Later I would run bad for a few weeks... what a terrible feeling that was!
Then I hit a stretch of 6 months in a row during my MTT career that came close to breaking me. I still remember the feeling pretty clearly. Anger, frustration.... fear. My bankroll was in shambles, my confidence shatterred. It was then I decided to take a big break from poker.
I always need something to work on, something to keep me busy. For the next 6 months I decided to build our family tree. I had recently found ancestry.com, and was amazed. 5 months later I had traced our family back to the late 1500s in Sweden! How fun was that! Another thing I gained though, was a renewed hunger for poker. The break was the best thing for me. I returned at lower stakes, and started building back up. The following months would be some of the best in my poker career. A $17k score in a $162 buyin MTT, and several other big wins got my bankroll back and rocking.
In my PLO adventures I have had a few more streaks where I run horribly. I don't know if there have been any as bad as the 6 months of MTT play... but there have been nasty ones. In the end though, I look at them now in a positive light. Don't get me wrong, it sucks to run bad! I heave learned from each one of them though! I learned the importance of taking a break. After another particular bad run (which I will post about another time), I realized my game wasn't all that good, and I studied and improved. After almost losing my bankroll a couple times, I have also learned about the importance of bankroll management! I know now that I have the ability to rebuild my bankroll... but also that I can greatly slow the ruin of it by dropping down when I should!
I also learned that as bad as a run seems... it can always get a lot worse. I laugh now looking at my early poker days when I had a week of running bad. I realize now that when I'm running really good, I need to recognize that and stay grounded. And when I'm running bad... I need to focus more on my play and less on my results. Alas, it's not always easy to do that!
Recently I've been through another bad stretch. After a great start to 2012, my BR came crashing back to earth. I had been up to $2/4 (30+ buyins normally for me), but was now back to $.5/1... and almost down to $.25/.5. My nights seemed to be getting swingier (See Typical Night for what seemed to be happening), and my actual results compared to expected EV always seemed to be bad. A few nights ago during another horrible night, I looked at my graph for the last month. It was horrible.
I was running about $6500 below EV. Why? WHY??? Lol.
But then I noticed something else. Why was my expectation so... ragged? This was over 76000 hands, so while not long term.... I would expect more of a upward slope. Well... I should expcet that. A look over my lifetime PLO profit graph would show a beautiful mountain range... well, beautiful except it is a profit graph. The graph for the last month suggested I would expect close to $4 every 100 hands. As I was playing a lot of $1/2 over this stretch... I was only expecting about 2bb very 100 hands. Not only that, but for the latest 40k hands, my expectation was about even. Why? I combed through Poker Tracker, intent on finding a leak. It didn't take long. As expected, I lose a lot in the blinds, and make most of my money on the button. My early position earnings were not great. And while I played more hands on the button than earlier, I was still playing almost 20% UTG. That seemed awful high. Then I saw my 3-bet UTG was actually HIGHER than on the button. I was 3-betting 11% of the time UTG, and only 10.5% on the button. What was I thinking? Clearly not about position. I knew right away this was a big problem. I really had forgotten about position for the last while, and was becoming a bit of an aggressive maniac. Any double suited hand was being 3-bet from everywhere, and I was getting in a lot more big hands. Sure, if I was running good I would make a lot of money fast. But I was running bad, and wasn't playing terribly well.
I decided there to start focussing way more on position, and far less on 3-betting pretty looking hands. This started about 4 days and 11k hands ago. (SHORT TERM ANALYSIS ALERT!) So... while 4 days and 11k hands is WAY to few to make any assumptions, things are looking up.
My stats for the last 4 days suggest I'm doing that. My VPIP UTG is now down to 16%. That's 20% fewer hands than I was playing from there before. Now... these stats aren't totally accurate. I'm playing 16% from 3rd postion in PokerTracker's position stats, which at a full 6-max table is UTG. I could find out the exact stats, but I'm lazy, and they're not that important. My 3-bet stats showed a more significant change. I am now rarely 3-betting UTG. In 2nd position I'm 3-betting 11% still, which is higher than I have on the button. It appears I still have work to do, but the changes are positive.
It isn't just preflop that I'm changing. I'm trying to use my positional advantage more postflop. I'm not firing away like a madman every time I'm out of position, and I'm controlling the pot better when the situations warrents it in position.
So far so good... hopefully this nice trend continues, except for the run-bad. I hope that turns around!
2 weeks until VEGAS!!!!!
DWDuck
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