August 2009 – the month that almost ended my career!

Looking back at August, it almost felt like an out of body experience.

Hindsight opinion: I could have done things so much different.

So what happened?

First real month of deciding to play SnGs exclusively and I got hit with my first BIG taste of negative variance.
I’ve had 10BI downswings before.
I’ve had 12 games ootm in a row.
But I’d never tasted what negative variance can really be like until last month.

I can’t recall the exact figures, which is beside the point to be honest. But I suffered from a 30+BI downswing which shock my world. I was over-rolled for my games which was fine but damn, 30 buy-ins down in the game I love SUCKED.

From there I started single tabling 100NL on Stars and 4 tabling 50NL on Ipoker, trying to convince myself “If I play really really really tight, I shouldn’t run into that much trouble and make back my losses asap, WRONG.

No need to give dollars and cents, but I had a negative 4 figure loss in August.

I really questioned, for the first time in my life, can I do this? Also, do I want to do this? The answer came back to what it always has been, YES!

Looking back I lost the main chunk of money due to not following my own rules and letting my emotions take control of my actions.

In a really weird kind of way, I'm actually happy I lost so much last month. It really taught me that there will be big downswings and there is nothing that can be done about it. Importantly, they will happen again, so be prepared for it. The most shocking part is that there still may be bigger downswings to come!

September 2009.
Having recently gone gold star on Titan I’ve decided to test the waters volume wise and see what I can do. I’m starting to get used to the fact that I need to put in the games and time so I’d like to see how many games I can actually get through in a month.

Since the start of the month I’ve played 160 SnGs for a +9% ROI. A little shocked at that but happy as I’ve never played so many games 8 days into the month.

I’ve moved from 4 tabling to 8 tabling which is working out very nicely. I’m was hoping to play 300 SnGs by the end of the month for at least a 5% ROI, so far the volume is tracking good, hopefully I can attain the good return.

August was a learning curve, yes another one. I lost big then played out of my depths to make it back quickly. Doesn’t work, looks like this will be a slow grind, but one things for sure…..

I will never ever give up and I will become stronger with this!

I had a lot of support following my last post and want to thank everyone on my blog and forums for their help and advice, if no-one wrote back or helped, my results would have been a lot worse, so THANK YOU ALL.

Be back soon with mid monthly updates.

Good luck to all.

Custo.