Poker

I ran really hot yesterday, so I’m happy to report that the week ended on a positive note! Action was very slow again but I didn’t really lose, so it felt way better than the previous days in the week. It also shows that a lot of my tilt was from losing rather than just from slow action, which isn’t a good thing.

I took a look at the week and it was EXTREMELY swingy, which is probably part of the reason why it felt so bad. I was also running ~20 buy-ins below EV for most of it, which was probably the other reason. 20 isn’t a lot, but it was combined with many ups and downs and slow action, so it felt worse than it should have.

I made up a lot of the EV yesterday, which was really nice. I still ran below this past week, but it looks a lot better after yesterday.

I’m thinking about playing some MTTs this next week in preparation for WPT Montreal. It’s been a long time since I played any MTTs, so it’s probably a good idea to get back in the MTT mindset. To be honest, though, I really don’t want to play any online MTTs. I’m almost considering not playing WPT so that I don’t have to 😛

If I do play them, I’ll probably just play a handful on PokerStars and Full Tilt one day this coming week or next.

This week has been truly frustrating. There’s just no other way to describe it. Volume has been the worst it’s been in a long time, and I am losing to almost everyone.

I have barely played any regs, so it’s just losing to fish over and over every day I play. They’re also frequently quitting after winning a bunch in a row, whether it’s two or four or six. The fact that they don’t even let me win one back before quitting has probably added up to a lot more in losses.

I’m really disappointed with how I’ve handled these bad days, but it’s been really hard for me. Losing all your games is one thing, but not being able to even accumulate volume to get out of the downswing just adds so much more.

I’m also disappointed with how long it’s been taking me to recover at night after a bad session. Typically I’ve always been able to bounce back pretty quickly after running bad, especially since I stopped looking at results on a daily basis. This week has just been miserable and depressing feeling.

I really don’t want to play poker tomorrow, but a day off isn’t going to help. In fact, I just took a day off yesterday. The only thing I can do is play as much as I can as soon as possible to get back on track. Really don’t want to, though, not gonna lie.

Today was, once again, extremely bad for volume. It was arguably worse than yesterday until later at night when it picked up a bit.

I think it picked up, at least. I can’t be sure that it was better than yesterday because today I finally added $60 lobbies when I didn’t have action. I only played 15% of my volume at $60s today, but I really would like to not have to play them again going forward.

The bad action combined with running bad made the day one of the least enjoyable days of poker in a long time. Running bad is always magnified when you have no games to play. There were so many one off games. No one was rematching, and it was just extremely frustrating.

Usually at the end of my sessions, I’ve decided to play my last $200 and then get off to eat some food. Lately, though, the $200 fish I’ve gotten has won a bunch in a row and continued to rematch presumably because he doesn’t lose.

In the past I’ve gotten extremely tilted by this. I’m hungry and tired at this point, and I get stuck at the computer playing a fish I can’t beat. If you read this blog regularly, I’m sure you’ll recall times when I’ve complained about losing 10+ in a row to someone at the end of the night.

When this happened yesterday, I quit the fish I was playing after 4 straight losses because I was extremely tired, hungry, and tilted. I was glad I quit after 4, but then I wished I would quit after 2 and decided to make an end-of-the-night stop loss of 2.

Today obviously it happened again: my last $200 was a fish that didn’t quit after winning. It just so happens, though, that a Full Tilt game fired because I forgot to unreg the lobbies there, so I got to two-table $200s. I lost 5 straight to the guy on PokerStars, and the guy on Full Tilt quit me after he won one.

So much for my stop loss, haha.

I decided to keep playing the guy on PokerStars because even after he won a bunch in a row, he didn’t quit after I won one back. In fact, he didn’t quit when he lost four back. After an hour, I finally won a few back and he quit me up just one. I’m pretty happy with this result and extremely glad I didn’t tilt my face off this time.

Once again, I really hope action gets better soon.

I stopped playing 1.5 hours earlier than usual just now because games were sooo bad tonight. Looking at the lobby just now, there was only 3-4 $100s running and 2 $200s. That’s way less than usual and it wasn’t gonna be worth it to sit here with this little action.

Today was overall pretty frustrating, but I think it had to do with mostly my mood than how I ran. I woke up super groggy this morning and had a hard time getting going. Then the games were slow and I was just in a bad mood overall, so it wasn’t very fun.

