A Career Wave of Bad (9/11/2011)

Just wrapped up the weekend.  Blasted away another 3 buy-ins.  Everything that could go wrong during the last 40 hours of play has gone wrong.

Breaking up my sessions into intervals I've lost the last 9 straight.  This may never happen again in my life.  Previously I have never lost more than 5 straight live sessions.  This down-swing should go down in the record books for me. It's now just over 8 buyins.  You hear how these sort of things are possible even live, but you never actually believe it until it happens to you.

It's hard to explain to someone who isn't in the poker world.  And when you don't have a lot of poker friends you really do go through it completely on your own.  You question your sanity.  You start to think crazy things that aren't logical.  

I was happy with my play during the down-swing for the most part.  Even tonight (Saturday) I felt I played very well and mistake free.  What can I say?  The biggest pot lost:  I isolate $35 pre from the blinds with AsJc and get one caller pre-flop (a very tight casual player).  Flop Ad Td 3c (a diamond draw is out).  I cbet $50 into 80 he calls.  TURN Jh.  I bet $140 into $180, he shoves all in.  I just remember I calculated everything in my head right there.  IT was $150 more for me to win a $750 pot.  I only need to be good 20% of the time against his range here to break even.  I'm obviously calling any amount, but I calculated it in my head right there just for fun.  I'm also thinking about how I could possibly end up losing this pot, deep down I know I will.

RIVER DIAMOND.

HE TURNS OVER 9d4d BINKING THE FLUSH.  I launch the fucking cards across the table and everything is rage for the next 50 seconds.  I accidently threw my cards so far that one of them smacked against the opposite rail and turned over.  I don't remember the other card turning over.  But the 94s donkey to my immediate right commented after "What took you so long, that's a snap call with two pair".  I didn't say anything.  I thought to myself "Ok it took me like 30 seconds to call.  I was calculating the exact equity I needed to call against his range because I like to do this sort of practice on the run.  It's certainly a snap call, but for fun I like to caluclate JUST HOW BIG that bet would have had to be for me to possibly consider folding."

And what else is new.  I could run on about bad beats but I won't.  There are probably about 5 stories like this from the past four days.  My favorite was probably getting in $130 pre-flop Friday night with AA and being called heads up.  Flop 8 J T.  $170 more gets in on the flop and he has the elusive 97o for the nut straight.

I have never seen so many dry flush draws get there.

I have never seen opponents nail the ridiculous shit at such a high frequency after being destroyed equity wise.

I have never realized it was so easy to flop trips.  What is it normally like 3% to flop trips?  My opponents manage to flop trips on me like 50% of the time.

So uh, that's my week?

How was yours?

lol?

Ok so I don't know.  AT least I know what it feels like to have 6% of your net worth sucked out on the poker table in the span of 40 hours.

I recently made a poker friend who just moved to the area.  He's won 12k in just over a month playing the same stakes.  That's almost double what I made the entire summer.  He has a very similar style as myself and grinded some of the same games online.  He may be like a .5 pt BB/100 higher winner then me.  I don't understand this game anymore............

Tommorrow I'm going to wake up and work out.  Then I might play about 6 hours at night.  I'm not going to over-do the playing tomorrow.  I've played Wednesday-Saturday and lost -3.5k in that span.  The results are irrelevant, but I usually don't like to play more than 4 days in a row.

This month will clearly be a losing one, I'm certain of that.  All I can do is try to chip away at the losses 8 hours at a time, by playing mistake free.  By playing mistake free, even if I  continue to get fucked up the ass by the Gods of probability.  Even if there are not Gods of probability, even if it really is just random cards being dealt.

My main grind days this week will most likely be Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I'm taking off Saturday because I'm playing the Borgata main event on Sunday.  Saturday will probably be just study 5 hours and get some sleep for Sunday.  This will be the biggest tournament I've ever entered.  I'm playing it no matter what.  I don't care if I lose 10 fucking grand this upcoming Wed-Fri.

Schedule something like:

Sunday:  (exercise, Play 6 hours minimum)

Monday:  (Watch the U.S open final, 6 hours of tourney studying/playing)

Tuesday:  (work-out, No grinding cash tables, Study for tournaments a minimum of 5 hours)

Wednesday: (8 hours of grind minimum)

Thursday:  (8 hours of grind min)

Friday:  (5 hours min, if the games suck like most Fridays go home and study some)

Saturday: (work-out, study 4 hours, get sleep)

Notice there isn't any going out or anything there.  Decided to not drink a week until after the main.  I just don't want to get drunk and burn off two days.

That's about it right now.  It's going to be a war getting out of this down-swing.  All I can do is keep playing mistake free, keep putting in the volume, and keep focused.  I wonder how long this can continue?

-bag