Hey,

I'm starting this to motivate myself to grind more, monitor 'progress' (more on this later) and hopefully have fun someday reading what I've been through. Been playing online poker for years. At one moment I was even a pro, playing nl100 back in the days. My life curse was that I've always needed poker money to supplement the budget (and I'm thankful for that part). But the drawback was that I've never been able to build a healthy bankroll. Always playing on the edge (of BR), always racing with time. In the begging of the last year after yet another 'major withdrawal' (read: devastating BR yet again) I found a smallish fishy room and started afresh. My initial test 100eur slowly became thousands. I've been withdrawing a lot, but also winning like a boss. (Not Enet but similar; don't ask; you need to know some people in person and deposit/cashout goes hand-to-hand, so don't bother PMing)

2012 I started with 1.5k-ish roll and nl50. It was going okay when ... somewhere on March/April ... **** hit the fan and little did I realize that the worst epic-est cooler of my life was about to begin. And I'm not a noob by any means, played for 6+ years and about 1.5mil hands as a rough estimate. Anyways, this bad run is lasting like 80K hands so far and even though I know that some people have been through this it's hard to accept that you are actually the one of them. Guess I've been playing long enough to eventually see the ugliest of many faces of teh variance. And the moment couldn't be worse, my job is on thin legs and on August I'm about to become a father for the second time (and WILL need lots of money). I'll spare you the bad beat HHs, just imagine getting 2,3,4-outered several times a day over and over again, for months now, where if you win - you win a small pot; if you lose - you lose 200+bb pots. Unfortunately I can't post any graphs cause the room is not supported by trackers and I first would die just to see the EV line.

To make things even more complicated, after my bad run I dropped to nl20 and **** continued. A month or so ago a good I was sitting with a good friend of mine who knows how I play and have trust in me. He proposed to stake me for nl100. And it wasn't even conventional stake, cause I know that his whole idea was to help and that he'll refuse to share any profit. For the record the 'regs' (tons of donks and lots of fish) who play nl100 also play nl50 and sometimes nl20/nl10 donks take a shot if there are not enough tables or when they feel/don't feel like gambling. He knows very well that I've already played with most of them, have notes etc and that during whole 2011 I've already proved I can beat the games consistently. And he even told that he feels really bad that I'm wasting my time at nl20 and on several occasions asked me "how much do you need for nl100?". Every time I would refuse, not wanting to get into debt even though he's in the affiliate business and that 3K is not something he'd die after ... but still.

The next day there was a message on my phone "you've got 3k transferred. have fun " So I started hoping that for once my good hands will start holding up. I wasn't asking to win flips, just to start as a (on average 70+%) favorite and end as favorite. But no, didn't happen. Sinking continued, my old 500ish roll was busted and a 1K from stake. I dropped to nl50 and this is where I'm now.

BR: 1945e from 3500 started so -> BR: -1555e

Goal 1: get back in black
Goal 2: make 3K on top of that so I can continue on my own

Gl mate.

Horrible when you do everything right and nothing goes your way.

Gl and keep us updated.

Andy

Thanks mate

Even though I promised not to spam with bad beat hands (and will take care in the future) I'll just leave it here, just to illustrate the madness ...

(my apologies for ugly hand history, the room is not supported by any tracker/converter; here and in future hands I'll do my best to manually rearrange and make it readable)


The villain in the hand was mega loose donk on a heater. VPIP: 100%, aggressiveness: very high, ego factor: huge.

When I got 3bet I knew that he had a premium-ish hand (he was aggro and bluffy post flop but preflop was mostly calling) and that he was never going to fold to 4bet. At that point my brain was working with 110% power and I was frenetically juggling the numbers in my head and jerking the slider trying to figure out the optimal size to commit him, having in mind effective stack depth. It sure was a fat value served on a silver plate. After I made that huuuuuge 4bet my first thought was "dang, it's too big" but once he called and low flop came - I fistpump c(over)bet shoved expecting him to call even with naked AK hoping to bink A or K by the river (well, some % of the time for sure), he fistpump called aaaaaaaaand ...



I could post lots of hands like this but there's no point. It's 2-3 months of same **** and it's impossible to know when (if?) it'll ever end. That 3.5 BIs from that single pot would mean huge difference to me now. Just this one, let alone majority of alike. Whatever, nothing I could do about it, suck it up and move on. Eventually it has to end, right ... RIGHT?



As ***** as the software is, it has some basic (and utterly useless) stats and among those there's a hand counter. I'll reset it so I can at least have exact # of hands I've played since starting this goal/challenge/blog/whatever thread. I plan to play some hands tonight and will report afterwards.

First update:

Tonight's session I'm ending with little under 2 BI up (yay). Was running mostly ok (thank God! what a change!). There were some suckouts, mostly vs shorties calling my TPTK vbet with bottom pair and spiking 2nd pair on turn while having only PSB left and a funny setup (vs shortie again) where my AK got called by JT and flop came AKQ etc. Not that it was smooth run but it wouldn't be fair to complain - most of the time when I got it in ahead, I stayed ahead, like QQ>99 aipf 60bb pot and I even managed to bust two shorties with AA vs 78o vs 44 aipf for a 10ish bb pot.

For some that would probably be another semi-boring day in the office, but for me it's the most welcome refreshment. Almost forgot how it feels to end the day with more than 0.5 BI in black (IF it was a good day, which usually wasn't in the recent past).

Last night was anal rape w/o lubricator. Lost like 4BI and I just couldn't do anything to win. Sick amount of coolers/setups and even though I did manage to get some of my monsters paid off, it was far from enough to cover the loss. NEVER EVER in my long poker career have I got so many beats in so little time. After losing yet another flip, had to stop, too much frustration.

But I was still eager to play and since I was not on my A game anyway, decided to drop low and do something completely different and hit NL10 Zoom. Unlike my main room which is not supported by trackers, this time I could actually fire HEM, record everything and see how it really is. Nothing changed, still some nice setups and **** like: set over set (3rd time in last 10 days), KK < AK aipf, KK < AA aipf etc.



Almost 6 BI below EV in like 3 hours. Bad run gonna run bad. And the funny thing is I have an impression that Zoom bad luck wasn't that hard compared to my main room. But it's hard to tell without real data.


Today I'm back at NL50 and hopefully won't be 'persuaded' to go back to Zoom again

Another day another disaster and another pack of BIs down.

After these two hands I just couldn't stand the software anymore and quit.





So I went to Zoom again and dropped another 4BI in equity but still somehow managed to end in green. Now it's 10BI below EV in little over 7k hands but meh, still running much better at Stars ...