So I think Decenmber and January together add up to the second most frustrating run of my career. The first one is the year 2010 where I only won 25k in the entire year.

Anyway, I just feel like venting so please leave if you're annoyed when people rant because I really don't care right now.

I'll start with a graph.



This is since moving to my new house. The last 65K hands or so have been extremely frustrating.Every session, I start pretty optimistic. And every session, it feels like, ends up frustrating as hell. I don't think I'm playing horribly. Like, I don't think I'm playing much worse than usual so I'm just trying to focus on putting in more hands to push through. Since I'm going through a downswing, I've been trying to cool down and reduce my accumulated emotion before beginning a new session, I usually wait until I motivate myself to play well before starting a session, get in an optimistic mindset, and then the session ends with me really frustrated. And this has been happening over and over and over. I'm starting to have thoughts about quitting. This usually happens to me after rough periods and is not the first time I think that. I've been convinced in the past that I'm quitting but obviously haven't quit.

It's crazy how quickly my mindset changes due to accumulated emotion. What the accumulated emotion really does is significantly shorten the amount of things that need to happen before I get frustrated. I do a good job of getting myself at good place mentally before starting a session, but I can't seem to fix the problem of getting frustrated quickly.

Sigh. I guess I'll just keep plugging away at it and see what happens. Hopefully I can put up a nice run and if not, if hypothetically I don't know how to win anymore, then I can always quit and have enough money to go to school. I'm having thoughts about how nice it would be to quit, but I'm not actually in the "I am going to quit" mindset. I would say that I am headed in that direction though. If for another 100k hands I BE, I might seriously consider that.

k, done..just wanted to vent a little

later,
Gabe

I calculated that to get to SNE in 2012, I'd have to play 40hrs/week, 45 weeks of the year @ 15 tables of 1/2nl 6max. I was actually intrigued by the idea and thought that I would give it a shot. I just had my first 15 tabling session and holy crap it's exhausting. I expected my play to be worse and it was. But most of all, it's just exhausting. I dropped 6BI after an hour and a half and quit. Even though I want to work hard this year, I don't know if doing this is possible for me. I guess I just put too much value on not being miserable. I have mad respect for people who are able to make it to SNE and have a positive win rate.

In my calculations, I used an assumed win rate of 1BB/100 (my winrate over the last million or so hands is a little higher than 3ptbb) and found that I could make 180,400 if I maintained the 1BB/100 win rate. I'm not sure if my play would suffer too much and my win rate would be lower or if I could maybe even maintain a higher one. After grinding for 1.5 hours at 15 tables, I am not sure I want to find out. I think a more realistic goal is to use the same # of hours but at less tables. I am able to play 9 tables pretty comfortably. If I use a 2ptbb win rate and play the same amount of hours at 9 tables, then I would make 131,400. Now, that's 50k less than if I had 15 tables but I just don't know if I could ever learn to be proficient at that many tables. I think starting tomorrow I'm going to drop to 9 - 12 tables (9 tables for the most part but add upto 12 when I'm feeling focused and like I could handle it).

For those of you who play 15-16 tables or more of 6max cash, how the hell do you do it?

So I really need to vent.

This month is among the most frustrating of this year, besides maybe July.

I feel so frustrated. I feel like there is something weighing down on my chest which doesn't allow me to take a satisfying deep breath. This month, I've played 31.6K hands so far and I'm down $444. Every session, I keep running poorly. Every day I keep telling myself that it's a new day and variance doesn't have a memory and to just play well. I feel like I do go into the sessions with that mindset but I also feel like any time I lose a stack, I start getting steamed. That's because of the fact that I'm optimistic every session and want to play well and then I run like shit. I know it's illogical but I'm human and my emotions override logic at times. If you read Jared Tendler's book, you'll know what accumulated emotion means and that's precisely where I'm at. I just quit a session just because I wasn't having fun anymore, I was just frustrated. I still feel this weight in my chest that I described earlier. As for my play, it's been okay. I've made some high variance plays like 4B shoves with mid PPs or suited aces and light call downs and while I feel like some of them might not have been great, overall I feel I'm playing okay. I'm not going to deny the fact that there has to be some bad play mixed in this stretch (going off the fact that I felt really frustrated during a lot of my sessions, don't have any hands that I remember butchering too badly except for stuff like 4B shoving 99 vs squeeze and stuff and having a bunch of 4bet bluffs get 5bet shoved on). Every time a 4-bet fails, I get annoyed and frustrated (tilted?) and it's just really annoying. I just don't want to play poker right now. So why am I making myself play? I have 1 year of expenses set aside and a deep BR so I'm not in dire needs to play. Maybe it's cuz it's the end of the year and I wanted to wrap up the year nicely especially after a lazy November where I only put in 30 hours and won ~3k (had negative life cash flow because of life expenses). So December I really wanted to crack down and grind a lot. Due to running bad, I'm a bit behind my pace of 60k hands for the month as I was discouraged on lots of occasions and didn't want to play.

Overall, this year so far I'm up ~85k or so (assuming I get my FTP money back) and I really wanted to beat my previous record of 92.5k for 2009 but it doesn't seem like I'll be able to do that. Right now, in all honesty, what I really want to do is not play poker. I want to play video games, I want to hang out with my gf watch movies, but I do not want to play poker. I'm just annoyed at it. I'm considering 'booking' this month and taking some time off to enjoy life. But there is a voice in my head telling me that I was lazy in November to suck it up and grind out the hands I planned to grind out. I don't know what I'll do yet, I just know that right now, today, I want to take a break. I was watching a family video yesterday of when I was 15 (1 year before getting into poker) and it helped me put things in perspective. I looked at myself at 15 and I knew that if I saw back then into the future (right now) I would be thrilled at the things I have accomplished and would not have thought that I'd be living in a house I bought and be driving a really nice SUV. I need to relax and un-tilt myself so that I can hopefully see things from the same perspective again and appreciate what I have and not worry so much about little speed bumps in life. All I know is poker can be a grueling game on your psyche.

On a different note, I ordered P90X2 and am looking forward to starting that in the new year.

I'm gonna go watch some TV and play some video games and eventually decide whether or not I want to play more this year or just book it and take a little time to enjoy myself.

later,
Gabe