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Ivano's TSP binkage variance galore
F_Ivanovic
Member Posts: 2,412
In the style of Lambert's thread I thought I'd do my own except I'm aiming slightly higher!! But first, I'm going to post a brief history of my skypoker/lifestory since I began playing poker.
Part 1
So I started playing on skypoker around 5 years ago when I deposited £50. At that time I was just finishing college and had no plans for university; I had a job at a supermarket and wanted to take a gap year to figure out what I wanted to do. I'd watched the skypoker channel a bit and knew somewhat of BR management, so I began by playing 2p/4p cash games. I think I played for a couple of hours, and by the end I was up to £60 and I was thinking at the time... WOW... that's pretty much what my salary is. If I can keep this going, I won't need a job!
The next day I lost £20 and so I experienced the variance of poker; and realised that I still need a job!! Besides, I had a plan back then that I would build up my poker roll and use my job as disposable income. After that loss though, I gradually began building my roll up. I think back then I played really ABC nitty poker, but it worked well at the lower levels. Within a month or so my roll was at £200. I don't remember what stakes I was playing at this point; I think I probably was at 5p/10p though as I believed a 20BI roll was substantial. I definitely preferred cash games, but I did like dabbling in tournaments. I never really got into satellites though - I much preffered to just use money I'd made playing cash (if I'd had a good day) to buy into the £11 open or the £5.50 velocity that used to run.
For a good time, it was all uphill for me. Then I hit a plateau at around the £500 mark. I'd make some money playing cash, and often lose it when I bought into tournaments. I wasn't bad at tournaments persay; in fact, I could often build up good chip leads, but then I'd often blow it later on in the tournament. My luck in tournaments was about to change though. In the space of a week I came 2nd in the Open and won the velocity for a combined winnings of around £2k and my BR stould pretty nice at £2.5k. I moved up cash stakes and began playing 25p/50p. It was at this time that my playing style began to change. My long term memory sucks; yet somehow I still remember this hand I played 4 and a half years ago. I had AKs pre-flop and 3-bet. I missed the flop completely but c-bet and got a call. The turn gave me a flush draw so I bet again and got yet another call. The river completely missed me but I decided to shove all in anyway in the hope the other player would fold - and he did! And so I'd played a hand with my first ever 3-barrel bluff.
I gradually changed myself from being a TAG to becoming a LAG player. For better or worse, for richer, or poorer!! In changing my style though, I once again rediscovered the bad side of variance. I'd moved up to 100nl and my £2.5k roll began to shrink, right before my eyes. And it wasn't just because of variance. It was a new side of poker that I'd just discovered: TILT
Where to begin with tilt? The more I lost, the more I wanted to play and the more "laggier" I got. When I say "laggier" though, I mean I was playing way too many hands.I'd start opening 100% of pots in the belief that I could outplay my opponents; that my cards were irrelevant. Maybe I was "Inspired" somewhat by watching too much poker TV. Not only that, but I got lazy with my bankroll management. I'd be playing higher and higher to try and recoup my losses. My roll got to less than £1000 and at was only at this point I realised that I needed to slow down. Yet I'd lost all reasonable sense and decided to dive into playing £1.5/£3. I stuck my entire roll almost onto 3 tables of £1.5/£3. And I had the best night ever! I both played and ran unbelievably well. It was a cash game special on the Skypoker channel, and I remember watching me play in some of the hands and how the skypoker analysts were praising my play - I was completely running over the rest of the table, and it felt so good! What could have been a catastrophic night of losing my entire roll ended up with me leaving the tables with £3k.
Over the next week I played £1/£2 and gradually built my roll up to £5k. Then one morning, I had a really bad start and lost 5 buyins within a few hours. I was seeing red again and wanted big action; as big as I could find. I still believed I was better than anyone else on the site, and sat down to play HU against someone who was arguably the best HU player on the site. We were playing £2/£4 and agreed to play 4 tables of it. In the beginning I was still tilting somewhat; and as such was playing manically aggressive. I was 3-betting nearly all of their opens and barreling down any time we saw a flop. After having a successful start my tilt wore off, and the image I'd created began to pay dividends. I stopped bluffing and started value betting as thinly as possible at every opportunity. By the end of the afternoon I'd made almost 6 grand. My biggest ever winning session by far; I was on cloud 9 and for the rest of the day I enjoyed time away from playing poker!
