Holy crap just donked off 4K in less than two hours. That's my stop limit so outta here. Might be back tomorrow for one final session in CT. Getting rid of all of my chips just in case I don't. Actually played OK today. Just ran into some bizarre spots...

Actually played suboptimally. Played somewhat looser pre than usual and found myself in a bunch of OK get it in spots post and lost all of them. Prob C+/B- performance-wise...

Tough loss yo, what happened? PLO swings?

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Nah, probably deserved it. I mean, I could have gotten lucky on a couple of hands and everything might have been fine, but didn't. You can play a lot of hands in PLO if you feel like it, and the more hands you play, the more obvious (and not so obvious) all-in situations you'll encounter. Sometimes when you do this, it works out (you get lucky), or it doesn't (you get your ass kicked like you're supposed to). I've been running pretty well this month (playing pretty good too), so I think I kind of got cocky (also might have been slightly less patient than usual due to a TWO HOUR wait, no joke, during which time I tried to update this thread and stave off MEGA TILT...) and lost focus. Played OK post flop, but the main problem was I definitely played way too many inflated pots pre with hands I normally wouldn't/shouldn't.

Losing SUCKS, but I feel pretty good about leaving right after shipping the set buy-ins, even though I had many more bullets in my pocket. Unfortunately, I carpooled with a friend so he had to leave early too, so felt kind of bad, but luckily he was up a little so it wasn't too bad for him, I hope. Lesson: don't carpool with a buddy who's likely to go broke!

ive been on 100 buy in swings in no limit omaha. you gotta have balls.

I'm gonna do one last session in CT today. Should be done with that place forever. Will post final session report and summary results for the month since I started this thread. That will be my final post here and will prob start a separate thread here or in the blogs forum for a new chapter in my life.

Today's parameters are 3K max and love it or leave it.

Good for you, sometimes you just have to hang it up.
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The wait at CT is the most tilting thing i've experienced in a poker room. Just beware that it may not be much better at MDL at first, as I'm sure you know.

GL op. Did you finish Elements of Poker? I highly suggest The Mental Game of Poker. I found it much more helpful than Elements. (I have a whole thread about it)

Also you said earlier ITT that a 25BI downswing based purely on luck is really unlikely, but I would assume these happen pretty regularly to even good solid players with big edges. (regularly as in certain more often than once a decade but probably less often than once a year, just guessing tho). Even with big skill edges you are often in spots where your equity edges are thin and its pretty easy to be on the bad side of flips/near flip over and over and over. Being 400bb deep I imagine you aren't getting it in on flops all that often (and basically never preflop) so we don't get to 'see' the flip in the typical ESPN broadcast sense of the word but the flips still occur.

Played some silly hands today. Ended up winning small ($320) but with big swings (about 7K between high and low). For some time, the game was unbelievably good, partly because it was everybody's final session in the worst managed room in the history of service-based businesses. I was pretty drunk for a while and definitely got caught up in the last-session shove fest. I think I just about broke even on the drunk plays, won a 7K pot, lost an 8.5K pot. Then ran into a weird spot that I misplayed, and lost in an unsatisfying way, so to speak. Will discuss some hands and overall monthly results maybe tomorrow. Today's performance was prob C+/B-. Definitely wasn't totally focused and had a little too much fun gambling it up with my fellow degens.

Haven't finished it yet. Actually, haven't gotten very far either. One recurring problem I have with playing well and running good is that I start to care less and less about everything else that allowed me to get there, or other things that might be enriching for my life. Playing and talking/thinking about strategy and hands take up most of my energy and brain power during good periods. I really need to better balance life when I'm doing well in poker.

I haven't done the variance math (too lazy to do it ) but under current market conditions, I'd think the probability of me running 5K BBs (counting 5/5 as 5/5/10) below expectation when playing my A game is negligible, somewhere in the vicinity of me hitting the bad beat jackpot in full-time of NL play over the same period. I could easily be wrong, but let's hope I'm right! I would hate to think I play professionally in a game that leaves so much to randomness. Also it's possible that my stubbornness in discounting luck over any significant period of time allows me to keep working on my leaks and taking standard bad beats as well as I do.

