stepping down after bankroll takes a beating...

[bholdr]

I have always been an advocate of maintaining good bankroll discipline, but, to be honest, it's never really been a challenge for me because my roll was outpacing my ability (thank you, bonus!); i've generally been bankrolled for one limit higher than i play and feel that i can consistantly beat.

well, no more! I had a breakeven month in july, and i made a withdrawl to pay for a vacation ($800) and then another to replace the surfboard i got rid of on the vacation (another $600). so, all of the sudden, i don't even have enough (technically speaking) to play exclusivly at my chosen limits (3/6 and 5/10). I am having a bit of a tough time stepping down to the 2/4 games. when i see (saw) a GOOD 3/6 game that i know i can (should be able to) beat, i still sit (sat)... throw in a little bad variance over a thousand or so hands, and i'm suddenly seriously BR deficient.

has anyone here had to take a step or two down and rebuild? i expect it to take a month or more to get my BR back up to where it should be. tips? thoughts? i've whored all the casinos, so that's not gonna do it.

maybe i'll just go back to ten-tabling .50/1 for a while. geez. i need a little encouragement here... [/whining]

ty

B

[gotme]

Maybe bonuswhore all the monthly casino bonuses, IGM pay party bonuses...

[deacsoft]

I've done it. Just step it down and grind it out man. If you're playing well it won't take too long to get back to 3-6 from 2-4 and you know you can do it. Take what you can learn from it, make the most of it, and keep doing what you do.

[Student]

At least examine the possibility that it isn't variance at work here. I don't use PokerTracker for much, since I'm still on the freebie version, but see if you can figure out some factor(s) that have changed in how you play poker now, vs before.

Then too, sometimes attitudes change. It doesn't take much to change a winner into a loser, and vice versa. I've merely scanned Feeney's book ("Inside the Poker Mind"), but if I had time I'd read it. The best thing about it is that it documents how he got started in poker, and traces his trajectory (presumably thru thick and thin) towards ultimate reasonable mastery of poker. Schoonmaker's "The Psychology of Poker" is another good one; both of these books have been highly recommended from time to time in the Book Forum. Both of these books were written under the guidance of Sklansky (acknowledged on the cover of both books), so they are good ones!

My intuition would be to start back into winning playing small. Go to the 50/100 cents game with just one table, for as long as it takes to prove to yourself you're winning, and then dig in with more tables. So what if it takes an extra day to do it in this cautious manner, if the end result is you discover what's going on in your game that requires change? Rome wasn't built in a day, and your reconstruction might not happen in a day, either.

Of course, I'm assuming it's not simple variance that's responsible. Some day I'll have my luck calculator built, and then I'd be able to help you directly concerning variance!

Dave

[bholdr]

"Maybe bonuswhore all the monthly casino bonuses, IGM pay party bonuses..."

yes... i have been saving the IGM bonuses for just such a rainy day... but i've busted like 7 monthly casino reloads already this month. ugh.


Student said to 'at least consider' that it might not be just bad variance... and he's right- i have not been playing as well as i normally do over the last month or so- my play has been almost break-even, and the bonuses are the source of all of my recent profit. the vacation helped a lot, though, and i feel that it's revitalized my play a lot. i wish itere was a good program like PT for stud, which, BTW, has a lot more varaince than hold 'em (the aggro style that i play in stud makes this even worse).


i'm doing the party reload right now, at 2/4, and am already up a bunch. looks like things are starting to get back on track. thanks for the encouragement and pointers, everyone. ugh. i hate poker. i love poker. no, wait... I... grrrrrr.