It was around this time that my parents found out I'd been playing poker (my brother caught me playing it, and told them!!) At first they were pretty mad, but it didn't take too long for them to accept it. It did mean them upping my keep though, which I wasn't very happy about! They were taking pretty much my entire morrisons wages which meant I had no spending money for myself, since I refused to take any out of my poker account just yet. I decided to set a target of £20k, and then as soon as I reached £21k I'd take out a grand; and keep on doing this whenever I reached £21k. I also decided that once I'd got to that point, I'd probably quit my job, since it seemed so pointless to be working for £6 an hour when in the same time at a poker table I could easily make £200.
I was now a 200NL reg but back then 500NL games ran frequently (especially at night time) and ended up playing them. So I had a roll of 20BI's again for the level I played at most frequently. It was good going for a good while; I reached £15k in a relatively short time. Then one night I was playing and there were no £2.5/£5 tables running. Instead, therere were £5/£10 tables running! Now, the only other time I'd got scared playing at a stake was when I moved up to 25/50nl for the first time. Even at £2.5/£5 I found it surprisingly comfortable. I rightly thought it would be a mistake to play that high so I opted to play 300NL instead. After a bad start though, I made the regrettable decision to move up to £5/£10. My bad luck from 300NL continued and within an hour I'd lost 3k. I was very much in TILT comfort zone at this point. By that I mean; my worst episode of tilt ever. I began open shoving £1k before the flop EVERY SINGLE HAND (on one of the tables - I think I was playing 2 of these 1000NL games) Eventually someone had the balls to call me with a hand like AQ and won. I was down to £7k. The loss only made me want to shove again the next hand. This time I had 67o and ran into... surprise, surprise AA. Lo and behold though, I sucked out! I still wasn't over the rage yet though. I stopped open shoving but I was raising almost every unopened pot and 3-betting most of the pots that had opened before me.
I eventually calmed down somewhat after doubling up on the other table as well. I was plaing well again and close to £3k on both of the tables. It was the early hours of the morning by now and the table had dwindled to 3/4 handed. A reg opened and I 3-bet with 99. We were both sitting 300BB's deep and in hindsight I should have left the table at this point, but I was on a roll and wanted to fully recoup my losses for the night. The flop comes Q94 and all the money goes in. A 9 falls on the turn giving me quads and it turns out I was up against 44. By the end of the night I'd recouped my losses and more. I finished on around £17.5k and fell asleep at 6am feeling thoroughly satisfied that once again tilt had failed to thwart me. I knew it would come back to fight another day though, and the next day I decided to take out £7.5k and put it into the bank. So that, if the worst thing did happen and I lost my entire roll, I'd still be up £7.5k from the initial £50 investment.
I'd applied to University as well for the following year and decided it would be good to have money set aside so that I needn't get in debt from University; instead, I could use my poker winnings to fund me through it. I took a short break from poker after cashing out, in the hope that my head would be straight when I came back to play. And for a good while, it was. I had so many more winning days then losing days that it felt unreal. I finally reached the elusive £20k mark, yet I found out that this was my second plateau. No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to reach £21k. It was the same story for weeks on end; I'd reach £20k and then gradually start losing. I'd get to around £16-£18k and get back up to £20k. And so the cycle continued. It was frustrating, for sure.
Then it happened agan; I somehow convinced myself that playing £5/10 again would be a good idea. At first, I was playing HU at £2.5/£5 against a reg, and then we moved up to 1000NL after he suggested it. (I was running well at this point, so accepted.) I also opened up a £5/10 six max along with our 2 HU tables. After a while we were both sat with £2k each and then a massive cooler happened. I ran my KK's into his AA's, which held up. Literally 5 hands later after I'd reloaded I picked up pocket kings again. Only to run into his Aces for a second time. I shrugged it off through and planned to leave if I lost another BI. I picked up AK half an hour later or so and got it in again pre-flop. This time he had AJ. Flops a J and that's goodbye another £1k. I start tilting horribly again. I don't go as far as to open shoving £1k pre-flop, but by 8am in the morning my roll has dwindled to £9k. To make matters worse my mum woke me at 10am telling me that I need to get her the keep for this week. £100 a week is what I was paying them and I'd just lost almost £10k the night before. I couldn't afford to give her that much as it was more than my morrisons wage. But the day before I'd been telling her how I was making loads at poker still. I didn't know how to tell her that I'd just lost £10k last night.
