Over the last 5 months I’ve been trying to revamp my poker game. I’ve made a spreadsheet to track everything I do on the poker table; freerolls excluded. I’ve worked hard to tighten my game up to closer to the level of the pros, usually 8-12% flops seen. I’ve been getting close to 20% flops seen, but have seen huge changes in my bankroll.
I deposited $50 back in January when I started this project and tracked where every dollar went. I went up to about $350 in January and maintained that in February. March was a bad month and I lost all my profit. I played “good” poker in March, but couldn’t seem to win a hand. I was seeing about 3000-4000 hands a month, so I took two weeks off to refresh my mind. April was a short month for me, but I turned in a $250 profit. I took another down swing in May, losing my entire bankroll. At this point, I’m down $50 for the first time in 5 months, but my statistics are almost right where I want them. In my profit months I was wining around 60-65% of my showdowns, which is still a little lower than I would like. In my losing months I was winning only around 55% of my showdowns. That is the only noticeable change in my statistics over the 5 months.
While sitting at the fire station stewing over my bad run of cards, I decided to take a couple of weeks off. There is a poker player on the medic unit we run with and they stopped by the station one afternoon. The other player and myself got talking poker and discussing our recent runs. I told him about my downturn and he was on an upswing. After a little more discussion, he helped reinforce the idea of taking a week or two off. I started into my first week off on Thursday June 7th and not playing poker was killing me. We didn’t have the extra money floating around for me to deposit $50 bucks, so my loving wife loaned me $20 bucks. I played a couple of ring games, but didn’t make any money.
On the 12th of June I decided to venture back into tournament life, which treated me well during my big up swings. I entered a $5.50 Sit and Go. I played solid poker during the whole tournament. I was able to slow play big hands, but also made the correct folds with big cards when needed. I ended up finishing 3rd after a mistimed bluff robbed me of most of my stack.
On a whim I enter the $10+1 Midnight Madness tournament on Full Tilt Poker. That started the best night of poker in my life.
…to be continued.
Stud Cowboy is a consistent online winner in Stud and is always interested in discussing the game as well as finding those tables/sites that are especially ripe.
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