In the gutter, but nowhere to look but up

Just checking my HEM now, it looks like I'm only down like $500 since my last post. Was up a good $2200 in the first 2k hands since the 21st, but since then I've been on an ugly downward swing that has more than erased those winnings. Looking at the big picture it's just a tiny blip in my graph, but it feels like I'm about to lose my whole bankroll. Just another shitty run; I'm laughing in frustration as everyone keeps showing up with hands that always seem to be one pip above mine.

I know a good chunk of my streak is bad luck, but I also know I'm very rusty from not playing at all last month. I think I logged like 10k hands total, didn't even bother writing up a monthly review.

I've been in raging monkey tilt mode while I play, but away from the tables I feel fine. It's starting to creep out of my poker life, but I still feel fine. Case in point, I just had my biggest losing session in quite a while ($1500 lost? yay,) and I feel fine after nearly breaking my keyboard, desk, floorboards and my knuckles. Almost all of that discipline is from the work I've done with Jared (and/or his videos).

I've mentioned this in previous posts, but the biggest things on my list are my tilt, motivation to play more, and organizing my personal life to make point 1) and 2) easier for me. First one is going good - sounds weird after losing a half dozen buyins and going apeshit, but it's true. I can calm myself down faster than ever. I'm also able to actually quit when I realize I'm too close (or way over) that tilt threshold.

My motivation is pretty high now. I'm already at the point where I'm starting to lose my confidence, but I realize that this is only a 5k hand stretch and as soon as I cool myself off and have a solid session, I'll be back in the green.

That's what poker is all about: the long run. Fuck the short-term daily variance, it's just luck. Stay in check, make as few mistakes as possible and continually improve your game through practice and study, and you profit in the long run, simple as that.

My personal life is still all fucked up, I guess that doesn't help. I'll be joining the gym soon, especially with spring coming along so I can have a warmup run before training. Been talking to my girlfriend and although it sounds much more like a big commitment than it actually is, we're thinking about moving into that warehouse I've been looking at for ages. As long as I can bounce back from this bullshit I'm trudging through at the moment and can bump my roll back up to at least 17k, I'm really confident it'll work. She already basically lives here at home with me, so moving out won't be much of a difference.

So one of the things Jared has taught me is that setting big goals is fine, but in order to achieve them you need to set periodic smaller goals. So for example my goal this year was to play 500k hands, but I simply can't do that without setting monthly, weekly, daily, even session-by-session goals. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Again, looking back at my overall graph, this is literally NOTHING compared to my other downswings. It's not really surprising how much it's affecting me mentally since I played so little last month and am obviously rusty. All I have to do is keep grinding and make sure I practice my tilt control. Get out of the rusty zone, get out of the tilt zone, and get back to winning 4BB/100 and rising.