The Poker Stars experiment did not fair so well today. Part of it was my deliberate fault, the other part... well, it was kinda the result of the first part. Let me explain, starting with former.
Earlier this week, I was down to $1.23 in my PS bankroll and things were looking bleak. I contemplated just gambling it all on one $1+.2 SnG, but, fortunately, my buddy Bret (who is also trying the experiment) talked me out of it. As a result, I started playing super tight, super aggressive 2/4-cent limit hold'em, and I built up the bankroll steadily. Yesterday, in fact, I was up to $7.25. That's nearly a 6-fold increase from the nadir of the week. Things were looking very good indeed...
...but then I got creative. Or should that be: "stupid?"
I figured I was up over the original $5, and I knew I had a winning formula for making a steady profit at the 2/4 tables, but I wondered if there was a more rapid way to increase the win rate. At $7, I figured I should stay at the low stakes tables, but wondered if I could experiment a bit with hand selection. Basically what I did today was open up my VPIP a bit. I also played a little more passively preflop to see if I could sneak my way into a some well-disguised monster hands. In other words, I wanted to see if, instead of taking down small (but assured) pots with tight-aggressive play, I could take down larger (but rarer) big pots with looser-passive play. I had been witnessing some other players at these tables seemingly take down big pots in this fashion, so I wanted to give it a whirl myself.
Yes, it should probably be: "stupid."
Long story short, I lost a bundle. Early in the day, I was up a buck or so with some normal hands, but then I got blind-sided by a run of truly devastating losses with my suboptimal hands. You name it, I got killed by it. KJ in early position losing to KQ on the button. 33 losing to 55, 78 finding the idiot end of a straight, etc... Those losses were bad enough, but when I flopped the desired monsters, things went terribly wrong. For instance, I had A9 in late position, limped in after a single raiser, and ran into an A3 hand on a flop of A-A-3, with me capping every street. Or how 'bout my 22 in early position falling hard to a board of 2-A-x-x-x in a heads up pot that I capped every street including the river, when the opp turned over AA?
In the majority of these cases, I should have never been in the hand in the first place, but because I was experimenting with loose play, I got involved, flopped what looked like a monster, and then subsequently lost monster pots. Unfortunately, this led to increasingly looser and wilder play... until, suddenly, I was on full blown tilt. I was up. I was down. I was all around. (See my thumb? Gee, I'm dumb.)
Things got even crazier when I found myself in a couple of 5/10-cent games, where I lost 80 cents or so in five minutes. I turned off the computer, ate lunch, turned it back on and went right back into tilt mode. I played some stud hi/lo, and got walloped, then made back a bundle, then lost even more. I even blew $1.2 on a SnG, despite myself knowing full well that I was on tilt and it was a bad idea, but nevertheless thinking I could make a play and get all the money I lost back.
No, it's definitely: "stupid."
Yikes. Bottom line is I'm back down to $3.50 and am staring once again at that big bankroll hill I have to reclimb. I only hope I learned a lesson about loose-passive play...
Okay, that's the bad news. The good news is that while I was melting down on PS, the other side of my brain was calm and rational over on Full Tilt. My PT numbers actually bear this out; I was like Jekyll and Hyde at the same time but on two different sites, with the good doctor playing solid poker on FTP, while Hyde ran amok on PS. Truly bizarre, but true nonetheless. I took second in a $2 SnG on FTP and then made a killing at the $1/2 limit tables. I may have lost nearly $4 on PS, but I made over $40 on FTP during that same 3-hour period of time.
Oh, well. Back to the straight and narrow on PS tomorrow. I hope.
All-in for now...
-Bug
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