I decided to take out another £5k and leave myself with just £4k. Instead of moving down stakes though, I still played 300 and 500NL. I couldn't think straight any more and within a week I only had £1.5k left. It was nearing on the start of University, but I just didn't want to go anymore. I was seriously depressed at how I'd managed to lose so much money. I was addicted to poker/the internet in general and when my parents took the laptop off me (can't recall the reason) I left the house and just wanted to get as far away from the house as possible. I didn't want to return, but in the end I didn't have the balls to just run away so I came back after a couple of hours. I decided to just forget about poker and not play it anymore. Instead I got myself addicted to watching TV series, which worked a treat for forgetting about poker. I was still dreading going to University for some reason though. I had decided on Chester (which wasn't far from Frodsham where I lived) and had planned to live at home.
Part 2
So hopefully this will be shorter than part 1, despite it covering more years! Anyway, right up until the moment of Uni starting I didn't want to go. But in the end I made myself go and at the end of the 1st year I was so glad I had, because the first year had just been such a good experience for me. I forgot about poker for the most part and enjoyed doing other things, such as pool, badminton, tennis and football. I still played occasionally but I couldn't motivate myself to play for a long stretch of time. I found as well that I was struggling to win any money anymore. Once Uni finished though for first year I decided to try and get back into playing.
First year of Uni I went pretty crazy with my spending. I had almost £20k in savings from both Poker and working before I started Uni (I quit my work a month into starting Uni though) and as a result I ate out most days, went out a lot, and just spent a lot in general on stupid clothes. So I realised I needed to start making money again as my £20k was dwindling. I had some success for a bit after a slow start, but then before Uni began again I had a bad tilt episode and was left with only £500 left. (I'd got back up to £3k at one point) So I stopped playing again and decided it was a good thing in a way, because I could focus on Uni.
Second year of Uni went through much the same as first year, although I had limited my spending slightly as I didn't go out as much and didn't spend as much. In 2nd year we had to work experience. I worked with this one guy who was starting up a new business and was marketing for him; something which I had little experience in. He didn't really point me in any directions and through anxiety/being depressed I ended up just not turning up for 3/4 days at which point he phoned me to say it wasn't working out and he didn't need me to continue. I had to resit that module which I just about scraped through the second time around. Once again during the summer I got back into poker seriously and I was back to enjoying the game. I was playing well, and by the time term started again I was up to just over £10k. I'd played aggressive BRM again (although not quite as bad as the first time) but it had worked out for me again.
Third year of Uni came around and I put the poker to the side for a bit so that I could concentrate on studies. (It was a Mathematics course btw... forgot to mention that at the start!!) However, I found third year really tough. There were 3 modules in particular that I just couldn't grasp at all. I stopped going to lectures and began to distant myself from my friends (those that studied Maths as well with me) and I wasn't handing any of my courseworks in. Instead I was playing poker again, but my state of mind was all over the place. I was tilting way too frequently and from being up to £14k at one point I was all the way back down to £6k come January. I took £5k out and stopped playing again. I spent every day in my room and the only activity I did anymore was Pool. And even that I was only doing because otherwise my friends would realise something was up with me; They had no idea that I wasn't handing in any of the courseworks, or had given up on the year completely. It was only when it got to March that I realised I needed to do something about this. I went to student support and told them about it, and went to the doctors as well to see if I was diagnosed with being depressed/having an anxiety disorder. They suggested counselling at the time, but I knew from my Mum that getting counselling could take up to a year, so I just didn't bother trying to get any counselling sorted. I was able to defer my year though which would mean doing third year again the following year.
So 4th year of Uni (the year that's just gone) came around and I was ready this time to work as hard as I could do get as good as a University degree as possible. Despite the initial optimism though, my 4th year was just as disastrous as my 3rd year. I was doing another module I hated this time around and the statistics module that I liked was dropped because our tutor broke her leg during the summer so couldn't teach the module. I fell back to being depressed a lot and just stopped attending lectures and handing in coursework. Exams came around and having not asked to defer them this time I ended up not turning up to 2 of them and out of the 4 I did attend, 3 of them I had no clue whatsoever how to do any of the paper. So I sat there for an hour and a half just writing up the questions again in the answer booklet and then leaving. I went to student support again during exam week though and explained my situation again. I knew I'd have resits on both coursework modules and 5 exams, and when I finally got my resits I was strangely optimistic about them. I thought to myself: Just 1 and a half months of studying really hard, and then I can be done forever with Uni. In the beginning it went well. I had 3/8 cwk's done and was on schedule. But the last 5 cwk's I was completely lost on.
