It’s been a while…
Although it felt like I was abandoning my hobby of online poker it was in reality just a break. I did get to play every now but not enough to give me the energy to keep my blog going. I had other things on my mind because I was travelling Australia for a year and what a year it was.
I didn’t get the opportunity to play poker much with the exception of January ’11 when I was living in an apartment in Melbourne for a while. Other times I didn’t have a constant internet connection – having to rely on free hotspots such as the one at McDonald’s – but I did have one here.
The last time I updated my blog was at the beginning of May ’09 – I had planned to play 90 STT’s that month but in reality I only played a total of 44 more in the rest of ’09 and January 11′. In contrast to this I managed to play 89 MTT’s.
Looking back over my accounts it became apparent that I slowly edged away from the single table tournaments, slowly playing more and more multi-table games. I remember when it happened – I lost a few STT’s and convinced myself that they were not worth it – risking so much for so little – so I took my chances and started playing more and more MTT’s.
It seemed to paying off – at least after a while. My bankroll steadied between $400 and $$500 for a quite alot of games until finally in December 6th ’09 I hit it’s peak at $682.91. I had finally jumped out of my bankroll stalemate with a win the day before, 1/452 @ $198.88 for top place.
(I used a different graph style in Excel. Fancy I know.)
This wasn’t too last very long though. Eight days later I was down $532. I had decided to take a lot of chances on the Mini Ftops events before I went travelling as a last ditch attempt at getting some more spending money. It didn’t work of course and so I was punished for abandoning my bankroll rules. Overtime I fell all the way down to $450 – a mixture of bad luck and bad play.
It was my first downswing and man does it hit you hard. There seemed to be nothing I could do.
It didn’t matter. I took out $400, leaving $50 in full tilt just incase I got to play, also safe in knowledge that I had $50 in Doyles Room too.
I didn’t get to play poker again till January 2011 – over a full year later.
I was hoping that my bad luck had left me but it a week I had lost my $50 in full tilt – the first time I’d got to $0 for a long time. I took a weeks break and started playing on Doyles Room. The first day I came 2/58 in a $1 tournament for $11 and then two days later came in at 1/203 to win $159.01. This made my bankroll $215.48, playing more tournaments over the next week to end up taking a chance on a $27 tournament at the end of the month.
DoylesRoom had changed their software and didn’t have many games that interested me any longer. However I couldn’t put any money in a different poker site because I had no money left in my UK account whilst travelling Australia – I got bored and entered the $27 tournament in error of boredom. Knowing I made a stupid mistake I withdrew the total sum of $176.97 from my account.
(Bankroll for 2009 + Jan ’11)
(A very simplified graph not displaying every day after May but rather total amount lost and won)
It wasn’t until I got back into the UK that I could start looking at poker again. I deposited $28 into full tilt – not using any more money than I had back at the beginning of ’09. With this in mind $548.97 has been taken from poker as profits – with the $28 re-invested to start from scratch again. This is what I have done this month in April 2011.
As mentioned earlier, after looking at the disproportionate amount of MTT’s I had been playing over STT’s in became apparent why my bankroll had become less steady. I looked at March & April ’09 for examples – I was using the STT’s as a steady flow of income which subsidised attempts at MTT’s that would provide a big boost every now and then when I won or ran deep. Over time I had stopped doing this, instead just taking chances over and over again. Although it didn’t have too much of a detrimental effect until I entered games way out of my Bankroll Management plan for tournaments.
It seemed that I also got the fear of losing STT’s. Not being able to handle losing a few $11 games in a row because of the big effect it hand on my bankroll. I convinced myself they weren’t worth playing. This of course is not the case and so after losing money immediately (from $28 to $10) I decided more STT’s were in order.
That was eight days ago and I have managed to go from $10.68 to $65.60 in a total of 21 games. Ten being STT’s and me cashing in eight of those.
(Four Firsts, Three Seconds and One Third).
I haven’t won anything big tournament wise but I have run deep a couple of times in the Daily Dollar this month. Just a few hours ago I finished 39/5661, something I’m a bit agitated about because I believe it was my fault that I got knocked out. I also ran to 97/5806 a week earlier – that time my Aces were cracked by something ridiculous. Although not big wins, they have been boosting my new small bankroll.
I’m hoping that I can build it up once more.
