What Happened? (LONG)

[MEbenhoe]

I have to admit I'm kind of ashamed writing this, but I'm at a point I've never been at before and I definitely need some advice. Basically I'm going to tell you the crazy story of what has been the past 3 days for me.

Day 1 (September 11): I had a pretty good day of poker on Friday, then went out and partied with some friends friday night, met some pretty cool girls at the party I was at (but thats another story completely), and was feeling good overall. My online bankroll going into today was at $1778.52, built up from a starting bankroll of $200 over the past month and a half. I had been playing the 6 max tables a lot lately and doing quite well at them. I decided with my bankroll at the point it was and my long run of success at $2/$4 full ring games and 6 max, that it was time to step up to $3/$6. My goal was to put in a good 4 hours of 3-4 table play during the afternoon, leaving me with plenty of time to have fun at night. About an hour in I was down $50, no big deal really just not the greatest of sessions. Then the dam broke. I lost a bunch of hands in a row to runner runner flush draws, inside straights on the river, and even a hand where my set of kings was taken down by a set of aces. This 2nd hour of play left me in the hole approximately $500 on the day. During the 3rd hour of play I started to right the ship and ended that hour only down $350 on the day. Then came the 4th hour, the mother of all bad hours of poker. My favorite hand from this session came right near the end:

PokerStars $3/$6 6 Max, 5 handed

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ad Kh
UTG calls, CO raises, Button Folds, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, UTG calls

Flop: (10 SB) As 8h 2c (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls, CO Raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG calls, CO calls

Turn: (9.5 BB) Kd (3 players)
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero calls

River: (21.5 BB) 4c
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero, calls

Final Pot: 33.5 BB
Hero has Ad Kh (Two Pair Aces & Kings)
UTG has 4s 4d (Three of a kind Fours)
CO has Ah Jh (One Pair Aces)

I wanted to smash my monitor after this hand, especially because simultaneously on another table I lost a hand that played almost exactly the same when my top two pair Aces and Nines lost when a player with pocket 8s caught his set on the river, and the fact that a very similar hand had also happened to me 15 minutes earlier. At this point I just played around to the blinds and left all my tables because I knew if I played any longer at this point I'd be on major tilt. I ended this day down over $1000. My bankroll stood at $702.68.

Day 2 (September 12): After my disastrous day at $3/$6 I decided it'd be best to just regroup at $2/$4. Along with the $2/$ tables I played a couple $30+$3 SNGs and finished 4th in both ugh. Should I have taken this as a sign that another bad day was in store for me? I mixed it up today, 1 full game and 2 tables of 6 max, and 1 hour later I was down approximately $300, plus another $66 from the two SNGs. At this point I took a break and I checked out some of my hand history from Stars to see if maybe i was playing abnormally, but again all I found were hands of mine that were continuously favorites on the flop and turn, getting outdrawn on. So after cooling off a little, and seeing from my hand history that I was merely running unlucky and not running bad I decided to go back to the tables. Another hour at the tables and another $200 gone I decided to call it a day. At the end of day 2 my bankroll now stood at $134.32.

Day 3 (September 13): I decided I'd start the day by playing two $25+$2 turbo SNGs as I'd had success in these in the past and thought it'd be a good way to get back on track. Dumb move thought because I obviously didnt have the cash to play in these. 4 hands into it on one table I was out when I called an all in bet with QQ on a board of Qh Ts 6s 2h. The villian hear had Ah Jh and the river was an 8h. Then a couple hands later my schools network crashed and that did me in on the other table. When the network got back online I played $1/$2 for awhile, (again dumb I obviously didnt have the cash) after an hour at 2 tables I was down a little bit and called it a day.

OK I'll admit I'm a bit rattled after this 3 day adventure. My bankroll currently sits at $34.12. I have no explanation for how this happened. I periodically checked some of my hand histories, and I was playing my normal style, but I was getting outdrawn so much it was sickening. For right now I've decided to take a few days off from the online game. My main questions here are has anyone else ever experienced an inexplicable downswing like this? Also, when I do get back to playing online what do I do? I'm down to $34 and I don't know if I want to crack into my live bankroll to fund more online play. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
My main questions here are has anyone else ever experienced an inexplicable downswing like this?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, but I have experienced explicable downswings like this. Back when I was playing limits that were too high for me to beat. 300 BB in 5 hours or whatever is an extremely intense swing and one that you should be very worried about, regardless of how much you were outdrawn. I would go play .25/.5 someplace and find a good player to send my HH to for some advice.

My guess is that you were mildly tilting, and mildly tilting on 4 tables at once can send your bankroll for a roller coaster ride.
Peace,
James

[nolanfan34]

I don't have any great advice for you, unfortunately. I haven't experienced a downswing like that before (yet, at least).

