Ups And Downs

The last few days of poker have been an exercise in frustration. Since I don't actually know how I'm doing over all due to the hidden stacks, I can only guess at where I'm at in terms of win/loss... Which, of course, is the point.

I have, however, discovered another natural human reaction. When left with an absence of information, we tend to "fill in the blanks".

Yesterday I was sitting in on 3 tables of 50/1. I waffle back and forth between 3 and 4 tables, depending on the challenge and my mental capacity at the time. Anyway, on one of the tables I'm getting brutalized. I mean, really taken to town. AA cracked twice in 10 hands, with the second one going down to a guy playing the HAMMER against a capped pre-flop and getting the miracle two pair flop that, of course, turns the boat at the river. The coup de grâce was KK getting owned by Q8o. It was the first time in a good long time I had actually busted out of a 50/1 limit game, and it was not a good feeling.

So, naturally, I'm thinking I'm getting stuck this session for copious amounts of my bankroll. After closing the busted out table and buying into a new table, I'm doing mental calculations in my head and come up with a figure of about -$45 by this time.

Of course, what I FAILED to realize was, when I first sat down on a different table, I went on a hellatious rush to more then double up. It quickly settled down to a standard grind so I had conveniently forgotten about my great run, instead focusing on the immensely more frustrating losses on the other table.

So at the end of it, I was chatting with a buddy of mine and bitching about how much I must have lost, doing my usual "I should just withdraw all of it and put the money to something useful" pissing and moaning I always do when I have an immensely bad day at the table, when he asks what I currently have in the bankroll. I hem and haw a little and do some mental calculations given the amount I remember having 3 days ago when I last looked, minus the last couple of "rough days" I was having and came up with, effectively, a completely off the cuff guess. I couldn't stand it any more, mentally geared up to withstand the bloodbath and took a peek.

I was up $14 for the day.

I was completely stunned. I figured I was in dire straits, but in reality I made off with a GAIN! The net 3 day total wasn't that impressive, but it wasn't negative either. The day before I had lost a fair amount of cash, but had actually come within a few bucks of catching back up.

So, this was a very interesting lesson to me. It proved to me that I could completely bust off a table and still come out ahead. This was something I just would never be able to wrap my head around, because the idea of leaving a table with nothing was so traumatic to me. If I get to playing no limit cash games, I'll really need to be able to recover after a rebuy.

So I'm making reasonable progress. August was a pretty lackluster month, thanks to a bad mid-month slide in the $1/$2 tables. I don't know why I can't come to terms with those tables, but I'd better figure it out and fast, or I'll never be able to progress past them. I think with my new policy of hiding my stack I may find it easier to stick to my game, but we'll see. I'm still about $120 away from having the appropriate 300BB roll for $1/$2, so it'll be at least a couple of weeks, unless I have a legendary run.

Anyway, August was a complete train wreck until the last four days, when I went on an amazing run on the 50/1 tables to end up in the green for the month. Overall I had a win rate of about 0.87BB/hr, with the worst damage being done at the full ring $1/$2 tables. Before getting back into that game, I'll need to sit down and really compare how (or if) my play differs between 50/1 and 1/2.

In the mean time, I'll keep on keeping on with the bankroll building. I'm still hoping to make it to at least 2/4 by the end of the year... Not a ton of time left!