And....in CT, we do get it in pretty often for way over 2K. Man...I could tell you a couple of hands from my very last session in CT, but pretty embarrassing lol. Alcohol was involved. No, a lot of us have no compunction about getting it in pre for 2K+ with way less than AA. To be continued at Maryland Live, obv. Degens gonna degen.

Summary Report

OK I'm ******ed and don't know how to insert images. Tried to post some stuff from my Poker Income app but will just type up some key numbers over the month since I started this thread.

Profit/Loss: $28,935
$/Hour: $219.41
Duration: 131 hrs 52 min
Cashed: 22/33 (66 percent)
$/Hour STD: $618.57
Games:
114 hours of 5/5 PLO at 250.2/hr for 28,760.
10 hours of 5/10 NL at 58.63/hr for 590.
6 and 1 hours of 2/5 and 1/2 NL for -53.07/hr and -122.4/hr, respectively (LOL).

So the results were pretty decent. Hourly is definitely above expectation based on historical data, so I must have run above normal, although obviously the sample size is pretty small. 132 hrs is also well below my usual monthly total. Hourly STD is higher than normal but actually went up a lot as a result of the last two sessions (was somewhere in the 400s I think). The weird part is that I don't think I ran that well; felt like I played better most days than I ran. PLUS...I made some dumb plays/obvious mistakes that usually didn't end well for me (i.e. lost like I was supposed to). However, even though I almost never played on tilt or when unhappy to be playing, I think I played my A game for a full session maybe once. And toward the end, I started to lose focus and really gamble in spots where I probably shouldn't have. Going forward, I want to keep maintaining a positive mindset at the table (which I have been totally awesome at recently) and focus on playing tighter pre. Also I need to keep working on extracurricular activities consistently, no matter how well or poorly I'm doing in poker. Easier said than done.

Really appreciate community's support here and also some of the players I play with that have commented about the thread to me personally. Was nice to be able to put a nice dent on the downswing, but hey, we're not thinking about our past losses anymore.

I'll continue to answer questions here if anyone has any questions about HHs or whatever. But will probably move my poker journal to the blogs forum or start another thread in this forum, but I probably won't be reporting detailed session figures like I have been. Maybe just focus more on performance grades and hand histories.

Thanks!

Been keeping up with your posts daily and has been an interesting read. Good luck and please post a link if you start a new thread

Thanks!
Link to my blog:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/22.../#post39912013

I've been posting sporadically on the blog thread, but I think I'll return to posting here. We'll see how it works.

I'm officially out of the hole now, after a near record month last month, playing mostly NL (10/25, some 5/10), a little bit of PLO. Actually prob ahead from when the downswing started in early July by like 20K, not sure exactly how much.

I've been running very well in 10/25 NL, and as a result, I've been able to play with more confidence and patience. Until....yesterday. Made bad play after bad play and could see the inner degen returning yet again. Fortunately, both 10/25 and 10/10 PLO broke so I had to stop playing. Lost 8K, none of it for justifiable reasons. What a joke. Really need to work on narrowing the gap between my A game and C game.

Anyway, the good news is I've been doing pretty well at MD Live. Just gotta keep grinding and stop ****ing around! Hope to have some good HHs to report here if I play today.

that really sucks man, went through the same thing last year and it's pretty soul sucking....tough to keep your chin up but i think that writing the hands down and then analyzing them in a hud or stats analyzer helped me. good luck and i'll be following

Thanks. I'm out of the woods now, for now. But I gotta stay cool and focused and not get cocky or lazy during upswings so I don't periodically experience spewtard sessions. Going to be grinding some 5/10 NL and 10/10 PLO today. Hopefully won't have any embarrassing HHs to report.

Best way to overcome a downswing : full roll on roulette (or a HU SNG or whatever).
If your roll was > 50% your roll before the downswing you beated that downswing and are back to your peak.
If not repeat one more time.

If you lose you're broke, that sucks but you have to stop this stupid game and won't have to think about these idiots dowswings.
It's a win-win situation