Hello!
Okay, I'll admit, it finally got to me. I've had a losing streak of 14 days in a row, which to me is a bit too much. I don't even remember if I've ever had a similar incident before in my poker career in terms of time, cause I'm sure that in terms of money it's a first. It's not just about the money lost (surprisingly that's not my biggest concern). It's mostly about the awful feeling of constantly losing. You have probably felt it too so until a certain degree I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. It's exhausting! Who would say that losing is far more tiring than winning, right? I think I snapped around the last couple of days of October, which is pretty good considering I took over two weeks of losing until I came to this point.
What is this point like? Not very pretty I must say. My morale is way below zero and the only way to get it back up is to start winning some. Which unfortunately to me sounds as hard right now as the sky turning green. I've literally forgotten what if feels like to win. It seems like something I'm no longer capable of. And yes, of course I know and understand that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense and that I'm not going to keep losing for the rest of my life, but... I guess I've hit an emotional low. This is what losing does to people, in all its glory! It's like your brain is thinking in a logical way but your emotions are countering every logical thought that comes to you. It's the ultimate internal battle between me and myself, if that makes any sense, and it's totally tiring.
To make matters worse, the vertigo is back. Not as bad as the first time it appeared, but still there to remind me of its presence whenever I turn my head around a bit too much. According to my doctor the change of weather from autumn to winter has a lot to do with it, but I think stress also plays an important part. This time however it feels totally undeserved because I've been doing my exercise, sitting properly at my chair, eating healthy and sleeping well. Oh, talking of sleep, I think now we can kiss that goodbye too. Just to add to my overall frustration lately I've been waking up before the alarm goes off, which is unheard of. No matter how late I go to sleep, it seems like I have to wake up 1-2 hours earlier than what I planned on the night before when I went to bed. I suppose my mind these days is not fully at ease even when I'm sleeping and that's why this is happening.
In terms of stakes and bankroll, I think it goes unsaid that I'm moving further and further down at stakes. Right now I'm at the point where the $37s are no longer allowed, so I'm playing a mix of $18s, $7s and $3.75s depending on the time of the day and the traffic. Okay, let's get this over with, here's my graph for the month of October (my ugliest graph ever so far!):
Total damage: -$4.880 and that's a wrap!
And after reading this, I suppose you think that the title of this post was referring to me going crazy. No, that was actually for André who decided earlier this week that I've had enough of 6-tabling and I should move to...9!!! Yeah, you read it right, that's a nice nine over there! I've never 9-tabled the hyper-turbos. Even back when I was playing the normal speed sngs, the highest number of tables I've ever reached was 12. So when I hear 9, I freaked out a little. That said, it's rare for me to go against André's opinion in poker, so I did what he asked anyway. The first session only lasted an hour, I was playing the $3s and it went bad, naturally. The second session was longer, close to two hours and even though it was a losing one, I was feeling like I could pay enough attention to all the tables so I actually managed. At this point I can't say I'm comfortable with 9-tabling, cause I'm obviously not, but at least I'm doing ok at it and only occasionally sit out.
Increasing the number of tables had two immediate benefits:
1) We suddenly got a lot more material to review during coaching time. Coaching throughout the month of October has not been very exiting, but now it got interesting all over again. André says he sees improvements in the way I play from one day to the next, so that's a good thing.
2) Okay, I've not been playing well during October but I've been getting a generous dose of negative variance. Increasing the volume of tournaments brings "the long run" a bit closer, so I have some hope to get out of the bad luck a bit sooner.
Coaching is now towards the end of the day after I play and we review the session from that day. That's really good because I have everything fresh in my mind so every correction sticks better in my memory. Also, it's comforting to hear an expert confirm that you are running bad. During our last coaching session two days ago, André went through 40 minutes of the video of me playing and was mostly quiet while he was watching it. Yeah, there were misplays and I did get a couple of notes of things I do wrong and need to try to improve in my next session, but it's always nice to have someone telling you that you did okay and it's not because of your awful way of playing that you lost 29 buy-ins. I think it's very important to find something positive to hold on to while being in a downswing. So yeah, I can 9-table and play ok while at it, so there was some kind of improvement during last month after all.
Of course we wouldn't stop to 9 tables now, would we? André's initial idea was to let me 9-table all through this week and then have me increase to 12 during the next one. It seems like that is not going to happen because number 9 seems to be the borderline for me at this point, so 12-tabling has been postponed for the second week of November. Which is still not that far anyway so I am kind of dreading the moment it comes, but then again I was thinking the same way about 9-tabling and it turned out to be fine anyway. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how things go, like always!
Anyway, that's all for now. October is in the books and I have high hopes that November is going to be a much better month!
Good luck to you all and see you at the tables! :)
