1st heavy hit at bankroll, advice requested

[bernie]

Probably covered already, but ill put it in...

[ QUOTE ]
I am not tilting (I have no problem leaving if I feel like I'm playing badly), but it definitely shook up my confidence a little.

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This could be a first sign of tilt. It could still be subtlely affecting your play or on its way. If it's shaking your confidence, you're likley not thinking about hands the way you should be.

Also remember. kill games can have a higher variance than normal limit games.

Take a break for a day or so and come back fresh.

b

[Lawrence Ng]

Hi Troy,

I am also in the very hard hitting month so far in September.

30-60: Down 95 Big bets in 3 sessions
10-20: Down over 110 Big bets in 4 sesions
Heck even the 4-8 I am down about 30 Big bets in 2 sessions.

In one of my 10-20 games I had a 75 BB losing session in about 8 hours. My record ever for a single session. The game was absolutely fantastic that night and I played my A game to perfection, but the Random God decided perfect play was not to dictate me a winner that night.

So September has been horrible for me thus far. After my last 10-20 game and dropping about $700 I decided it was time to take a break. I don't go on tilt, but my confidence is definitely taking a hit.

Poker is like any other sports I play. If I keep losing all the time, it takes a hit on mentally. Luckily for poker I can take breaks, regroup my thoughts and get back in my game when ready. I can't do the same for other sports with a committed schedule.

As long as you are ready to play again and feel you are confident enough then play. Otherwise take a break as long as you need. I haven't been playing for a 4 days now and I think I'll take a little more time off enjoy some other things before I head back to the cardroom.

[Al Schoonmaker]

ANYONE who says he has played perfectly is kidding himself. NOBODY plays perfectly.
I am not saying that you have not been unlucky, but you are unquestionably giving yourself credit for playing better than you did.
If you read Card Player magazine, you will find articles by great players such as Phil Helmuth or Roy Cooke that admit to making stupid mistakes.
One reason they are great players is that they are self-critical. There is nothing you can do about luck. The only thing you can improve is your play. You can't improve it if you think "I've played perfectly, but been unlucky."
Regards,
Al

[Dan Mezick]

SunDevils21 and CockandBull advise dropping to lower limits for awhile. The rest of the threads dont seem to mention anything about the relationship between bankroll and stakes.

If you played too high for the bankroll you had, you were setting up this dramatic episode. If you were playing stakes that brought you below 200 BB there was little chance this could have been avoided.

You might consider reviewing your decisions to play at specific limits and explore what's going on there.

[tdomeski]

Take a shot at a bigger game, immediately.

[jakeoneil]

I also suggest this method, and if you happen to lose a buyin there, move up a level, and so on and so on until you got all of your money back.

This works nearly every time.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
SunDevils21 and CockandBull advise dropping to lower limits for awhile.

[/ QUOTE ]

Me too, right after them heh. That's what I'm doing right now. And just like I said, it's helped my confidence a lot. I'm up a couple hundred big bets in a few thousand hands in the level I left in the first place, and things are a little more in perspective now. Now I remember why I thought a shot at the next higher level might not be out of line in the first place.

[tdomeski]

Congrats on your 100th post.

Although many of them can't be accessed anymore b/c they've been banned due to their vulgarity.

[timmer]

dude dont worry about the past its gone dont worry about the future it unknown just do whats right right now thats how you play your best game all the time. by simply playing your best game right now. this descision based on this information.

take whoever long you need to get your mind right then proceed from there.

timmer

[CrisBrown]

Hi Troy,

Take a couple of days off. Then take a few more. Then a few more. No, I'm not kidding.

I took the entire summer off. I had my kids at home at the time anyway, so I probably couldn't have concentrated if I had wanted to. But regardless, I was playing very poorly in the late spring, and I'd reached the point where I could no longer tell where all the problems were.

Take at least a week. Don't think about poker. Don't read or post here. Find another hobby. Work on some household projects. Get some exercise. Let your poker mind rest.

Then, go back and read your core poker books -- the ones that resonate best with your game. For me, these are Sklansky's The Theory of Poker, Ciaffone & Rueben's Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker, and Brunson's Super System Poker. Your list is probably different. That's fine. You're rebuilding your game, not mine. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

This may sound like you're going back to step one, way back when you first started playing. But you'll be bringing all o that experience to your reading, so you'll probably see a lot of "new" information that either wasn't clear before, or was in the nod-nod-yeah-I-see-that category ... you knew it but you didn't really know it back then. You'll probably also spot some of your leaks, perhaps in instances where you thought you were applying what you'd read, but in fact you'd overlooked some small but critical detail.

Once you feel like you've wrapped your mind around your game again, you'll be ready to return to the tables, and probably play better than ever.

Good luck,

Cris