I would only say that I can't imagine having that kind of downswing without tilting slightly. I know you said you examined the hand histories and saw a lot of best hands getting drawn out on, but I can only imagine there must be smaller leaks in there as well. Post some hands in SS and Micro and let people take a look.

While you might not have been feeling like you were on tilt in the traditional definition, I would bet you probably didn't pass John Feeney's definition of tilt in "Inside the Poker Mind". Feeney defines tilt as "any time you KNOWINGLY make a -EV decision". Period. I know I do this sometimes during a down session. Might fall just short of the necessary odds to call, but I talk myself into it. That's a tilt play, and it's important to recognize.

The mistake I think you made, that should be a lesson for others, is playing outside of your bankroll. People talk about 300BB as the benchmark for moving up levels. But I DON'T think that accounts for playing 4 tables at once. I think you need that many BB's for a single table, so theoretically a 500 or 600BB bankroll is probably needed to handle the swings of multi-tabling.

I also think there's a lesson here about jumping up a level and multi-tabling right away. I probably would have gradually incorporated some 3/6 into my usual 2/4 rotation instead of jumping into 4 tables at once.

I'm not trying to be critical here, just pointing out a few things that I think others can learn from. I think this is an important post, from a player that I know is a capable player from the hands you've posted in other parts of the forum.

I would recommend taking a break from the online thing. Play live, regain your confidence, and get another $200 to put back into online play. It might seem like a step back, but when you look at it as one long session, you'll see this is just a small speedbump in the grand scheme of poker.

[icepoker]

From reading this it seems to me that you lost 160 bb at 3/6 on Day 1 and then proceeded to do some not so smart things after that. I haven't done the math but I bet playing sng's is not the healthiest thing for your bankroll when you're struggling.

Back to day 1, you had a tremendously shitty session, unfortunately that will happen. The key is to deal with it as it happens. You make a move to 3/6 with a limited bankroll for short handed. In my experience at least 500 bb for sh play, I'm prefer 1000 bb behind me. Granted that is too much but the way I like it. So when the bad run occurs you have $700 left which is less than 200 bb for 2/4 and again you play short handed right? Time to go back to the drawing board. Start over again. There is no justice is poker, if you're a winning player the good run will come however your bankroll might be gone when it happens if it's not adequate.

So bottom line, let this be a learning experience, and I hope you make it back.

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
PokerStars $3/$6 6 Max, 5 handed

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ad Kh
UTG calls, CO raises, Button Folds, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, UTG calls

Flop: (10 SB) As 8h 2c (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls, CO Raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG calls, CO calls

Turn: (9.5 BB) Kd (3 players)
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero calls

River: (21.5 BB) 4c
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero, calls

Final Pot: 33.5 BB
Hero has Ad Kh (Two Pair Aces & Kings)
UTG has 4s 4d (Three of a kind Fours)
CO has Ah Jh (One Pair Aces)


[/ QUOTE ]

FWIW I think you gave too much action in this hand (the river 3-bet is usually wrong IMO, and UTG's flop/turn smells a lot like a set) unless your opponent was a total maniac (which apparently he was). This borderline LAGish aggressiveness could easily lead to some very ugly swings if you aren't careful. That said you first day's loss isn't particularly abnormal for a bad day in a 6-max game

Other than that you fell into the easy trap of not dropping back when things went bad. Playing 2/4 SH with <$800 is a recipe for disaster as you discovered. Its just too easy to hit a bad run in these games that playing on a short BR is very risky. And I think you know that playing in SnGs that are 15% of your total bankroll is a no-no.

I think most people have had a day (well weekend)like this at some point in their career, I know I did about a year and a half ago when I was first making an effort to move up. I had clawed my BR to about $1200 over a couple months or microlimit play and some poor decisions left me with about $150 in a matter of days. After that I really started taking all the BR talk seriously and haven't had any major setbacks since then.

