I was excited yesterday when my downswing started because I saw it as an opportunity. I'd spent time thinking about how I would handle a downswing and here was my chance to apply it. Considering that I want to be a NL200 reg, dealing with NL200 downswings and the new level of money being lost was a big mental hump that I knew I'd have to get over, and here was my chance to do it.
My plan was to stick to my 3 buyin stop loss, and once I felt I was running like total shit I'd move down to NL100 6max and NL50 HU. I also planned to take breaks where I'd do walks, exercise, and just mental examination to get back into a good mindframe.
I stuck to my plan very well. First session I dropped nearly 3 buyins, then recovered to a 1.5 buyin loss. Thought it might just be a small dip and not the real downswing. Took a break and when I was feeling good and confident I did another session. This one just kicked my ass. Floated around 2 buyins lost and then had a rush of big hands where I got coolered / sucked out on and suddenly I was down 4.5 buyins, so I quit.
This is where I made my mistake. I took a break and told myself I would do 1 more 3 buyin stop loss session of NL200 and if it went bad I'd move down. I wasn't convinced that I was running bad or that I'd keep running bad. At that point I should have moved down to NL100 or quit for the day. So I've adjusted my plan to be more specific for dealing with downswings - from now on if I have 2 sessions in a row where I run like total shit then I will conclude I am starting a downswing and will either A) quit for the day or B) Move down at least 1 limit. And by definition a session always has a 3buyin stop loss.
I went back and did the third session and got rapeddddd. Same type of thing. Was down by 2 buyins really quick, floated there for a while, then hit some big hands that I thought would bring me into the green but lost in setups/beats and suddenly I was down a little more than 4 buyins on the session, so I quit. And I felt like shit, because it was suddenly very obvious to me that a 3rd NL200 session was idiotic. You can't beat variance when it decides to shit on you. I've learned this lesson before. I've moved down limits really fast before. But I didn't do it this time. It was stupid.
So the first lesson learned is that I need a better "dealing with a downswing" plan. Here it is for future reference.
1) Always follow a 3 buyin stop loss - don't feel like you need to hit 3 to quit though, it's fine to quit at 2.
2) After quitting a bad session don't check your BR or to see how much you lost. Just review hands and then take a break. Use the break time to take a walk, exercise, watch poker videos, play video games, go out with the GF, and overall get into a good mindframe. It's ok to take the rest of the day off if you can't get mentally solid again.
3) If you have 2 sessions in a row where you run like total dog shit, accept the fact that you're downswinging. Move down immediately. There's nothing wrong with playing a few thousand hands at a lower limit till things are going well again. Don't feel like you need to keep playing - quitting for the day is a great option. But if you do play more you need to move down. And when you come back for your next session, whether it's the same day or 3 days later, play it at a lower limit.
That's the first lesson. The second is much trickier and has been identified for a while now, but I still don't fully understand the root of the problem and I have very few ideas on how to fix it.
What I've realized is that I'm doing the exact opposite of what I should. I play too much when losing and too little while winning. I don't know why this happens. I do know that when I am having winning session after winning session they keep getting shorter. As soon as I win 2-3 buyins I stop. The reason I stop is because suddenly I get distracted, sometimes I get nerves in my gut, or I get apathetic, but overall my mental state wanes. I don't feel 100% in the game, I don't feel like I'm on my A game, so I quit.
On the other side, when I start a session and lose a buyin or break even for 500 hands, if I'm playing well then I am eager to keep playing for at least another 500 hands. I want to grind. I don't get any feelings other than a desire to be more aware and play even better. Eventually if I lose too much or take too many beats, I start to tilt, but my first reaction to a losing session is a passion to play more and better.
I need to switch those things around. I need my body and mind to get that drive to play more and better when I win 2-3 buyins so that I keep grinding. I need my body and mind to get those butterflies, nerves and apathy when I lose 1-3 buyins so that I stop. I've created these mental associations that are deep and ingrained in my body and they are triggered by circumstances at the poker table, and when they are triggered they affect my play and my stamina. I need to figure out why they were created in the first place and then I need to switch them, because playing too much while losing and too little while winning is my biggest leak right now.
I think that a big part of why I stop playing after winning a few buyins is that I am scared to lose it. I look at the profit and think "oh that's a nice winning session, might as well stop now cause I'll feel like shit if I lose it all in the next 100 hands and then quit at break even". I'm too worried about variance and not thinking at all about the long term. I'm far too focused on short term results. And I'm far too scared to lose money. I shouldn't even be thinking about how much I win or lose in any given session. It's not important.
To combat that I have a few ideas and am open to any suggestions you guys may have.
