2,875 hands

I really don't know what to say about where I'm at right now. Last month's upswing bloated my ego to the point where I thought I would be crushing 400nl and the mid stakes in no time. Now, heh, well now I'm not so sure. I'm running like shit, and while that's obviously a big part of me not winning lately, I can't help but think I'm not up to par with my game at the moment. I dunno.

Last month everything went well. When I made a marginally +EV play, I would either be shown the very bottom of my opponent's range, or I would be shown the top, but suck out anyways. Either way, I wasn't tilted by the results, and I would see the situation as slightly thin, but didn't really care because I won anyways. This month, those marginal plays (as well as the clear-cut +EV plays) are just killing me, and I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong.

I might be playing just fine, and am just hitting a rough patch, but it's killing my confidence. I think last month's success lead me to kind of expect every other day to bring me in $800, break-even days being the worst I'd see. I'm still nearly a 6ptbb/100 winner at 200nl overall, and I don't see how I can possibly be disappointed with that. It's probably just a case of lifting myself above the clouds of variance and seeing that in the long run, I'm going to beat 200nl for a solid winrate.

Tilt has obviously been a part of my break-even month so far, but it's definitely getting better. Today for example I ran into a good handful of ridiculous beats and even though I didn't keep a completely level head, I managed to stick it out with a 5 hour session and played at least my A- game. Jared's videos are helping a ton with that. Understanding what triggers your tilt, why this trigger affects you in that way, and how you can prevent or subdue the effects of the trigger. All very good solid stuff that I'll probably have to watch several times to get it completely sunk in my brain.

I've noticed that a couple more things may actually be a factor in my downswings. The first being that unless I see the fruits of my labour every so often, I kind of forget about exactly what type of money I'm dealing with. It's easy to tilt and say 'fuck this, he can't possibly have me beat yet again' and toss out another $200 to call, but really that $200 is like a new monitor. Or a divono keyboard. Or like 1/6th of a new laptop (thanks for all the help by the way!). I've been planning on getting this loveseat for a while, and although a laptop isn't necessary either, I'm getting a pretty good price by way of the $1000 gift card from the fpp store.

The other factor is something that I haven't though about for months. My bankroll. Before I took out about 3k for the sofa and other stuff, my roll was sitting at nearly 15k (now 10k). With me playing 200nl, that gives me 75 buyins. Probably the biggest, both in terms of buyins and in dollar value, that it's ever been. There's absolutely no pressure of me dropping back down. Winning $300 or $400 in a day doesn't even feel that good to me anymore. I mean winning $500 back when my roll was at 4 or 5k was huge. Now that it's more than 10k, it's more like a drop in the ocean. I considered taking shots at 400nl, but as I mentioned earlier I'm not feeling tops with my game at the moment, and definitely don't want to tilt at double my stakes, so I held that idea off for a bit. Who knows, maybe I'll take some shots in the next couple of days and see how it feels.