Saturday, August 27, 2011

Keeping it in perspective

It's been a tough past week. My IT work has been more challenging than usual, this bout of Man Flu continues and the poker run of cards just wasn't great resulting in another sizable downswing that has me almost asking what could have been this month.

It's times like these that it's easy to just pack it all in and give up - but to me this is the normal run of the mill. It was a week where almost every time I put myself in a position to win a coin flip (or a was clear favourite) all-in preflop with 10-15bbs I lost. Instead of getting into the money or making the final table I would be out in 20th-30th position no less than 10 times. In the 180-player SnGs (or the 180s) this is the difference between recording a good or bad week. This is why volume is important - the more coin-flips at this stage the more we make it into the money spots - or so the theory goes...

Looking at the summary stats for the week:

Session 1: Played: 23, Placed: 0, Prizes: $0 
Session 2: Played: 23, Placed: 3 (4th, 9th, 17th), Prizes: $44
Session 3: Played: 16, Placed: 0, Prizes: $0 
Session 4: Played: 19, Placed: 2 (7th, 12th), Prizes: $19

All in all this week resulted in a $138 (or 55 buy-in) downswing with the current bankroll down to $470 and ruined what was otherwise a month that looked like I was going to be a big winner in. I have made a few obvious mistakes this week however I feel that in general I am playing well - after all I manage get into a good position in a large percentage of my SnGs and constantly losing when you get your money in good is just a sign of short term variance.

Without being overly results oriented on the past week I find the situation is not too bad when I look at it with some broad perspective. It's clear now that I am not playing enough volume for this type of poker and its inherent variance so week to week the results can vary by a big margin. Realistically I would need to be playing at least 200-300 tournaments a week if I were to reliably hope on any major results on a weekly basis. I am not sure with my current time constraints what I can do to fit in more volume but its something I will need to look at.

Taking the above into account I need to look at my current results on a monthly basis in these 180s. From this perspective July was a horrific month running at a loss of $164 in two weeks however August was relatively not too bad with a win of $99 at an ROI of 19% over 209 tournaments. Obviously this ROI is nothing to write home about for the $2.50 180s but a winning month is still better than a losing month and at least I have negated some of the damage from the previous month. Having close to 200 buy-ins remaining as well means I am still in reasonable shape from a bankroll management perspective.

I have also realised over this past week that I need to spend more time studying and working on my game - I have struggled to fit in study of late - and maybe its now starting to show. I know that there are still improvements I need to make in some of my pushing and calling ranges in marginal spots against certain villains. I also have made some mistakes of late on some final tables so I will review some ICM theory and push/call charts over the next week.

Next week I'm off to an IT conference on the Gold Coast and will most likely not be able to play much online poker. It may be the perfect opportunity to take a break away from the weekly grind and review my recent play as well as cover off some study material.

All in all its important to keep perspective on the tough times and stay positive. I still managed to win 40 buy-ins in August and that's not such a bad thing! Bring on September!

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