Well what a month it has been, and not in the good way...it is safe to say that February has tested me to the very limit several times as it just seemed to get worse and worse with the brutality of misfortune being utterly relentless. Pre-rakeback my downswing extended to almost $18,000 which is 3 times the size of my biggest downswing before then. However, with rakeback (around $7,000) the amount is reduced significantly to just over $10k. Most of the misfortune seems to have been more focused in MTTs although I managed to go on a 3,500 game losing streak in sit and gos too which according to Noah Stephen-Davidowitz, (who did extensive research on the % chance of success/loss playing sit and gos for a living and posted it in a blog-http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/03/stt-pro/), there was less than a 0.5% chance of a player with my Return On Investment (ROI) going on a downward streak like that. That combined with my MTTs misfortune (which is more common due to the higher variance (Noah writes about MTT variance too -http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/02/mtt_pros_2/ and my ROI for those of you who are interested is just under 50% despite sharkscope saying 112% which stemmed mainly from me doing well a few years back in micro tournaments)) made life pretty tough.
To combat this I've tried to put as much volume in as I can usually making around 9,000VPPs a week which would come from around 5 weekdays of play. Subsequently it is now March 7th and I have 80k VPPs so I should make the 100k mark this month retaining Supernova a full 5 months before I did last year. This puts me firmly on pace for my new goal of 420k VPPs which would include six $4,000 FPP bonuses as well as the 4 milestone bonuses which provides a healthy year from rakeback alone (assuming I don't lose it all at the tables). Anyway, if I hadn't increased my volume I'd probably be boring you about run bad in my next blog post too.
So, that was pretty draining but over the last 3 days things have picked up a fair bit gaining my 1st significant top 3 finish this year and running better in the sit and gos. Subsequently I'm feeling a bit better about myself but also cautious because although I feel I'm due a big upswing ($50k would be nice :-D) I know it isn't my right to have one. Because of this swing I've had to postpone my goals for now and once I get back towards the black for the year I will return to playing live cash as well as looking into my trip to Dublin. One thing I will say is that when things got really tough for me, and I was at breaking point a few times, I did complain on occasion. I think it's natural but I guess it was a little ill disciplined. However, I didn't complain before I crossed the $11k mark so there's positives to be taken from that too. I hope I never have to go through anything like this again, I have re-evaluated which tournaments I should and do play and limit the amount of money I invest in MTTs per day just so I know what I can expect to lose from them etc in a future bad run.
I spoke to a Russian player who's screen name is Kedrila, who had a similar run to me, he said the key was to continue to play with confidence something that I used to struggle with on occasion in the past but lately not so much. He has made $30k pre-rakeback since then and is a good role model for me to follow not only because he's an excellent player but his behaviour at the table is impressive too.
I'm on 4 leaderboards for the year despite this swing which is encouraging so with hard work, plenty of volume and a little luck I hope to report on a successful March.
Take care and good luck
bigstealer
