[heyrocker]

Is it just me or is everyone running bad lately? There's a post here, there was Aleo's post and some followups to it, and I've been running just horribly for the last few weeks (although I know those of you I bad beat in the NA v Euro tourney will have trouble believing it.)

I have spent a LOT of time thinking about why I've been running poorly and have come up with the following:

1) For the past two or three months the Party $50s have been my lifeblood and they have become much more difficult recently. Anyone else noticing this?

2) I HAVE been getting a ridiculous number of bad beats, which does happen I know trends and downturns etc etc Also aside from this I'm finding lots of situations where I'm not getting bad beat but just unlucky. I feel like I've run into aces dozens of times in the last week.

3) After a couple weeks of thought and analysis I have finally come to the conclusion that the above has definitely been affecting my game in various ways. I am still working out what they are and trying to get at how to root them out. However there is no doubt that as my luck has turned worse I'm playing way worse than I did when I was running good. I am coming to realize that confidence is a HUGE factor in my tourney play. Right now I don't have any, so I'm trying to find ways to get it back and work around it. One of these is definitely taking some time off, but in that time off doing some reading, going back over the basics, getting into TOP and HPFAP again, maybe posting more, etc. I'm also just trying to shake things up by playing some different games, I've taken up 1/2 Limit Omaha HL ring games for fun. I'm dropping down in limit in the SNGs I do play. I definitely feel myself coming out of it mentally, which is great. Having done that I just have to ride the rollercoaster and try to hang on until things improve.

For anyone running bad and feeling crappy about it, step 3 is the important one. Taking some time off is good advice, especially if you're steaming which I certainly have been. But use this time off to think about your game and analyze some recent tourneys. Think about your play and what went wrong. This is what I believe is going to turn things around for me and should for others as well.

Here is something I've discovered about my play that I will share. I was seeing an inordinate amount of bad beats and bad luck. I started really looking at this and I began to realize that while a lot of them were just that - bad beats or bad luck - I also began to realize that a lot of them were hands I never should have been in in the first place, or hands where the other player was giving off signs I should have picked up on. However because of stubbornness and frustration I wasn't seeing those things. I had become one of those tunnel vision players who only saw his own hand. One of the most common responses to the "what was my mistake in this hand" posts is "Your first mistake was playing this hand ion the first place."

Here is another thing I have picked up on in my own game, as my confidence waned I stopped bluffing. The bluff re-raise against a perceived steal or weak hand was a big part of my late game strategy in certain situations, but as I began to lose and my confidence waned I became far more passive and never made these moves. Another part of the confidence failing is that I no longer trusted my own instincts or reads of other players. Obviously this is deadly.

So yes, by all means take some time off, but also really sit down and think about your game and what you've been doing and how it differs from what you were doing when you were winning. Maybe nothing is different and it really is just a bad streak, thats great! However I don't think there is a single one of us from the newest newbie to the oldest old hand who can't benefit from taking some time to think about how you're playing and ways it can improve.