The 'D' Word

The observant ones amongst you (hopefully most of you are observant since you are poker players) will have noticed that I haven't written a blog entry for a while, it has been about 10 weeks since I last posted. A few of you have commented on how you enjoy these blogs so for you I am sorry that I haven't posted recently, there are a couple of reasons for this, mainly I am on a sickening downswing at the moment with no end in sight and also I do not have anything concrete that I want to write about at the moment (I find it a lot harder to write about strategy when on a downswing as it is so much easier to doubt every decision you make).

As such this is only a short blog entry which contains no strategy and probably a lot of moaning, if this isn't you cup of tea, feel free to stop reading and do something more productive with your time, I won't hold it against you :)

On 7th February I won an MTT for a $700, but since then (as at time of writing on 2nd April) I have been on a terrible downswing and had only 6 cashes over $100 and none over $300, considering the number and buyin of MTTs I play this is bordering on a crisis and it certainly has affected me at times. I have been through a couple of major downswings before but this is worse than both of them, nothing is going right, I am winning very few flips and having lots of hands cracked while missing my own draws etc. There is also an element of sub-standard play on my part which is partly responsible but variance is being cruel to me on a constant basis, there is little point in me listing some of the hands that I have suffered in, suffice to say it can't get any worse. On top of the poker problems  my laptop died and I lost all my hand histories and had to purchase a new machine and start with blank poker tracker databases (my own fault for not backing HHs up I suppose, lesson learnt!)

 

I have tried different things to end the swing, taking a break has never really worked for me, although I had an online break during a lovely week in Malta I still played a live MTT once a night in which I also ran horribly. I have tried varying my style but tightening right up hasn't helped since I seem to get very few value hands and when I do they either get zero action or get cracked, playing looser hasn't helped as I pick up a couple of small pots then repeatedly get played back at by people who call then smash flops for fun. At the moment I am max 2 tabling to try and focus more on each table and I think this is helping my game a little but it is not resulting in any better results but in a way it is increasing my frustration as I am active in fewer hands than usual and also feeling the effect of busting more, but it is helping stem the tide in terms of monetary losses. The next option to try will be to move down stakes, but this brings its own challenges with bigger fields and faster structures I can't guarantee any success there either but I will persevere and aim to play my best every time I play which is all I can do.

When in a downswing it is very easy to feel down about the game but in terms of my quality of life overall, I have it very good, I have a very lovely and supportive girlfriend (who has seen my bad side due to poker run bad) and I have a roof over my head, am relatively healthy, I am debt-free and I have a job and have all the mod cons in life, I wouldn't give any of those up to end my downswing and so this should put perspective on poker. It can be hard to realise this when playing poker is a large portion of you spare time as it seems so important but we can't control the fall of the cards but we can control our lives and our decisions at the poker table, our main priority should always be on the quality of our lives and those of our loved ones, anything above this is a bonus, if I can remember this rule while playing and being beaten to a bloody pulp by variance then I should be able to play my A game and will come out of the other side no matter how dark and long the tunnel may feel, hopefully my next entry will be a more cheerful one, if you read to the end, thank you very much for listening to me whine!


There are more important things in life than poker like loved ones, family and friends.