What a Difference a Year Makes

I had such great hopes for 2007 after 2006 and 2005 being winning years online. I was just reading my posts back in December and was really looking forward to another successful year. Maybe I need to manage my expectations more, and I have expected to carry on winning, rather than working on improving my game and looking for ways to progress.

Anyway, the year hasn’t been great and the last 2 months probably rate as the worse run I have been on. Spent a lot of time reviewing my hands and can see a few holes that would probably account for about 10-15% of the losses, but overall just can’t seem to shake not knowing when I’m beaten.

My game pre-flop is fairly good. I vary my raises with hands so as not to become predictable. I re-raise strongly with premium hands. I also vary my starting hands depending on the table I am playing. This shows that I am watching and noting opponents and their style of play – which is all pretty positive. I guess one of my big flaws is getting away from flops when I believe I have the strongest hand, when in fact I don’t. Some of them I was obviously behind, but called anyway, many were hands like my AA v the villains 77 on a 7 Q 3 flop. Can you ever confidently believe you are behind in these circumstances? A % of times I have called raises in these situations and been shown AQ to take down the pot – but not sure how you can confidently predict when you are ahead or miles behind in a hand.

At the blogger tourney, I folded AK on a K 8 9 flop to a huge raise from Acorn. 2 weeks ago I would have put Acorn all-in without a 2nd thought. I thought about what he had, and was confident he’d flopped a set. He said he was bluffing after, but I’m pretty sure he had a stronger hand. Hopefully my read was right.

I know I have taken a high number of incredibly unlikely cards on turn or river – but I understand that these things happen, maybe they’ve not happened for a while and lady luck is just evening up the odds.

So, in a nutshell, the £500 in winnings from November and December have dwindled to just less than £60. I’m trying to remain positive, realising that these losses are from winnings, rather than next months mortgage payment and that I was a winning player and therefore can be again.

For the immediate future, I’m back to basics. I’ve read Bluescouse’s blog and can see how addictive the game can be, and how you can be severely depleted if you don’t keep control of your BR. 25$ Pot Limit games at Poker Room and 5c NL games at Poker Stars that were relatively fruitful for me 18months ago, as I was at that ‘afraid to step up a level’ stage. So I’m back there again and starting from scratch and beginning the process of the game again.
Another area is MTT & SNG games, which were profitable (I was a shark on Sharkscope for a while!), but lacked the speed and excitement of cash games. Maybe I’ve lost discipline and become complacent. So I’m going to focus on SNG for a while and see if I can re-find that disciplined, patient player that I was, but am no longer. Maybe life off the tables has also had an effect, and I’m hoping that stability at home will also bring stability at the green felt.

This should also make my blog a bit more interesting to read, as it has got a bit depressive recently. Having said that, these online diaries are suppose to reflect your ups and downs and feelings as we walk through our lives, and are I want to capture these thoughts and feelings, if only to learn from when I re-read them in future months.

Time for a new start.