I've been on a steady downswing for weeks, following a really spectacular upswing. I was up over $7000 playing 1/2-2/5 NL. In the last weeks though I lost $4000 or so of that, and it's just too mentally brutal to deal with for me. Loss after loss for weeks. I don't know if I'm playing really bad or just running bad. My guess is that it's a combination of both.
I've gone through this before, usually not showing a profit. I know I've thought that before in these kind of situations, the most important thing is to not freak out and just stay in action, keep playing, and it will eventually even out. Right now though I don't even want to play at all. I just feel like I could be doing better things with my time. Getting in shape or focusing on my career.
Yesterday I played some poker at Aria. 1/3 NL then the tournament. I don't really even feel like writing that much about it. In the cash game I got brutalized and lost $600. I was down $300 right away. Lost some money where I had 10-5 on a straddle, flopped a 10, and the other guy ended up having K-10. Then with a little over $200 left I got K-K in the big blind and got all-in on the flop against pocket aces. I called $16 preflop. Flop was T-5-4. I check, he bets $35, I raise to $90, he goes all-in, I call, pocket aces.
I had K-K vs A-A again later in the day and only ended up losing $50. I raised to $15 and got reraised to $50 from the big blind. This guy had been raising to $50 a lot, and I had actually gotten all-in with him earlier preflop with K-K against K-K and chopped. I just called the $50, flop came ace high and I check/folded. He showed A-A for a flopped set. Great flop for me.
Then I just played pretty loose, straddled a bunch, overall did not play well. Just put a lot of money in with substandard hands and the outcome was as expected if you aren't hitting a bunch of hands - you lose a lot of money. So I ended up losing $600.
The tournament started out pretty well. I thought I played well through the entire tournament really. I picked up some pots early and got my starting stack of $10k up to $15k. Then I played a pretty big pot.
I picked up A-K, raised to $600 (blinds were 100/200). Flop comes Q-10-8 with a flush draw. I bet $900, he calls. Turn is the perfect card, an offsuit jack. Now I bet $1800. He goes all-in. I call. I was thinking, I'm probably going to end up chopping this. He has J-10 for two pair. Sweet, I'm about to double up and be the chip leader at my table. River, 10. Brutal. He didn't have quite as much as I did and I was down to $3k chips at that point.
I played really well from there. Had K-K and limp-reraised all-in on one hand, stealing the blinds, antes, a raise, and a call. Raised all-in from the big blind with A-J against a late position raiser, he called with A-7, and I doubled up. Pushed in a few other times and got my stack up to about 9000. Then with the blinds at 300/600/100 ante, I pushed all-in over a 3000 chip raise with 9-9 and got called by A-Q. Ace on the flop and I was out.
I got home and collected all of my bankroll money. I had it stashed in a small can. I remember for a while it was all $100 bills and the can was so full that I was thinking about finding a new place to stash my money because it literally all wouldn't fit in there. Now, it was a collection of some 100s, a bunch of twenties, and random tens, fives, and ones. A sad poker bankroll, showing the signs of repeated losses. All together it added up to about $2650 or so. Technically I had more in my bankroll, maybe another $1000 or even $1500, since I had been taking money out of it to loan to my wife to play with me, and gamble (video poker, etc) while I was on vacation, and I just hadn't taken that money back out of our bank account.
Now I'm just going to deposit that money back into our bank account and call it a day. Another poker cycle ends for me. I'm sure I'll get started again later. Maybe around Christmas or my birthday (in April). I love the excitement of poker, the prospect of getting a bankroll together, the excitement and promise of that first huge win. It's what makes poker great. Right now I'm on the opposite end of that, feeling the depression of repeated losses over a long period of time. The money itself doesn't bother me at all, and that's why I had a separate poker bankroll. I always knew that if I lost it, I would be OK with that. But after you lose for weeks and weeks, you start to doubt that you have any skills to begin with. You start to think about past big hands, and how you got really lucky to win those to begin with. You either coolered someone else, or you made a retarded move that worked, or better yet, you made a retarded move that didn't work, got called, and drew out in a monster pot. I've had all of the above happen during my giant upswing for sure. So then which side is the reality? The winning side, where you have a huge upswing, make some good moves, and just keep winning? Or the side where you try to play your best and lose over and over, with no hope to recover?
I honestly don't know. What I do know is that I'm giving up on poker again, at least for a while. Poker is an awesome game and there are a lot of exciting aspects to it. In the short term, you can win money and play huge pots, which is exciting. In the long term you can always dream of winning big, winning a huge tournament, or maybe consistently winning at cash games and turning that into a career. I know I get sucked into that dream every once in a while. At least the dream of being able to win consistently and make some decent money on the side.
I'll be back. See you soon, and good luck at the tables.
- Mark
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