[MEbenhoe]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
PokerStars $3/$6 6 Max, 5 handed

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ad Kh
UTG calls, CO raises, Button Folds, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, UTG calls

Flop: (10 SB) As 8h 2c (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls, CO Raises, Hero 3-bets, UTG calls, CO calls

Turn: (9.5 BB) Kd (3 players)
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero calls

River: (21.5 BB) 4c
Hero Bets, UTG raises, CO calls, Hero 3-bets, UTG caps, CO calls, Hero, calls

Final Pot: 33.5 BB
Hero has Ad Kh (Two Pair Aces & Kings)
UTG has 4s 4d (Three of a kind Fours)
CO has Ah Jh (One Pair Aces)


[/ QUOTE ]

FWIW I think you gave too much action in this hand (the river 3-bet is usually wrong IMO, and UTG's flop/turn smells a lot like a set) unless your opponent was a total maniac (which apparently he was). This borderline LAGish aggressiveness could easily lead to some very ugly swings if you aren't careful. That said you first day's loss isn't particularly abnormal for a bad day in a 6-max game


[/ QUOTE ]

The reason I played this hand the way I did was because the UTG player was super LAG, pretty much to the point of being maniacal, but had hit a couple hands in a row which had put his stack up pretty high. My thinking was that at this point he would've played the hand the way he did with even bottom pair, which basically is what he had. This play was 100% read based, and while this session ended up quite badly, I have some great notes on this player for when I hopefully eventually work my way back up to this level.

[MEbenhoe]

Nolanfan,

Thanks for the kind words of advice, and I think I'm probably going to end up following your plan. You probably are correct, as I started to get more and more in the hole I was probably making a bunch of slightly -EV plays which added together basically had a snowball effect on my losses. The mistakes you pointed out about how I played my bankroll are well noted. Thanks for all your advice.

P.S. Think my HULA draft stock just plummeted? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[TimM]

I hate to say this but I can't imagine you were playing well here. The chance of a break even player having a 166BB or worse downswing in only 16 table-hours is very small, probably 1% or less, although it could be as much as 4% if your SD/hour/table is something huge like 24BB (I admit I don't play much short handed so I don't know what typical SD's would be there).

If this happened to me, I'd like to think I would have stopped the bleeding a lot sooner. Your bankroll was a little short for 3/6, so once you were down $500, which brings you to about 300BB for 2/4, it was time to stop for the day and move back down to 2/4 next time.

I don't like the idea of playing mixed games simultaneously (SNG's and ring games). Some seem to have no problem but I think it would screw me up. It's hard enough to adjust to your stack size and blinds as the SNG progresses, without having to play other games requiring a totally different strategy, and having to adjust to the players on those tables as well.

Now, I'm not sure what I would do. You could make a small deposit, but I think I would take the $34 and start over at the bottom rung of the ladder. I'd probably play $0.50/$1 with it, starting with one table until I could get enough for two. Your bankroll would be very small, but it's not a big deal if you fail as you would have had to deposit anyway. Be sure to adjust for the lower limit play. The benefit of doing this is that it would force you to be very disciplined and also prove to yourself that you can recover from any kind of downswing. Set up strict rules for adding tables and increasing limits and stick to them. You're starting small like a OIC but you don't have to move up that fast.

For me the rules would be: add a table at $100, $150, and $200 (I like to buy in for 50BB's, and play up to 4 at once). Move to 4 tables of 1/2 at $400. Again a little short but I feel this is OK for small games and games you already have experience in, and if you are prepared to move down quickly if things don't go well. Next would be 2/4, and for this I would wait for a full 300BB roll. I am assuming you haven't played much 3/6 online, and I think each failed attempt to move up should be followed by another attempt with about 100BB more than last time, so maybe try again at about $2400.

I did something almost exactly like this after month long dry spell. I only lost a few hundred but I decided to withdraw most of my roll near the end of May (left about $100 each in Party and Paradise). Started at the bottom rung, combined with more reading (SSH was huge for me), and all of this was very beneficial. I played 1/2 for all of June, and 2/4 for all of July, both on Paradise. I transfered most of my roll over to Party, and went to 3/6 in August. My previous 3/6 win rate was always very low (<1BB/100), but this time I did much better, and after only 10 days had enough to take a shot at 5/10, where I've been ever since.

I don't know if any of this will help, but good luck in whatever you decide to do.

[nolanfan34]

[ QUOTE ]
P.S. Think my HULA draft stock just plummeted? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

I almost made a joke about that but decided against it. What's important is that you're clearly able to not take this too seriously, like it's the end of the world. That's great.

I think in the long run this whole thing will result in better play from you.

[CardCuda]

Yeah this sucks bigtime, just had a similar run like this the first few days of September (1st thru the 4th). Had $1750.00 BR multi-tabled the 5 max SH games....-100bb's in back to back sessions on huge suck-outs. Top 2, sets, and straights dying on the river...oh well. Worst is over.

Reviewed my play, Hand histories etc...dropped back down to $1-2 full table game with $625.00 BR and will build it up again. The only advice I have is....not to play above your roll...it's not healthy....lose a couple a big hands and pots and I think subconsciously the destruction begins. The funny thing is it happens so quickly that you don't realize it until you look at the balance at the cashier, at the end of the session.....brutal feeling.