I looked at getting a tutor, but by now I was completely broke. I no longer had 20k sitting in the bank; I had about £700 left and I had money which I needed to pay for resits. Also, I just figured that it would be really hard to try and get a tutor at the level I needed in such a short space of time anyway. So in despair once more, I turned back to poker in the weeks leading up to handing the cwk in (and the exams) I had £200 in my poker account and decided to start out at 10p/20p. I knew that 10 BI's wasn't ideal but I figured if I went down to £150 early on I would move down to 5p/10p. Fortunately though I started off pretty well. I was playing tighter than usual because of my small BR management, but it was working out OK. Instead of going the library every day to revise/study I was going there to play poker.
My exams came and went. I didn't go to any of them but instead went to Student support and asked about deffering again. I also went to the doctors again and they advised CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) which is what I'll be doing over the next few months. My plan for now is to get a job part time, and play poker in my spare time. I still don't know exactly what I want to do for the future but a career in the betting industry whilst playing poker part time is something that appeals to me somewhat.
Poker challenge
OK, so now I've relived my skypoker/lifestory over the past 5 years, onto the poker challenge! I'll be keeping this thread updated as often as I can. Hopefully it will serve as a reminder not to start tilting as well when things are going badly! As I said at the end of part 2, I'd began playing poker again with a £200BR and playing at 20NL. (A mixture of NL and omaha) So far it's been a fairly smooth ride. It was fairly slow in the beginning because I was playing relatively tight, but after a week or so I'd built my roll up to £500. I then had a really good few days where I got up to £800, and then my first big dip where I went back down to £650 (I think I had a mini tilt episode as well, although I didn't lose that much whilst tilting). After that though it was mostly winning days until I got up to almost £1.1k. I had a bad session and went down to £900 and decided it would be OK to take a shot at 25/50 PL Omaha. With Omaha being a much higher variance game then Holdem, this wasn't the best of ideas.
I lost 2 BI's, but I was pleased with myself that I decided to stop at that point. I wasn't tilting; I was just on the wrong side of variance. Since then I've stuck vigorously with just playing 20NL even if it looks like their's a juciy 50NL omaha table going and I've managed to build my roll back up to over the 1k mark. As well as cash I've been dabbling in tournaments throughout the day but like back when I was first starting out, I'm not having too much success in them and mostly it's eating into my profits. That said, I feel I'm getting better again at them and hopefully it won't be too long before I can get a decent win in a tournament.
As of now my roll is 1142.42 and I've got £150 worth of C4P currently, which will be a nice bonus at the end of the month! I'm almost rolled now for 15p/30p games I feel that 20NL is offering me a better winrate, so I'm still playing 20NL in the main and picking and choosing some 30NL/40NL games if I feel like i'm in a good zone!
Comments
I can't believe that I read it all but I was intrigued by your story. Good stuff.
We can do a race if ya like, see who can get to 100NL first!
Dunno about you but when moving up levels now I just add a couple of the higher levels with my currents ones, like I've been playing a few 40NLs in my regular grind now, but just out of interest what kinda roll are you wanting to start playing 100NL proper, like 50 BIs?
EDIT: Read the story now, good read. Bet it sucks now though having to play the games as they are now where people want like 2nd nuts+ to put any money in the pot. Won't be as easy this time round but I'm a fish and I'm doing it
What stakes/hours/amount of tables are you playing now?
I take it your better at controlling tilt now Ivan.
Very impressive that you can roll 50 quid into 20k in the first place so im sure if you can do it once you can do it again. Good luck!
After seeking help and sorting myself out, now finally getting life back on track. Although still get days that just huant you of past, gambling of any kind horses/dogs/roulete even poker will allways be part of my life no matter how i/we try to get away from this.
Gl at the tables
I'll be updating my diary again soon, just been focussing on a month of grind for August.
I'm probably gonna be starting to take shots at 50NL in mid Sept (all being well) and will take some shots at 50NL when I get around the £5k mark.
Best of luck!!