I'm in incredibly unfamiliar territory with poker at the moment. I spent about three years as a small loser and then a modest winner, which was easy enough to deal with. The earnings were small enough to not be particularly interesting and the swings were small enough to not be too stressful. Now we're in 2020. My profit for the year so far is over 80% of my total profit in the last four years and I actually made over £2,000 in July. The money is starting to be interesting.
And, for the first time, I actually feel like I'm a good poker player. There have been times in the past where I've dared to believe I might be alright but now I'm quite confident about it. I'm probably not going to bothering the @MattBates and @chicknMelts of the world just yet but I believe I have a decent edge in most of the games I play. And I've had some nice results lately that have boosted my confidence even further. In the space of about a month I won the Mini Marksman, I got 7th in a Sunday Major, I got 7th in the £33 £8k that runs on Sundays, and I got 3rd in a Sheriff, along iwth plenty of other good results in £11-22 Bounty Hunters. It's been a wild, profitable ride. 7th in the Major was my biggest cash to date but I'm proudest of my Mini Marksman win; it was a gruelling and swingy HU that lasted about 3 hours and I think the study time I've put in there paid off masssively.
So it's a tough pill to swallow to be in the midsts of a £700 downswing. My ABI in August has been a little over £10, so that's a 70 buy-in swing. I've tried not to think about this too much because it's not good for my mindset when I'm playing but it's ugly and I don't feel great about it. There have been times this month where it feels like I've lost every single flip and been rivered an impossible amount of times. And it just keeps coming, no matter how well I feel I'm playing.
But it is somewhat to be expected when regularly playing £11-33 buyins. I've spent a lot of time reminding myself of this, and had a little whine to Coach Chicken about it, who echoed the same sentiment. I can even see in my own results that this is my fifth £400+ swing this year, and I've always recovered in the past. If anything, it's probably about time for a downswing when my graph has gone so vertical in the last month or so.
But my god does it feel bad and like it's never going to end.
I am, for the most part, managing to stay positive about it. Variance is a fundamental part of tournament poker and we all have to deal with it. I know I'll ride it out eventually if I stay positive and keep playing well but I've also taken some extra steps in the hopes of hastening the process:
I'm playing more satellites to the £22-55 events instead of buying in directly to keep my ABI manageable. I had started just buying in direct to a lot of these, and I think it would be fine to keep doing so, but it can't hurt to minimize my exposure for now.
I've lowered my volume and shortened my sessions, mostly to keep the tilt monster at bay. When you get sucked out on for the hundredth time in a session I think it's best for me to just unreg and give up than try to struggle through it with a storm cloud over my head. I've surprised myself at how well I've dealt with tilt overall but unfortunately I'm not an emotionless sociopath. Nothing but respect for people who can just shrug off those coolers and carry on.
A corrolary to the above is I'm doing less multi-tabling. There have been times where I've found myself 9-tabling or more. That sort of thing is becoming more manageable but I still find it hard to play my best poker with more than 4 or 5, so I'm trying to stick to that.
I'm studying as much as I can on my off days. I still have a lot of obvious and less obvious leaks to work on and there's always something to learn. I'm working through the Dara O'Kearney PKO book, I'm trying to finish the RYE Tournament Masterclass course, and I'm watching as much Youtube content from the likes of Jonathan Little and BBZ as I can.
Meditating on breaks. Not really meditating, just having some time to myself, doing some stretches and breathing, trying to stay cool. It's easy to not realise how bad I can feel in the middle of the grind so it's handy to take 5 minutes an hour to try to reset and get back into a good headspace. I should learn how to do real meditation.
I don't think I can do much more than that, other than play my best poker and hope to run well.
Hopefully I can struggle out of this by the time the SPT Online rolls around. I'm committed to playing it, even if I have to buy in directly, and I want to be in a good place when it happens. I don't have high hopes of running deep in it since it will no doubt attract a lot of extremely good players but it will be fun to have a go.
So that gives me about 3 weeks to figure this out and get back on the good side of variance. Woof.
