Willing To Die

Wow, what a brutal week playing poker I've had. From Monday to Friday, I lost on the order of $200 playing limit, NL, SnGs, and multis. I've been killed at the low stakes games and the high stakes tables. I've been slaughtered at stud, stud hi/lo, and razz. Hell, the only money I made prior to today was at Omaha, and I really don't know what the F* I'm doing in Omaha. Call it a tiny drop of beginner's luck in a sea of bloody water.

In an effort to diagnose the problem with my game, I've been going back through my hand history on poker tracker. The good news is that I've generally played solid poker preflop. My VPIP has been a steady-eddie 18%. My preflop raise percentage has been in the mid-teens, too. Even my positional stats are where they need to be; I'm playing appropriately tight up front and looser as I approach the button.

So what's the problem, then? Answer: two big things.

First off, I've been running pretty bad, plain and simple. The cards just haven't been falling my way. I've had very few pairs turn into sets, and I've had sets beaten by straights and flushes. My TPTK hands have been regually sucked-out on, too. Hands that should have held up, like AK on a board of AK8, have regularly been decimated by both better hands and bad beats alike. Bad like has been my #1 problem.

And for that, I really can't complain. As the Guru likes to say: if bad luck is your only problem, you've got a good problem, indeed. Translation: luck will turn around by itself, skill needs active work to improve.

But... but.... well, bad luck hasn't been my only problem. The other half of my losing streak can be directly attributable to my, ahem, lack of guts post-flop. Yes, I've simply been driven off of hands way too easily. I haven't pushed back when I should have, and I have let people steal from my blinds mercilessly. My TPTK cards, when not being sucked out on, have scared me too much to play to the river. In fact, the few times I've been reasonably certain my TPTK hands were best on the river, I have lacked the intestinal fortitude to fire into fifth street. My bad luck has, essentially, turned into scared play, which has added seriously to the big, bad, lousy losing streak. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy; I feel scared, so I play scared and the opp can sense it. Like fear on the mailman, the dobermans at the tables have sensed it. Big, regular bites out of my rear end have resulted.

(Oh, and couple all this with some play at limits that were too big for my bankroll, and you have the recipe for disaster.... but I digress)

Getting back to the fear thing, I realized yesterday that I had to buck up and try to turn this turkey around. As the old tournament adage says: In order to live, you have to be willing to die. I've clearly been too scared to die, and as as result I've been lopping off huge chunks of my bankroll in a gutless display of chickenshit poker.

Well, no more, bubs. I promised myself I would play strong today and, well, it seems to have worked out for the better:

I started the day playing three simultaneous $1 SnGs. I played uber-tight in all three games, but when I did get involved, I took no prisoners. I was also able to bluff in the later stages of the games, which also made a big difference, allowing me to steal a few times and give myself some real chances to make the money. At the end of tough 60 minutes, I had taken 1st, 3rd, and 4th, for a nice tidy profit and much-needed boost of confidence.

I then jumped into some 4-tabling of $.25/.50 limit, where I made a few more bucks. Again, I played my usual TAG preflop game, but when I got involved in hands, I told myself that money didn't matter and I kept maximum pressure on the opp. The result was another $8 or so added to the coffers.

Throughout the rest of the day, I played sporadically at $.25/.50, $1/2, and some low-stakes stud hi/lo. In all cases, fearlessness made a big difference. (Of course, I got off of losing hands when I had to, but I really thought twice before pulling the plug.)

The bottom line is that I'm back up to $170 from a bankroll low of just under $100 on Friday. Better still, playing poker was actually fun again today, and I felt like I actually knew what I was doing. What a weird, wonderful feeling this willing-to-die thing brings to the table.

All-in for now...
-Bug