When Poker Doesn't Go Your Way

Hey everyone!! I finally been thinking about the past 6 or 7 weeks since I went through my misfortune of what they call a downswing. First off, what really is a downswing? To most, people think they are running terrible, getting sucked out on, losing flips, etc etc. Not that i'm say that I don't have this downswing like others because I really feel like I do day in and day out. Believe me when I say it....I run bad. But I put in tons of volume, so i'm gonna have tons of swings all over the place. What I have been thinking about over this reflection of what has happened is it isn't any different than what I go through over the past 3-4 months, and those months I had winning results. I think over this period of stretch, my game changed to the point of tilt. All the bad beats, suck outs, flips that I couldn't win, overpairs vs underpairs that lost all in pf and overpairs in 3b pots that couldn't win. and draws that I couldn't get there with really got to me. I started getting it in a bit lighter, calling 3bets a little more, cold calling raises, getting aggressive in all the wrong spots led to my disaster. I didn't really think about all this before my last few days I left to go to California.

Basically my winning month in September turned into even stevens. I think I ended up winning like $350 for the month, which was unfortunate because I was having my best month in September, up almost $3k. Than I carried over my same game into October and still ended up losing for the month. Granted, I only played 2 week worth of hands, but still managed to put in almost 100k hands and lost about $800 for the month.

So what has changed since then? Not much I guess besides working on my game. I basically am starting back at basics. Trying to regroup and do what I did months ago and working on each aspect of the game while acquiring new knowledge of things. So when poker doesn't go how you expect, you have to think about what your doing. Like I said get back to basics, discuss hands, what videos, read a poker book or two. I've been trying in whatever small spare time I have, but I've been watching a few vids and trying to find time to get on the poker forums.

Since my parents left back to Thailand which was November 9th, I started grinding again. Since I started back up, I'm pretty much still trying to get my game going. It seems a little better, but basically I'm close to break even for the month which sucks, but better than losing tons of BI's. I'm only play 50NL at the moment and hopefully start back up at 100nl soon. I just need to get back in the groove and start winning again. If I don't, then I'm gonna have to reevaluate myself and poker.

If has been one rough ride and when you keep losing or breaking even, the best thing to do is just play your A game and don't change anything or play differently because you can go on tilt really fast. You might not even notice until it's too late. It took me 3 weeks to notice and it wasn't pretty. I still deal with the issue on a daily basis, but it is getting better. I feel a lot better and not so upset about my sessions and life. Maybe taking the past 3 weeks off is something I needed. We will have to see how the rest of my year ends because as of now, SNE is not looking like it will be in my cards for next year unless I have some huge heater coming up.

Since I rely on poker to take care of my family, moving up just doesn't seem like the best thing to do and risking my bankroll right now is not what I can do. I'm going to continue on improving and move back on up!!

Hope everyone else is running better than me!!! Good Luck!!

Jeff