Cruel Game

Just when you feel like you are on top of the world, when everything is going your way and you feel like the sky is the limits, thats when variance usually comes in to kick you in the ass and remind you that things can go the opposite way too.  February has been an especially trying month.  I took a shot at 2/4 which didn’t go well.  Ended up losing ~3500 the first day of the month.  Then I decided to drop back down to 200 and 100NL where I continued to lose more and more and more.  I am now looking at a massively negative month where I really haven’t played that bad at all.  Literally any time there is any way for me to lose  a pot, it happens.  I’ve been sucked out and coolered more times than I care to count in the past 11 days.  I can’t believe that it is possible to run as bad as I have in February.

The worst part about the whole ordeal is not losing the money.  $7000 is not that much in the grand scheme of things and to be honest its really not that big of a deal.  The bigger dilemma here is that when you run as bad as this for a sustained period like I have you start to doubt your own abilities and you lose all confidence in your ability to beat the games.  This is extremely damaging for your game and can take months to correct.  I have been questioning my own decisions lately a ton more than I ever have in the past.  Decisions that used to be really automatic are now becoming huge question marks in my head.  I am almost ashamed to say that I have totally lost all confidence in my game and question whether I am still a winner constantly.  I know its totally irrational to think this way, but it still pops up in my head nearly every time I play now.  I have come to now expect to lose every time I sit down instead of win.  This is all really really bad for a poker player.

Its hard to explain how a downswing can affect you to anyone who doesn’t player poker on a professional level.  It really takes a huge toll on your psychological state and causes an insane amount of stress.  Imagine working for a week at your job and then having money removed from your bank account for the job you did.  Thats the best analogy I can come up with at the moment.  Anyways, I will eventually start running good again and I will have won all the money I lost back.  Hopefully it comes sooner rather than later.  For now, I think I need to finally take about a dozen different people’s advice and take an extended break for a bit.  Get my head screwed back on straight and just go back to doing what I do best, which unfortunately for the ladies, is not sex.

Anyways, heres my abysmal graph