earning my stripes

so up until this point in my poker life, i've never really played regularly at stakes where i can get really stuck. in my limit holdem days my worst downswings would usually be about $500 and i had a 2.5k roll to withstand it. in my mtt and sng days, i would frequently lose a couple hundred in buy-ins in a night if i took shots but never more than $700 or so. i think the worst sng downswing i had was i lost $1100 in a weekend 8 tabling $55 turbos but luckily had a final table at the same time that covered the loss. fast forward to now, im playing 200nl and my biggest downswing so far has only been about $950 but both times i got stuck that much it's been mid session and i've climbed out to get close to even. i think this is pretty lucky, not getting stuck more than 5 buy-ins at a given limit. from what i understand, downswings of 10-15 buy-ins in nlhe games are the norm and not to be unexpected. i've heard of 30+ buy-in downswings from people who were playing great and making zero mistakes but often these people think they play great 100% of the time and don't look at their game with the same eyes that they view others.

anyways, this weekend everything changed for me. i've been riding high, having my best moth ever only half way through it, learning some plo and being succesful rather than the disastrous attempt i made at the game last november and my bankroll was up to just shy of 15k. i came home friday and decided to play for an hour or so before going out and quickly made about $200 in holdem and $300 playing 1/2 & 2/4 cap plo. i was feeling great, only about $500 away from moving up and playing 2/4 nl and maybe sticking at 2/4 cap plo with shots at 3/6 cap plo.

i went out, had a great night and came home around 11pm and decided to play some more before hitting the sack. it got ugly from the start. i loaded up 6 tables, couple 1/2 plo cap, couple 2/4 plo cap and two 1/2 nl games. over the first hour i made another $100 or so on the holdem tables but had lost my $300 profit from earlier in the night on the plo tables. a half hour later im now stuck like $500 in plo and like $200 total for the day. i wasn't really tilted and felt challenged to get unstuck. almost all the players in the plo games i was playing were just horrendous. on guy was playing 96% vpip and 66% pfr and went from $150 when i sat to about $1300, busted that, rebought for $200, ran that up to $3600 before going down to about $2700 when i left the table. (all at 2/4 $160 cap) so i closed out my holdem tables and 1/2 plo tables in favor for some 3/6 $240 cap plo games. a lot of the players that were in the 2/4 games were also in these games. shit kept going wrong and eventually one of the 2/4 tables broke. i opted to stay hoping it would get going again since now i was stuck like a grand. some random sits down w/ a $150 and instantly starts potting and repotting any 4 and stacks me like 4 times in literally 5 minutes and takes off. now im a little pissed so search the guy and get on a wait list where he is playing 2/4 uncapped plo hu. i sit down with him and take an early lead, then play a hand brutally and get stacked for a full buy-in, get stacked again and he's sitting on like $1500 after starting with like $500. i manage to stack him for a change to get back within $500 or so and he immediately sits out and leaves. i go back to my other tables, win a few pots, lose a few pots before finally deciding to call it a nite.

the end damage was close to $2600 in plo and i made about $300 in holdem putting my end result at a $2300 loss for the nite. at the time i wasn't that upset, it sucked but i didn't think that much about it. the next morning though i woke up and felt sick about it, i quickly started another session saturday and was down another $600 quick. i took a break and went to clear my head and do some thinking. i came to the conclusion that:

1. plo is high variance
2. i tilt easily playing plo more so than holdem
3. the games are great
4. i should stay at 1/2 cap for a while and probably not move up to 2/4 cap until im playing 2/4nl and get used to bigger swings.

so with that i came back and erased my $600 loss in plo playing 1/2 cap by making over $900 and putting +$300 on the day. i also booked a win playing holdem. then yesterday i played a short session booking another holdem win + a $600 win in 1/2 plo getting me right back into things. i think my holdem winnings over sat and sun were prob $500ish meaning out of the $2300 i lost friday night, i've made back $1400 of it. not bad.

in a year or so, i'll probably won't even blink at these numbers but for now, it's my craziest weekend yet.

tg