The Downswing Continues

I had another disastrous day yesterday. Without going too much into the details, I basically got destroyed despite sitting at several awesome tables with multiple 40+VPIP fish. Essentially, after breaking even for so long, I tried to force the action and make something happen. I isolated fish with almost any two and 3-bet the hell out of anyone who tried to isolate them. Although I was definitely making a small error preflop by doing so, I figured I could make up for it with my better play postflop. Unfortunately, this plan couldn’t have gone any worse. I never seemed to make a hand against the fish and simply found myself throwing away continuation bets and double barrels everywhere. My image was getting worse and worse and the fish couldn’t/wouldn’t fold bottom pair. Soon I was faced with the unenvious situation postflop of having to triple barrel people off ace high or having to instantly give up on any flop I missed (not fun when you have no showdown value to begin with).

Now, I know that when your image is this bad you should either quit or slowdown but I couldn’t bring myself to do either. Quitting would mean passing up on some very easy money, a relatively rare occurrence at MSNL (at least for me)! And slowing down would mean letting other people get to the fish first or letting the fish leave before they got stacked. The second outcome would really be letting the fish off the hook...

So persevered I did and several hours later I was stuck 4K. Great...

To make matters worse, if I decide to stick to any semblance of bankroll management, I have to move back down limits now. My last big downswing came when my bankroll was at a peak so I could absorb the loss and continue playing 2/4 and 3/6. This time, however, I’m left with barely over 20 buy-ins for 2/4 which, from experience, I can safely say is not enough for my volatile style.

I’ve decided to cash out 2K to reward myself for the hours I’ve put in this year and to remind myself that, on the whole, I’m very fortunate to be making significant money playing what is essentially a video game for adults.

I’ve also decided to move $650 to Full Tilt Poker to play some heads-up. My biggest problem at MSNL was playing in 3-bet pots so I’m hoping that messing around in some heads-up games (where playing 3-bet pots is mandatory) will allow me to improve in this area. I don’t in any case feel like grinding six-max for a while now so I think a change of scenery will be beneficial by itself.

Word Counts, Deadlines, Footnotes and Me

So it’s 4.30am and I’m putting the finishing touches on my law assignment. I’ve finished cutting it down to the word limit (1550) and am now ready to begin footnoting and referencing. This process is usually quite a tedious one but I’ve been smart enough on this occasion to make brief references to myself along the way. This should mean that I spend less time wondering where the hell I got a passage from and more time actually referencing!

Half an hour later, my strategy seems to be paying dividends as I’ve finished referencing 4 of the 7 pages. Bleary-eyed, I sit back to admire my work. Three more pages, I say to myself, and I’ll be able to get a few hours of precious shuteye.
Then I notice something weird in the bottom-left hand corner of my screen.

Words: 1842

Eh?

I figure that I must’ve accidentally written too much in my sleep-deprived state. I had, after all, been continuously adding and deleting sentences whenever I saw something that needed changing. Upon glossing back over my piece though, I quickly realise one thing: I had barely added a word! Sure, an adjective here, a random sentence there, but nowhere near enough to increase my word count by 20%!

For some reason, my mind flashed to the week before. I was sitting in class and my lecturer was warning us to avoid substantive points in footnotes or else they’d be included in the word count. I quickly glance at my footnotes.

Gulp.

Sure enough, not one, not two, but three of my footnotes contained substantive points. But, how on Earth did my lecturer know!?

Then it comes to me. This was the first time I had used Microsoft Word 2007 (I got a new computer last Christmas). Somehow, I reason, the new version must be programmed to recognise substantive footnotes and add them to the word count! (Hey, it was logical at the time...)

Ah well, I thought, I’ll just have to delete them. They were such nice points too...

So I delete the substantive trio and look back to my word count.

Words: 1713

...

Ok, like WTF?

I then finally realised what had happened (yes, for real this time...). Not long after, I realised the even worse ramifications...

As quickly as possible, I clicked on ‘Review’, clicked on ‘Word Count’, unchecked the ‘Include Footnotes’ option, and looked...

Words:
.
.
.
1153
.
.
.
@ # $ % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Toughing It Out

It’s assessment season again and I’ve been trying to catch up on all the work that I was meant to do during the Easter break. As a result, I haven’t had much time for poker or blogging. During the times that I did play poker, I didn’t manage to stick to my goal of exclusively playing tournaments at all. In fact, I think I’ve only played one. I like to blame this mostly on daylight savings time changes both here and in the US which have resulted in the MTTs starting at wacko times. In all truth though, I just can’t be bothered to one-table a tournament when I can fire up SpadeEye instead and plonk myself next to several fish.

Unfortunately, ever since my move to MSNL, it seems that I’m one of them! I cannot for the life of me beat 2/4 NL and 3/6 NL. You might wonder why I even play 3/6 if I can’t beat 2/4 but the fact is that 3/6 actually seems easier than 2/4. I put this down to 3/6 players being the failures from 5/10 whereas 2/4 seems to contain all the good regulars who want to put in the hours at 2/4 before proceeding quickly to 3/6 and 5/10.

I knew that the variance would increase as I moved up stakes but I never imagined the extent to which it could happen. It’s really quite frustrating and hard to deal with. Just yesterday I quit a short session 2.3K down and felt down in the pits. Later that night, I decided to take a quick 20 minute break from my law assignment and fire up a few tables. Three and a half hours later I quit 3.5K richer. No doubt I will lose half of it back in my next session. This process has been repeating itself for me over and over again the last few weeks and I simply can’t wait for the day that my graph decides to veer north-east and stay that way. I’ve attached the graph for the last 35 days below.

As you can see, in addition to the insane swings, it’s just been one long break-even stretch. Man, if I’m going to get nowhere, at least let me get nowhere in peace! I also never realised just how long a break-even spell can go for. I had heard of people breaking-even for 30,000 hands at a time but I never really believed it. After all, surely by the end of 30,000 hands, variance would catch up with you and you’d either realise you sucked and drop down or come out on top and rake in the dough? Not so it seems. It’s only since I bought Holdem Manager that I’ve begun to realise just how long it can take for expected winnings to catch up with actual winnings. The most depressing thing is that my break-even spell is a result of me running ABOVE expectation, not below it. Last month (the first full month I’ve had HEM) I was 4K above expectation after 30,000 hands. This constituted almost half my winnings for the month. This month I’ve played 12,000 hands and was 2K below expectation for the first 10,000 hands. After my good session yesterday (in which I won about 4 coin-flips in a row) I’m a couple hundred bucks above expectation for the month meaning I’ve now been running good for almost 50,000 hands! Quite depressing given the fact that I’m only beating MSNL for 2.7 PTBB/100 at the moment. With my luck factored out, I’d only be beating it for 1.0PTBB/100.

I may be being a bit hard on myself and I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from my initial foray into MSNL. I have after all only been playing it for a month and a half. It is however annoying to know that if I was playing 1/2 throughout this time I’d definitely be winning and winning without nearly the amount of swings that I experience at 2/4 and 3/6. Sometimes I do just want to go back to 1/2, grind out some easy dollars every day and not have to worry about daily swings of thousands of dollars. My ambitious side however always gets the better of me and I invariably find myself sitting at numerous MSNL tables at which I have little if any edge. And this is so even though I game select very well. In the end, I know that investing the time (and money) at MSNL right now will reap the rewards in the long run. It’s just so hard to persevere while getting to that long run...