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Always keep a bankroll
Apr. 13th, 2009 09:55 amWhy it's important to keep something in reserve. This month's graph...
That's from a $700 profit to a $500 loss in six days and about 5,000 hands. Playing full-time live that would equal about a month to two months' play. In fact it was worse than that, because a couple of days ago I was $900 down for the month, but gt it back before the end of that particular session. Since then, things have stabilized slightly.
Stabilization is the first important step because, no matter how much you know it's just a downswing, it's tempting to vary your style. Far better, if anything, to become a little bit more ABC in style. When you keep missing flops or, when you hit TPTK, your opponents keep raising you, it's sooo tempting to start saying to yourself "I know he's a rock, but he must be on a move here. He can't have a set again". So you call or reraise, get to the river, call his big bet and, yes, he did have the set.
I've been resisting that. And the stats seem to indicate that it is just that, a bad run. I've got a little bit laggier (a single percentage point in the VPIP and raise columns) but 13%/12% isn't going to kill anyone at full ring. And the went to showdown has stayed constant at 20.5%. But the "won money at showdown" has dipped dramatically, from 55% or thereabouts to 37%. Basically, my preflop hands aren't going on to win as often as would be expected.
The important thing here is not to say to yourself "OMG I've been found out! I've got to change my style!". There may be some external factors at work -- fewer fish on Pacific, for example -- but my opponent player base is so wide that over 5,000 hands I'm not going to be found out by all of them at the same time. Being "found out" at this level would result in a gradual decline in profit rate, not a sudden shift.
I should add that I had a play with my numbers at the end of January and calculated that I should expect a $1300 downswing two or three times a year. Since I haven't had anything approaching that since last August (since when I'm more than $20K up) I've got more evidence on my side that this is variance rather than a long-term disaster.
So, I plug on. But it's a bit of a depressing way to spend your Easter! And, hell, running bad, as I've written before, is damned exhausting, because the mental strength and effort required is so much greater than when you are running well.
+++++++++++++
For the past three days I've taken to keeping a (paper) log of certain emotions that I've been feeling, how often I am thinking of certain things, etc. I just use easy words like "Happy", "sad" (not too many of the former at the moment, you know me!) "bitter", "angry", enthusiastic", "satisfied" and so on. I wasn't sure at first whether doing this was good for me, but then I realized that this is actually a physical manifestation of what Tolle describes as "watching the thinker". An external "me" is observing the "emotional" me, without judging. The external "me" is keeping the record. In Tolle terms, this is a good thing. It's a forward step. When the comments start being scrawled in large red crayon letters along the lines of "Someday I will fly" then it isn't such a good thing, but when rationally recorded in a diary, I think that it might work. When I don't feel like doing it any more, I shall stop. That's important too.
_______________________
That's from a $700 profit to a $500 loss in six days and about 5,000 hands. Playing full-time live that would equal about a month to two months' play. In fact it was worse than that, because a couple of days ago I was $900 down for the month, but gt it back before the end of that particular session. Since then, things have stabilized slightly.
Stabilization is the first important step because, no matter how much you know it's just a downswing, it's tempting to vary your style. Far better, if anything, to become a little bit more ABC in style. When you keep missing flops or, when you hit TPTK, your opponents keep raising you, it's sooo tempting to start saying to yourself "I know he's a rock, but he must be on a move here. He can't have a set again". So you call or reraise, get to the river, call his big bet and, yes, he did have the set.
I've been resisting that. And the stats seem to indicate that it is just that, a bad run. I've got a little bit laggier (a single percentage point in the VPIP and raise columns) but 13%/12% isn't going to kill anyone at full ring. And the went to showdown has stayed constant at 20.5%. But the "won money at showdown" has dipped dramatically, from 55% or thereabouts to 37%. Basically, my preflop hands aren't going on to win as often as would be expected.
The important thing here is not to say to yourself "OMG I've been found out! I've got to change my style!". There may be some external factors at work -- fewer fish on Pacific, for example -- but my opponent player base is so wide that over 5,000 hands I'm not going to be found out by all of them at the same time. Being "found out" at this level would result in a gradual decline in profit rate, not a sudden shift.
I should add that I had a play with my numbers at the end of January and calculated that I should expect a $1300 downswing two or three times a year. Since I haven't had anything approaching that since last August (since when I'm more than $20K up) I've got more evidence on my side that this is variance rather than a long-term disaster.
So, I plug on. But it's a bit of a depressing way to spend your Easter! And, hell, running bad, as I've written before, is damned exhausting, because the mental strength and effort required is so much greater than when you are running well.
+++++++++++++
For the past three days I've taken to keeping a (paper) log of certain emotions that I've been feeling, how often I am thinking of certain things, etc. I just use easy words like "Happy", "sad" (not too many of the former at the moment, you know me!) "bitter", "angry", enthusiastic", "satisfied" and so on. I wasn't sure at first whether doing this was good for me, but then I realized that this is actually a physical manifestation of what Tolle describes as "watching the thinker". An external "me" is observing the "emotional" me, without judging. The external "me" is keeping the record. In Tolle terms, this is a good thing. It's a forward step. When the comments start being scrawled in large red crayon letters along the lines of "Someday I will fly" then it isn't such a good thing, but when rationally recorded in a diary, I think that it might work. When I don't feel like doing it any more, I shall stop. That's important too.
_______________________