Hopefully tomorrow is better!

Volume was pretty good today. The ratio of 100s to 200s was back to normal though, which I was kinda sad about 🙂

I think that overall I didn’t really do a good job with controlling my emotions today. I was overly annoyed when I was losing and overly happy when I was winning, which is 100% never EVER good when you play poker. I know that I lost my patience a few times during the day while on call with my grind partner, which I’m pretty disappointed about.

I also had to tell myself multiple times that it doesn’t matter if I lose the game I’m playing, and it doesn’t matter if the person I’m playing against has won a bunch in a row. You’d think that week after week of going through this would finally teach me, but it’s definitely a snail slow process.

I feel like this blog is a broken record sometimes 😛

Overall I think the day was good and that I made some money. I’ll never get tired of saying THAT at least.

Last entry I said I was back to the grind but then I had a week of not very much poker again. I feel like the week just flew by and that I can’t believe we’re 10 days into April already. I’ve only played 3 full days of poker so far this month, so I’m pretty far behind pace.

I don’t have a lot planned for the rest of the month, though, so I should be able to get at least 100 hours at the tables between now and April 30th.

Today I played almost 8 hours and the volume was pretty bad overall. The one positive was that I played a higher average buy-in than usual because I played almost half my volume at $200s. I’m not really sure why this happened, but I’ll take it 🙂

I think today I ran okay overall, especially during the night session. Hopefully I’m right. I’m pretty sure that the last time I said I ran good, I didn’t make a single dollar 😛

I ended up taking Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. I woke up Saturday feeling extremely unmotivated and just overall down about things. I also had a terrible rash (triggered from a milk allergy) and was very itchy, so I just decided to take the day off and visit the doctor. It was definitely the right move because I remember feeling extremely relieved once I decided to take the day off.

Sunday I had already planned on taking off, and Monday I had a bunch of things to do during the day.

The week ended up going pretty well where poker is concerned. I had one day where I won 20+ buy-ins, and then the other days were around break-even. The funny thing is that day where I thought I ran “really good”, I ended up just barely over break even. Further proof that I can’t trust myself and I never really know how I’m doing!

I’m writing this before I play my session today, for some reason. It just felt like I should write those things before another day of poker, otherwise they would just never get written.

As the title suggests, my day was up and down. In particular up at the start and then a cliff dive at the end. I felt like I was having a great day until my last hour or so. During the last hour I lost almost every game I played, including 13 straight games to a fish that ran super hot.

I felt really bad while that fish was winning. It was mostly because I hate losing, but also because it was at $200s so it added up to a lot of money. I think it’s safe to say that the little losing streak I had vs that fish un-did the rest of my day. And it’s stupid to think that way, but I can’t help it.

Other things I couldn’t help doing was saying stuff like, “Why wouldn’t that hold” when unfortunate cards fell and also sweating my show downs super hard once we were all-in. I guess that once it gets to this point I should probably stop playing? I’m not sure how much my play drops off once I’m this tilted, though. I should possibly review some HH’s tomorrow and find out.

I really wish today was Saturday so that I could take a day off. But sadly tomorrow is Saturday, so another day I guess.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got really tilted near the start of the day because I was losing a lot of games after getting my opponents really short. Obviously once you get your opponent down to less than 10% of the chips in play, you expect to win very often because it’s pretty hard to come back from that. Yesterday I lost a lot of these games in a short period of time, though.

This tilts me more than almost anything in HU SnGs, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before in this blog. I definitely got irrationally bothered by it yesterday, and I was way more upset than I should have been when it was happening.

I guess it goes back to that consecutive losses kind of thing. For some reason my brain can’t be content with the fact that yes, sometimes unfortunate things can happen all in a row. Yes I can lose 10 coin flips in a row. My brain knows it’s not likely and as such tries to convince itself that therefore it shouldn’t happen. But obviously I logically know that that’s not true, of course it can happen.

Anyway, just wanted to put that on the record since this blog’s original purpose was to keep track of the things that tilt me most.

Really amazing volume today, I was so happy with it. Played less hours than I was supposed to because I slept badly and had to sleep in, but I still got to play a lot of games.

I also think I ran really good today, which is also nice. Hopefully this week ends up being a good one to make up for the rest of the month!