I haven't blogged about this yet, but it's definitely worth talking about. My coach, Nutedawg, made a prop bet with some other poker players that he could get to Supernova Elite on PokerStars by the end of the year. He's getting great odds on his bet and if he wins he'll win a bunch of money. I hope he makes it.
To reach Supernova Elite VIP status on Stars he needs to accumulate 1 MILLION VPPs (like frequent flier miles for playing poker a lot). When he started a few weeks ago, he had 39,000 VPPs. He's playing mostly SNG tournaments because they accumulate more rake paid. He's also, unfortunately, running really badly in them and is over 50 buyins below equity (getting pretty unlucky). Nute has made a blog about his quest for SNE. You can and should visit it and root him on! Here is the link. If he is successful, I will be very impressed as it's pretty tough to get SNE, especially in only half of a year. GL Nute!
In other poker news, I'm on a bit of a downswing... I've had a rough week and had a lot more losing sessions than winning ones. My confidence is a bit lower than it normally is. I haven't been running the greatest and losing key pots when I'm a big favorite has really been the norm lately and I think it's been affecting my play in other pots as well. Besides being thousands below EV in all-ins, I feel like I'm getting unfortunate more often than normal in other situations postflop (for example, board always seems to come running flush cards on turn and river... Ah 5d 4s 6d Td... and I'm holding As Qh here, bet flop and turn after villain c/c twice and I never seem to have the flush.)
I think I'm going to follow Nutedawg's advice to me. He told me to move down to $2/4 NL for awhile to get back in the winning mindset and regain my confidence. Bankroll wise, I still have plenty of buyins to play $5/10 NL comfortably but I am a pretty big bankroll nit so I'd prefer to have over 100 buyins online spread amongst the four sites I play on before I go back to $5/10 NL full-time.
Looking back on the past week or so, besides running like a midget with a broken leg, I think my main problem has been playing too many tables. I've let myself get back into my bad habits of just rolling up 8 tables or so and going on auto-pilot. I'm a much better player than that and going on these multi-tabling tirades really kills my winrate. I saw a few of my friends in Vegas playing a ton of tables so I guess I figured that I should be able to do it as well... the fact of the matter is, for me personally, I really believe I can make more money playing four tables than 6+ tables.
SO, the short term plan is to play four tables of $2/4 NL for the near future, pad the bankroll, get my confidence back, and look to be back to playing mostly at $5/10 NL hopefully no later than September. Also, I'm going to make sure I limit my sessions to strictly two hours in duration. I'm going to try my hardest to play well and make the correct decisions while playing during the last week of the month. I want to hit the ground running in August, so having a good upcoming week would certainly help that.
At least I've been winning in the stock market lately, so not all has been lost. Hopefully my poker graph starts going up soon as well.
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Hey you should go into details on your portfolio you currently have in the stock market. Sounds like you are doing well.
ReplyDelete"I saw a few of my friends in Vegas playing a ton of tables so I guess I figured that I should be able to do it as well... the fact of the matter is, for me personally, I really believe I can make more money playing four tables than 6+ tables."
ReplyDeleteyeah that's something that always kills me too -- i really want to be able to 6+ table effectively, but there's no way i can do it. i'm simply not that good for my limit. also, it makes me give up a significant edge in learning. i play 200nl right now; playing more tables means i dont think well enough about spots during, which means i dont get to try out new things as often. my main goal is to get better / move up. not to make the entire comment about me (oops!), but i'd imagine you have a similar goal (am i right?). you're a winning 5/10 reg who can be beating 10/20 with a bit of work, why not focus on that? guess it really depends on what your goals are, but that's how i see it.
any other things you do besides dropping down when you're in a downswing? i'm in the midst of one right now and could use a few tips!
best of luck getting your confidence back, which i'm sure will be very soon
My stock portfolio is pretty uninteresting. I just bought about 7-8 pretty safe companies at the right time 4-5 months ago. I don't know a ton about it though at this point, so I'm just using a basic buy and hold strategy. My dad helped me pick out the stocks.
ReplyDeleteI'm not into day trading or short term trading yet but maybe someday in the future.
Malfair, thanks for the comment. I think the # of table thing holds back a lot of poker players from achieving their potential.
ReplyDeleteI definitely want to move up to $10/20 NL as soon as possible. For now, it's about getting back my confidence though. I will definitely focus on that and I hope to be there before the end of the year.
When I'm in a downswing I like to make sure I don't play marathon sessions. I time all my sessions to two hours, no more. Then I make sure I take a non-computer related break for at least a half-hour.
Also, I like to re-read the book, The Poker Mindset. I think I will be doing that soon.
And lastly, I like to remember the big picture... if it wasn't for poker, I'd be stuck in some 60 hour per week management job that I'd probably hate, making about 1/4 as much money per year as I do now. So even though it seems like the world sucks now and I can't seem to get any big wins at poker I'm still doing a decent job overall.