dizong
07-28-2005, 11:49 PM
Don't know if this helps, but recently I experienced a downswing of about 40 SNG buy-ins over the course of a week. I felt I was losing every coinflip, kicker war, etc. So out of curiosity, I decided to keep track of every 50:50 and ~75:25 hand I was involved in from that moment on. I proceeded to lose 5 out of my next 6 coinflips and won only 5 of the next 10 hands where I was a 3:1 favorite (usually these are situations where I am all in preflop late in an SNG). Then things started changing, I started to win more coinflips, I didn't run into as many monster hands (e.g., AK vs AA). I'm still down a little bit for the last couple weeks but I'm not as pissed. What's the point of this post? I'm not claiming bad luck was the sole reason for my downswing. What this exercise did achieve (for me) was to encourage me to continue playing my game without going into a turtle shell once on the bubble. That is, continue playing solid poker knowing that these percentages will smooth out a bit, even in the near term and definitely long term. Hope that helps.