Poker as a living is an up and down deal and I've been on the down lately. Still making the money at my expected rate of about 20 percent of tourneys but just never getting decent score.
So I cut and pasted this little gem over from thepokerdb website. It is a compilation of all the data that they have every collected on me over the years. There is lot of holes in the data collection but assumping the data collection holes are not designed to invalidate the data that they do collect... I have 7095 tourneys to look at the results.
| total winnings: |
$580,216.84 |
return on investment: |
89.19% |
| total est buyins: |
$281,440.50 |
cashes: |
1448 |
| total rake: |
$25,239.70 |
wins: |
37 |
| total est profit: |
$273,536.64 |
final tables: |
197 |
| largest cash: |
$13,445.80 |
tournaments played: |
7095 |
| largest buy-in: |
$500.00 |
|
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Well when i first look at this data is it encouraging. It makes me feel a lot better about making the top 100 of 5 tourneys today just to break even.
So action plan number one when feeling like a dip....
Reflect on your pass successes and take an honest look at your long term results.
Recently however, I just can't get there. I have so many finishes between about 50 and 20 in really large fields its aggravating. My mind is now playing tricks on me, sometimes I actually just expect to finish 20th. When its been going on for about 6 weeks straight you almost begin to expect mediocrity to avoid the disappointment of 1 more day of mental gymnastics and no medals to show for it. Especially, when you need the money to pay bills, you almost feel like you are developing multiple personality disorder on the spot, one personality is praying for divine intervention, the other is just saying screw it, its not fair, still another just wants to go sleep and avoid the stress, you just get so conflicted after a long bad run.
So action plan number 2 is lower the poker stress level...
Play less tables, play for less money, and play less time. Back off and if nothing else mute the damage until things turn around.
Something I have always noticed in poker is momentum is a powerful force. When you have been winning, you tend to keep winning and vice versa. Now we could go all metaphysical at this point and talk about laws of attraction and so forth, but for simplicities sake lets just all agree, people get on really good runs that defy logic and really bad runs that defy logic.
So if you are on a bad run, momentum is not on your side, what do you do?
Go find some game you can beat and book a win. It can be anything, 5 sng, 25nl table, some place they play so bad you know you can beat the game. Your goal is not make a bunch of money, its to change your momentum from loser with a capital L to someone who beats the games he plays. Reset your mindset to winner.
If you have a long poker career/hobby/passion you will have to do these things many times. Hopefully you know yourself more and more as the years go by and you can bust out of the tough times more rapidly each time.
Aloha