![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Raise it up
May. 23rd, 2006 10:25 pmBiggest loss of the year so far today at $810 (and it's not over yet - I've shifted to my third site of the day...). Once again I ask myself if perhaps $2-$4 is my maximum profit level. But then I really do feel that I have definitely had the worst of it. I just don't know. The volatility has certainly gone through the roof with no noticeable improvement in expected hourly rate. All the normal phases of self-doubt, but without much depression at the money, if that makes sense.
In fact, I don't care about the money. It's the "not knowing if I've done the right thing" that I care about. $800 is neither here nor there, but if I have gone from an EV of plus $10 an hour to minus EV of $5 an hour, then I care a lot, if that makes sense.
At $2-$4, there's a kind of certainty, but at the higher level, there's necessarily greater uncertainty for a long long time (it took me 18 months before I was stone-cold certain that I was good enough to beat $2-$4). Add to that the higher volatility and you have a recipe for worry that doesn't do me much emotional good. But, well, I know that coming to terms with it is necessary.
I think I played quite well tonight, actually. I might have been bluffed out of some pots with four-bets, but, as a rule, these guys aren't that aggressive and a four-bet means what it says it does. I got rivered and cold-decked many times and the money just seemed to go, as indeed it can do over 500 hands at $5-$10, without much happening.
The easy decisions are "don't tilt" and "don't steam" (i.e., fall into the easy trap of trying to LAG the table). The hard decisions are "do I move back down to $2-$4 even if I feel in my heart that I am positive EV at $5-$10, although perhaps not much more than at $2-$4?" These are the hard choices and they are of course ones that I and I alone can make.
So far this year the good months have been the ones where I have stuck to $2-$4 and the bad ones have been when I have moved up. I felt that I had adjusted well to the $5-$10 and I still feel that way. Obviously the players are on average tougher, but they aren't that much tougher. It's not a completely different planet. Provided I maintain faith in my play and do not shifting-sand chop-and-change my decision rules, then either it will eventually come right, or it won't. In the past, many of my big losses were a result of my refusal to believe that I could have been outdrawn on the flop again. I would therefore push my hand too far. These days I am aware that you can get outdrawn for whole long sessions and then some more whole long sessions after that. I have the experience to continue folding. But it means the balance keeps falling, just slowly rather than quickly.
This being $5-$10, I am only ever one good night away from a bad month turning into a good one, or one bad night away from a good month (as I was having) turning into a bad one (as I am now having). This is something which didn't happen at $2-$4 and it is something I know that I have to learn to cope with.
So, life in general is still an emotional roller-coaster, full of "where do I go from here?" questions, but not in a bad way. More in a general, abstract kind of way. Do I owe you (the readers) anything? Do I owe the world anything? Should I be more hedonistic or less so? Does doing good make you feel good, or does it make you angrier at the general ingratitude of man? I don't know.
I think that I'm a bit worried that I lost this money and don't really care. This could be a bad sign of mental and emotional disengagement from the game and from life. It's what Ive been feeling for a while, but not quite to this degree. I know that it's one of my protection mechanisms, but it has dangerous implications, such as calling people down when you chould fold. I hope that I am resisting that at the moment (without of course going too far the other way and folding when I should call them down!) but it's a whole series of poker and non-poker balancing acts that is generally my life.
We get through it.
++++
Update: Won $70 on Virgin. I had the right attitude here in that I was not thinking "that's only a small fraction of what I've lost", but had the correct attitude of "$70 is $70".
However, after thinking muchly overnight (not good, considering that I am going to Brighton this evening so an afternoon nap is out of the question), I'm minded to go in for some serious knitting for the rest of the month. This would include opening an account at Full Tilt and smacking into the $600 bonus. There's a 27% rakeback on offer, but, knowing the way these things work these days, I bet that most of the "bonus" would come straight out of the rakeback offer.
But, smack in the knitting at four sites. Put in the hours. Grind back $800. Re-evaluate position whenever I've achieved that. At least that leaves me with a certain peace of mind.
In fact, I don't care about the money. It's the "not knowing if I've done the right thing" that I care about. $800 is neither here nor there, but if I have gone from an EV of plus $10 an hour to minus EV of $5 an hour, then I care a lot, if that makes sense.
At $2-$4, there's a kind of certainty, but at the higher level, there's necessarily greater uncertainty for a long long time (it took me 18 months before I was stone-cold certain that I was good enough to beat $2-$4). Add to that the higher volatility and you have a recipe for worry that doesn't do me much emotional good. But, well, I know that coming to terms with it is necessary.
I think I played quite well tonight, actually. I might have been bluffed out of some pots with four-bets, but, as a rule, these guys aren't that aggressive and a four-bet means what it says it does. I got rivered and cold-decked many times and the money just seemed to go, as indeed it can do over 500 hands at $5-$10, without much happening.
The easy decisions are "don't tilt" and "don't steam" (i.e., fall into the easy trap of trying to LAG the table). The hard decisions are "do I move back down to $2-$4 even if I feel in my heart that I am positive EV at $5-$10, although perhaps not much more than at $2-$4?" These are the hard choices and they are of course ones that I and I alone can make.
So far this year the good months have been the ones where I have stuck to $2-$4 and the bad ones have been when I have moved up. I felt that I had adjusted well to the $5-$10 and I still feel that way. Obviously the players are on average tougher, but they aren't that much tougher. It's not a completely different planet. Provided I maintain faith in my play and do not shifting-sand chop-and-change my decision rules, then either it will eventually come right, or it won't. In the past, many of my big losses were a result of my refusal to believe that I could have been outdrawn on the flop again. I would therefore push my hand too far. These days I am aware that you can get outdrawn for whole long sessions and then some more whole long sessions after that. I have the experience to continue folding. But it means the balance keeps falling, just slowly rather than quickly.
This being $5-$10, I am only ever one good night away from a bad month turning into a good one, or one bad night away from a good month (as I was having) turning into a bad one (as I am now having). This is something which didn't happen at $2-$4 and it is something I know that I have to learn to cope with.
So, life in general is still an emotional roller-coaster, full of "where do I go from here?" questions, but not in a bad way. More in a general, abstract kind of way. Do I owe you (the readers) anything? Do I owe the world anything? Should I be more hedonistic or less so? Does doing good make you feel good, or does it make you angrier at the general ingratitude of man? I don't know.
I think that I'm a bit worried that I lost this money and don't really care. This could be a bad sign of mental and emotional disengagement from the game and from life. It's what Ive been feeling for a while, but not quite to this degree. I know that it's one of my protection mechanisms, but it has dangerous implications, such as calling people down when you chould fold. I hope that I am resisting that at the moment (without of course going too far the other way and folding when I should call them down!) but it's a whole series of poker and non-poker balancing acts that is generally my life.
We get through it.
++++
Update: Won $70 on Virgin. I had the right attitude here in that I was not thinking "that's only a small fraction of what I've lost", but had the correct attitude of "$70 is $70".
However, after thinking muchly overnight (not good, considering that I am going to Brighton this evening so an afternoon nap is out of the question), I'm minded to go in for some serious knitting for the rest of the month. This would include opening an account at Full Tilt and smacking into the $600 bonus. There's a 27% rakeback on offer, but, knowing the way these things work these days, I bet that most of the "bonus" would come straight out of the rakeback offer.
But, smack in the knitting at four sites. Put in the hours. Grind back $800. Re-evaluate position whenever I've achieved that. At least that leaves me with a certain peace of mind.
