Life Shouldn't Be A Fuckin' Grind

I will never be a poker pro, but my lifetime poker ledger is positive and I think that's something to be proud of.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Downswingin'

I think this is by far the biggest downswing I've ever been in since I started playing poker seriously. In fact, if you included the 150 or so BB I lost at 3/6 in May and June you could probably really shake my confidence. However, I still think I have a pretty significant edge of the players that I see on a regular basis in the 2/4 games on Party (I'm not so sure this was the case at 3/6). At this point my 2/4 downswing is sitting at about 175BB over right around 1700 hands. It could be worse, but on one of my last hands Wednesday night I raised with JJ and got 2 callers, the beautiful flop was JT6 and both players called my bet. The turn was a 6 and we ended up capping it 3 ways. On the river I think we got in 3 bets 3-ways and one villain flipped TT and the other mucked winning me a pot of like $96. I decided right then that that was a perfect time to quit on a good note. I'm hoping that hand will signify the end of my downswing and the beginning of an upswing, but only time will tell.

I didn't play on Thursday and I won't be playing online today. Since it's Friday night and I'm off work I will almost certainly be heading out to Argosy to play the 6/12 game. I've done very well in that game so far, and I know that's one place I'm not running bad. When I do get back to the online game on Saturday or Sunday I'm sticking to 2/4 for a while longer. Like I said, I really believe I should have a pretty significant edge over the average player I've seen at those stakes so I see no reason to quit the game right now. I have roughly $600 in my Party account at the moment and if I lose all of that, I will then drop down. I actually have enough in my overall poker roll that I could lose the $600 and play 1/2 pretty comfortably, maybe even 2/4, but if I suffer a downswing of more than 300 BB in addition to the money I lost at 3/6 I will have no choice but to conclude I'm doing something wrong in these shorthanded games and at that point I think dropping down to .5/1 and trying to figure things out again will be my best course of action. At this point I really don't expect to have to do that though. This downswing has to end at some point and like I said, I believe a small portion of my losses have come from tilt and misplays, but I still believe I have a solid edge in the game so things are bound to turn around soon.

4 Comments:

  • At 1:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    why do you think that you have an edge over the other players. you don't make any money. your bankroll never grows and keeps growing. stop kidding yourself. you cannot beat online poker. you have been playing for a year or 2 and barely have $1500 to show for your efforts. wake up!

     
  • At 8:14 AM, Blogger TheCinciKid said…

    I really shouldn't respond to this, but I for some reason feel the need to defend myself.

    Anonymous wrote...
    "You can't beat online poker." Ok, let's see. I deposited $100 on Party Poker roughly a year and a half ago (late March or early April 2005). Since then I've cashed out and spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $3k. One of the main reasons I haven't been able to really build up my bankroll is that I keep having to take money from it to help myself financially. If I didn't have poker though I can't even imagine the debt I'd be in right now. I also still currently have roughly $2k online left in my bankroll. Throw in the $1k to $1.5k that I've won playing live poker and I'd say my short poker career has been quite the success.

    "why do you think you have an edge over the other players."

    The answer to this one is pretty simple. I've read and posted on strategy forums long enough to have a rough idea of what kind of pokertracker stats winning players should have. I use pokertracker and gametime+ while I'm playing and I can say with a pretty high level of confidence that I'm better than the majority of the players I see in 2/4 6-max games. Am I good enough to significantly beat the rake at those stakes long-term? I don't know yet and it's entirely possible that the rake is just too big to overcome for a significant winning percentage. Are there things that I could be doing better to beat shorthanded games for a better rate? Undoubtedly. I'm sure there are many spots where I can improve my game, I make mistakes every day (every poker player does), but if the more I play the more I will continue to improve and I'm pretty damn confident right now that I'm making fewer mistakes than my average opponent, which is really all I need to do to be winning.

     
  • At 2:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    /so you've made 5k in 2 years? thats time well spent. lol what does your poker tracker tell you about your hourly rate?

     
  • At 4:16 AM, Blogger TheCinciKid said…

    Replying to your dumbass really is pretty pointless, but here goes.

    It's been closer to 2 years than 1. I only had $500-$600 last July when I started taking cash games seriously. I've probably made $5-6k since then. My hourly rate probably isn't all that great, but at least I make money on my hobby and that for me as a victory.

    I don't play for a living and I doubt I ever will, but I think I have a pretty successful hobby going here.

     

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