I've haven't been blogging because poker has been fucking awful. I'm drawn to such foul language because I've been on the receiving end of three months of bad variance which has just culminated in the following beats in three sit and gos.
All the money goes in with my set of eights against a set of fives. Five rolls off on the river.
All the money goes in with my A7 versus KQ on a AXX board. Basically he needs runner, runners. K on turn and river.
My AQ v AJ to basically decide the bubble (this was in the room where I'd been one outered and managed to recover brilliantly. Money goes in preflop and Jack rolls off.
A10 v 82 all in preflop. The guy gets a four card flush.
AQ v K10 all in preflop. Two kings on the flop.
Some of these aren't massive bad beats but they add to the massive, huge, un-fucking-believable ones at the top of the list. Amazingly I still managed to cash in one of them. A second place that means I only lost $2 from the three games. But that's all that happens at the moment: have a series of bad beat games, scrap into the money a couple of times with no chance of winning it and then have maybe one or two games on the spin where I get my money in horribly, suck out and go on to win. This isn't the poker I signed up for. The only comfort I get is that my bankroll is still frozen in the same place - with the exception of playing some cash rooms and losing $1 or $2 by playing passively, looking for a big hand.
That's been the story since the middle of July now (bar three days or so when the cards were average and the winning hand actually held up). I'm always getting my money in good lose most of the time. Even worse, whenever I get my money in on a coin flip (usually because escalating blinds cause a pocket pair v overcards situation) I go in and expecting to lose and I do. Trying to be as objective as I can I think my race ratio at the moment is more like a 4:1 dog.
I've tried to analyse my game and see where I was going wrong but it's extremely difficult to do when the deck is just crushing your nuts constantly. All I could find was that calling isn't working - mainly because I never hit my draws, I honestly can't remember the last time I called a draw with the right odds and actually connected, meaningfully anyway. As a result I've adopted a fold or bet/raise strategy. I'd like to say it's made a difference but 70% of the time I get knocked out on bad beats anyway so I simply have no idea.
Anyone who has been reading my blogs will know that I always try to analyse my game when a bad beat has occured to see if I missed a bet, slow played in the wrong fashion etc, but at the moment I can't do that. Poker literally has broken me.
I can't even blame it on one site even. After suffering beat after beat on Full Tilt I played on 888 after months without bothering and the same was happening on there. Even worse, the deck was taunting me. I fold 82o only for the board to come 888 with people getting all their money in. Full houses, flushes and so on, all coming when I've folded trash. And when I do play a hand I get stacked with K10 when the board is K7XXK and the other guy has K7.
It's impossible to think about taking shots, reading books or adopting new strategies at the moment. Variance is just crushing my game, my luck and my confidence completely.
Can I hope that this one outered I've just suffered is a turning point?
Not bloody likely.
Fuck poker, fuck it up its stupid little ass!
1 comment:
Hey man, i personally could never handle the swings of this game--which is why i stopped playing online--but I give you a TON of credit for doing just that.
I go on the TwoPlusTwo website all the time and there are people with 100 thousand hands of breakeven poker, people on downswings of epic proportions.
I think that IS the game you signed on for.
One thing I'd caution against, is changing your game arbitrarily because of this breakeven stretch. If calling is the RIGHT thing to do in a particular situation, you may be PROLONGING your downswing by raising or folding in order to somehow "change up" your game.
Now you are making incorrect plays in order to get different results.
If you are making mistakes, obviously fix things.
But be careful about just doing different things in order to avoid whats happening.
Make good decisions no matter what, improve your game.
Results will follow.
You HAVE the discipline. You have the BR management.
Just keep plugging away.
I find your blog inspirational, for the record. To me, it is a tale of great discipline--and I find that more interesting than someone spinning up cash and losing it every other week.
Aaron
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