An Important Comeback (and some whining)

I came to terms tonight with something I kinda already knew but wasn't fully admitting to myself: my poker confidence is shot. I realized it when I decided to 6-table 100NL, and I felt like I was playing nosebleed stakes. So much aggression! Which is totally ridiculous, cause not very long ago I played 100NL when I needed to step down for a bit.

I don't want to sit here and whine, but I've been running like ass for about three months straight. If you don't think it can happen, well, you're misinformed. Don't get me wrong. I still could have had way better results by just playing better, and who knows where the line blurs between running bad leading to worse play or vice versa. But I can say with a fair degree of confidence that this fall has been by far the worst case of run bad I've ever had. Not even close. Just in October I'm about 30 buy-ins to the bad in all-in EV. I know, I know, that's just one type of luck. But if I had run neutral in just that one department I'd have had a marginally profitable month instead of the abomination I had. It's funny, cause I'm doing all this mass-tabling, and people are telling me I'm crazy, and I'm thinking I should reconsider, etc etc. But if I had run even just okay, I'd be feeling like I was on my way with it, SuperNova Elite here I come...

Not that I'm done with SNE. My potential staker (it really looks like it's going to happen now, btw, but I'll be sure to let my faithful readers know once it's for sure one way or the other) is a SNE, and he wants me to hit that milestone in 2010. Just with a modified plan from how I've been approaching it so far.

But anyway, I've digressed a lot already. So I played a 12-table session this evening at 50, ran six buy-ins below EV to book a five buy-in loss. Typical. But I wasn't feeling too bad about it, cause I was in that right head space of accepting that I can't control the luck, and I think I did play okay.

So I was gonna go to bed, but I decided to first play an hour of 6-tabling 100NL. Within 10 minutes I was down four buy-ins. First I lost a couple flips. Then my QQ < JJ AIPF when a jack spiked on the turn. And the worst one, my AA < JJ, with it getting in on the turn and the third J hitting the river. So I was down $400 and my all-in EV was saying I should be up like $180 or thereabouts (can't remember exactly, there were a few small hands in there too).

I fully accept beats as part of poker, and I even accept that the run of luck I've been experiencing, while probably in the top percentile of bad runs, is likely not near as rare as it feels it must be. I still feel like in the long run skill will win out over luck most of the time (and it's only 'most' of the time cause we might not make it far enough into the long run to make it 'all' of the time).

But man, it's wearing me down, and I really need to find a way to reset my expectations so that hopefully my confidence will follow. I mean, today at 50 I got it in with KK against a guy's J9o. 125 BB's deep, and he had a PFR of 5. WTF? He flopped the straight. Honestly, you wonder if he knew what was coming somehow, cause it just makes no sense otherwise. But when I saw what he had I literally cringed, waiting to see how I was gonna get screwed. Even though that attitude obviously doesn't influence the cards, I just can't imagine it doesn't bleed over into my play in big and small ways.

The silver lining in all this is that I did grind back to make the 100 session basically even. Maybe the most satisfying break even session of the year, and important too, cause 100 suddenly looked like the cuddle-bear soft game it is and hopefully I can bring that feeling to my next session. The thing of it is, when I was down four buy-ins and the game seemed so tough, I actually had gotten my money in even or very good each time. So why did it seem tough? Shot confidence.