Comments
I'm in incredibly unfamiliar territory with poker at the moment. I spent about three years as a small loser and then a modest winner, which was easy enough to deal with. The earnings were small enough to not be particularly interesting and the swings were small enough to not be too stressful. Now we're in 2020. My profit for the year so far is over 80% of my total profit in the last four years and I actually made over £2,000 in July. The money is starting to be interesting.
And, for the first time, I actually feel like I'm a good poker player. There have been times in the past where I've dared to believe I might be alright but now I'm quite confident about it. I'm probably not going to bothering the @MattBates and @chicknMelts of the world just yet but I believe I have a decent edge in most of the games I play. And I've had some nice results lately that have boosted my confidence even further. In the space of about a month I won the Mini Marksman, I got 7th in a Sunday Major, I got 7th in the £33 £8k that runs on Sundays, and I got 3rd in a Sheriff, along iwth plenty of other good results in £11-22 Bounty Hunters. It's been a wild, profitable ride. 7th in the Major was my biggest cash to date but I'm proudest of my Mini Marksman win; it was a gruelling and swingy HU that lasted about 3 hours and I think the study time I've put in there paid off masssively.
So it's a tough pill to swallow to be in the midsts of a £700 downswing. My ABI in August has been a little over £10, so that's a 70 buy-in swing. I've tried not to think about this too much because it's not good for my mindset when I'm playing but it's ugly and I don't feel great about it. There have been times this month where it feels like I've lost every single flip and been rivered an impossible amount of times. And it just keeps coming, no matter how well I feel I'm playing.
But it is somewhat to be expected when regularly playing £11-33 buyins. I've spent a lot of time reminding myself of this, and had a little whine to Coach Chicken about it, who echoed the same sentiment. I can even see in my own results that this is my fifth £400+ swing this year, and I've always recovered in the past. If anything, it's probably about time for a downswing when my graph has gone so vertical in the last month or so.
But my god does it feel bad and like it's never going to end.
I am, for the most part, managing to stay positive about it. Variance is a fundamental part of tournament poker and we all have to deal with it. I know I'll ride it out eventually if I stay positive and keep playing well but I've also taken some extra steps in the hopes of hastening the process:
- I'm playing more satellites to the £22-55 events instead of buying in directly to keep my ABI manageable. I had started just buying in direct to a lot of these, and I think it would be fine to keep doing so, but it can't hurt to minimize my exposure for now.
- I've lowered my volume and shortened my sessions, mostly to keep the tilt monster at bay. When you get sucked out on for the hundredth time in a session I think it's best for me to just unreg and give up than try to struggle through it with a storm cloud over my head. I've surprised myself at how well I've dealt with tilt overall but unfortunately I'm not an emotionless sociopath. Nothing but respect for people who can just shrug off those coolers and carry on.
- A corrolary to the above is I'm doing less multi-tabling. There have been times where I've found myself 9-tabling or more. That sort of thing is becoming more manageable but I still find it hard to play my best poker with more than 4 or 5, so I'm trying to stick to that.
- I'm studying as much as I can on my off days. I still have a lot of obvious and less obvious leaks to work on and there's always something to learn. I'm working through the Dara O'Kearney PKO book, I'm trying to finish the RYE Tournament Masterclass course, and I'm watching as much Youtube content from the likes of Jonathan Little and BBZ as I can.
- Meditating on breaks. Not really meditating, just having some time to myself, doing some stretches and breathing, trying to stay cool. It's easy to not realise how bad I can feel in the middle of the grind so it's handy to take 5 minutes an hour to try to reset and get back into a good headspace. I should learn how to do real meditation.
I don't think I can do much more than that, other than play my best poker and hope to run well.Hopefully I can struggle out of this by the time the SPT Online rolls around. I'm committed to playing it, even if I have to buy in directly, and I want to be in a good place when it happens. I don't have high hopes of running deep in it since it will no doubt attract a lot of extremely good players but it will be fun to have a go.
So that gives me about 3 weeks to figure this out and get back on the good side of variance. Woof.