WARNING!! TL;DR
So I've made 16 BI in the last two days, and it's hard to believe that I was very seriously considering cashing out a week ago. Man this game is something more than crazy. And the thing is, I probably would've either cashed out or went bust eventually if it weren't for my coach and the fact that for some reason I can't ever seem to give up at something I care about even if every single sign in the Universe says I should.
The month of February was by far the worst month I've ever had. It kicked me in the side of the head and called me names pretty much. I lost somewhere between 35-40 BI. Luckily it wasn't that bad because I dropped two levels after the first 9BI. It was a pretty ugly experience, and the reason it happened so fast was cause literally nothing went right. Sure, the hands were any crappy scenario you can think of when the money went it, and that happens to everyone so it's fine. What made this one so different and so damn brutal was that sometimes I'd go hours without a hand across all my tables, and my c-bets were getting raised/checkraised far more often than is normal. If I had to guess, I'd say like 60% at least, not even kidding. There was a two week period in there where literally every single combo draw missed. I've never experienced anything like it lol. And sometimes if I tried real hard I'd finally make top pair after 2 hours so that I could get called 3 streets by AA lolololol.
So you get the picture. This wasn't just waaahhhhhh waaahhhhhh bad beat cooler ugly. It was can't scoop a $2 pot if my life depended on it ugly and a cold deck is right around the corner waiting to collect his payday like a loanshark who loves his job a little too much. And with virtually nothing coming in to mitigate the damage due to a nonexistent stealing effectiveness, that's probably what turned a crappy run of cards into a total nightmare. I felt like I was a Russian in No-Man's Land charging the Germans armed with a godd**m stick, hoping I could get lucky enough to find one of the 1/20 of my dead comrades armed with a gun so I could take a shot before I got blown to smithereens lol. Of course, if I were a true Russian, maybe I could've at least won a few like some my villains by runner runnering the nuts with 95o after checkraising the turn in a 3 bet pot for the motherland. Instead I was some guy who was just getting destroyed and is too stubborn and slightly insane to stop going back to the computer at 4am only hours after having yet another session that made me want to scream. What can I say? Resiliency is both a blessing and a curse.
I think the hardest thing about that run was to keep importing those hands and watch my awesome winrate degrade exponentially. It's not even pride or ego. To me, it's flat out scary to watch that crumble into dust because it makes you have to start asking some pretty hard questions and forces you to face some very ugly potential realities. I knew it deep down though when I was staring at the bad news on HEM2 that I already more or less knew and imagined the program animating, pointing to the graph and bb/100, and explaining to me in as simple wording as possible that those numbers meant I sucked donkey cock. I think that was the moment I knew subconsciously that I had a problem.
So I dropped down two levels... I would just rebuild at a limit I knew for a fact I could destroy and go back to it when I was more adequately rolled. Only problem was, every aspect of the runbad followed. It felt like everyone at 50nl was a god except for me. There's nothing quite so humbling as seeing a limit you once blew through and laughed at while running 13.7bb/100 run at like -17something bb/100 over your first 10k hands. So the problem wasn't my opposition at my new limit. It wasn't that they were better. It was that somehow I'd gotten worse. I think that was the point where I knew that if I didn't figure out some way to improve my game that I was eventually going to go busto. Somehow, somewhere along the way my game had deteriorated. That much was clear. I wasn't sure how, but the biggest indicator was that I could no longer make steals, and my c-bets had somehow turned into the literal equivalent of setting money on fire. Even though I was running god awful, that could not explain why I couldn't even sustain some type of bottom line. No, I was the problem. I just couldn't figure out why.
And you know what? It was hard as hell to go back through tons of old videos, dig through hand history and review myself getting flat out crapped on. Not only is it kinda degrading, it's simply flat out boring as hell. But I'm glad I did it. And then I got in touch with my coach, helped him get set up specifically on my site, and watched him play for hours. After that, he sweated me for some sessions and made me start playing LAG rather than the TAG game I've always played. He felt I had come to a point where I was ready to step my game up and exploit some extra edges, so I did, and man I don't know what I was waiting for!! Not only did the experience make me realize that I was not as good as I thought, but also that there's still so much to learn. At some point, for example, now that I can play this way, it occurred to me that there's alot I'll need to learn at some point if I get to a point where I commonly face competent LAG players. There's still some rough edges to work out on my own LAG game for sure, so it seems that the work has only just begun. But, the results since playing the new style are undeniable, and my coach identified and helped me patch up a couple leaks I'd picked up at some point, likely due to the fact that my life has been in non-stop motion for the past 5 months.
I've put too much work into this damn game and love it too much to quit or not continue attempting to get better, and I gotta say that after this last month I think by far the best times to work on bettering your game is when the sh*t hits the fan. At some point, it's absolutely essential if you wish to keep moving up from wherever you at. We might all think we're awesome at whatever stake we play at, but I bet none of us would jump 5 levels (assuming BI wasn't an issue) and expect to do just as well... not unless you're totally clueless anyway. Phil Ivey once said that he learns new things about this game every day. If a guy like that is still figuring things out, then really the amount you'll win really depends on your dedication to the part of this game that is not so easy. The work. The studying. Getting better... which is not something that happens really at the table by itself due to the aspect of incomplete information.
I guess if there's anything I've learned from all of this that I can pass on to any readers, it's that it's absolutely imperative to check on your game and get help for it if needed whenever you run bad and it starts getting to double digit buy ins and/or is more than just running into some cold decks. There is simply no reason that running bad should cause you to lose buy ins in any other way than in the form of bad beats and cold decks. I believe it's when ticking time bombs in your game manifest themselves at the same time as running bad that you will encounter truly horrible and seemingly impossible swings... the kind that can break entire bankrolls if you're not careful. So whenever you even start getting close to double digit BIs lost, I believe it's essential to drop a limit or two and really scrutinize your own game. The leaks my coach corrected, for example, were not things I was ever doing before and I honestly couldn't tell you when or how I picked them up, so don't assume for a second that your game is a solid or impervious to deterioration as you think, especially if alot is going on in your life keeping you away from the table at times. Practice is essential after all
Well, that's all I got. I know there's quite a few serious players out there who post and lurk in this subforum, so hopefully this post helps some of you out if and when the time of your own trials comes. Maybe you can save a few buy ins or something.
