hand (not how it was played though) and just focus on that.
Biggest Pot Lost & Special Hand #1:
This hand was like not that bad in terms of coolers, however, the villain I was playing against, was someone who I was battling with on another table and he been killing me with raising and calling with worse and catching up. This one put a personal hurt on our match up because yes he was hyper aggro, but I know how to handle these type players comfortably but this match up just ended brutally for me. I don’t know what more to say than that. I wasn’t down or out yet though, I still had high spirit and still was playing.
Special Hand #2:
This hand was basically the start of a trend. Player 2 probably only played 20 hands before leaving the table. This is literally the 3rd hand he played. This also was a new table probably about 60 or 70 hands in. Player 3 & 4 was lucky candidates for player 2 wide plays. He was a golden fish, just raising everything, folding nothing, can’t go wrong. As This hand isn’t that bad as a hand but when you think about it like this was the only hand he literally won… excluding about 3 or 4 hands where he got people to fold in a small pot, then you could see why I sat there shaking my head. Won my stack and donk it off to another person… Lucky me…
Special Hand #3:
Now these hands showed you so far have all had a deeper feeling towards them from just the hand being played. Well except this one. This hand was more personal because this was the point that I know I was just in a terrible situation. I took a break after this hand and as I sit down and thought about this hand and the other hands; I started my motivation speech and my prep talk. I didn’t have one of these kinds of moments in a long time.
Special Hand #4:
This hand was my biggest frustration call. I remember tanking this hand vs this fish and I’m making this special face like “NO WAY! NOT AGAIN!” before I even click call. This was my facial expression before I clicked call.
The sad part about this hand, villain being a fish, the way it was played, I should never be folding here, but I knew I was beat, I knew variance wouldn’t let me win, but I played it since the math behind it says if I fold its incorrect.. I tanked to the very last second before clicking call and I remember this hand giving me a really low feeling after would like.
Now there is one more special hand to show, but before showing it, you have to realize I’m in the middle of my downswing. This day started with me going on a heater and then back down I go. I blew a $100 upswing in a second due to the craziness of this variance. This was critical for me, I was reaching the point where it almost didn’t matter what I said or do. I felt like carbon was cheating me, I felt like I shouldn’t have to take these kinds of loss. I literally felt like somehow some way there is a reason behind me losing this much. I even thought, maybe where I have been winning so much carbon might be trying to slow my earnings down so I don’t cash out or something. I was really being irrational. I’ve been here more than a few times to know its not me its variance, but it don’t stop the way I feel and as usual something or someone gets the blame. With me in the middle of my downswing, I remember me being break even for the day, I blew my profit but yet here I was making that extra effort to talk myself into a good spirit. Before being dealt this hand I sat behind my computer and said “I refuse to let this downswing dictate who I am as a poker player and what I believed in.” I remember repeating those words throughout the entire time.
Final Special Hand #5:
Do take note that this $25NL and not $50NL.
This was the first of the second hand that I lost this day to put me down for about $100+. The second one wasn’t that bad, it was at $50NL table where it was full house over full house. But this hand, man words can’t describe how speechless I was. For every attempt to bring me mentally up, there was the painful pill of reality to bring me down.
Sitting down through this I learned a few things about me, well not learn but more like a strong reminder about me:
Now that this week is done and over with, I may still more downswing on the way, I don’t know but I’m very far from being down and out and if it’s one thing I could always remember from any of serious downswings there is a real heater awaiting. The last time I went down 10 buy-ins, I had a 12 buy-in heater……… in one day. The rest of the days were normal but I haven’t had a heater like that in a long time and back then it was at the lower limits too but it’s still not impossible. So I may have one like that or not, but just keep watching, the graph about to go from 0 to Hundred real quick…
The one thing I did hate about this week was I just began my series and personally deep down I wanted to show you all how winners win but this may be good for both me and you. I do look forward to hearing what you guys think, my mind is a bit focus on poker than trying to think about how to improve this series. If you still have any suggestion, leave a comment.
Also I would like to use this time to invite anybody who may be looking for a study group to hit me up on Skype because I want to do something more interactive with poker. Blogging is just the beginning for me and I been secretly watching people like Gripsed, Splitsuit, HUSNG.com, etc. all my life that I really want to do start giving back to the poker community and this is my way of doing it.
To join my Skype, PM me your Skype ID on Red Chip Poker Forums: Rello242
Poll: I notice last week there weren’t a lot of votes but everybody so far is in favor for hand reviews being done by video. You will see that next week, this week I just wanted to rant on.
Now for the poll of the week:
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