1) Don't check my BR or HEM results after a winning session. Right now I won't check that stuff after a losing session, but if I think I won money I am eager to close down the tables and see how the session went. Then I stare at it for a while and get a big boner. Then I look at my month long graph to see how the line is going and start to cum. lol. Seriously though, it's bad. From now on I'm going to check results at most 1 time a day, which will be in the morning. I will go to bed without looking at my results and when I wake up in the morning I'll check to see how I did the previous day. And that's at MOST - I am going to try going several days without checking results.
2) Refocus on the long term. At the end of the day the BR will go up and down and up and down, but if you play well it will go up more often than down and the end result is a bigger BR. I know this. I've seen this. And I've played with a long term mentality for most of my poker career. I lost that the last 10 days or so. I need to focus on one hand at a time and making sure that I play every single one perfectly. I need to focus on putting in the hours. It doesn't matter if I have 5 winning sessions in a row or 5 losing sessions in a row, because the only way I'm really going to make money is by playing LOTS of sessions. A heater is just the same as a downswing, I'm making the same amount of money even if my BR is going up fast or slow. A downswing is just variance taking back what I earned when I didn't deserve it, and a heater is variance giving back what I lost when I shoulda won it. They balance each other out in the end. It reminds me of a poem I used to recite to myself a lot because it was a list of life lessons. It's called "If" by Rudyard Kipling and the part I'm thinking of is:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
Those two impostors. We always focus on learning how to deal with horrible times, painful downswings, and how to not let that type of thing affect us. But we don't ever focus on dealing with the good times, the heaters. The ability to treat a heater and a downswing exactly the same is what I want. Don't get all giddy about all the money won on a heater just like I shouldn't get all depressed by money lost in a downswing. Treat them the same.
Alright, that's all I can think of for now. Comments would be greatly appreciated, and definitely want to hear any suggestions that come to mind!
For now I'm going to do NL100 for a bit. I think I'll aim to win 10 buyins before moving back up but I'm not going to be too solid on that. Basically I'll wait till I feel confident and am playing well and am not running like shit. I'm still well rolled for NL200 so it's all good.
Well the downswing kept coming and it kept coming hard. Been taking breaks and then coming back to play and done some great plays but there's no way to avoid bad beats and coolers. It's funny cause every time I hit a big hand I'm either in a flush under flush or set under set type of situation, or the board turns it into a split by the river. I basically keep getting to say hello to the top of everyones range! =)
Oh well, gonna move down for a bit till I feel better. Lost like 10 buyins over 3 sessions. Gogo 3 buyin stop losses though =)
Finally ran bad today and lost 3.5 buyins in 200 hands. Nothing worked, nothing hit, and I made one spew by triple barell bluffing in a bad spot. Didn't get tilted at all, just played solid and won some of it back to have a 1.5 buyin loss.
Kind of a relief to run bad after running so good for a while. It wasn't feeling like real poker. To always win flips and nearly always hit flops that I can maneuver on was crazy. Everytime a shortstacker shoved if I had 99-JJ they'd have overs and miss. Finally today I get it in with JJ vs a shortstackers shove and he has AA.
It's like, this shit has to happen eventually. When it doesn't happpen for a long stretch of time I just start thinking "wtf, this isn't right". Also I played the last several months where I got nonstop raped by bad variance, so I'm much more accustomed to this stuff than the long heaters.
It was nice to play a session where I didn't run like god and still feel like I played well. I was worried that when I started to run even or bad that I'd lose my touch or mindset or that maybe I'm just winning only cause of a heater, but despite the rape being dropped on me in every hand I felt really confident. So it's reassuring to know that I'll be ok no matter how the variance comes.
Anyway, overall good month so far. Excited to keep playing. If I keep running bad I'll probably play some NL100 or NL50 HU. If I start running godly again I'll keep doing NL200.
Jim Cramer was on the Daily Show last night after a week of John Stewart skewering him and CNBC. It was pretty fucking awesome. Not the funniest interview ever, but epic in a "holy shit he's laying the smack down" type of way.
If you have no idea what the history behind this is, click the spoiler. Otherwise check out the epic interview below!
It all started when Rick Santeli, the CNBC Reporter who had the melt down on the floor of the NYSE and called home owners with bad mortgages losers, didn't show up for his interview on the Daily Show. John had planned to show an 8 minute piece about CNBC being full of shit before the interview, but since Rick didn't come they just showed that and dissed him a bit. Here it is:
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As part of that clip you saw that they had Jim Cramer of "Mad Money" caught in some BS. The next day John Stewart was on Letterman and he kept going after CNBC:
CNBC waited till late Friday to respond so that they'd have the weekend for things to calm down before John Stewart had another chance to do a show. Their response was that John Stewart was "bizarrely obsessed" with Santelli... the old "you stalker" trick. Jim Cramer also wrote an article claiming that the Daily Show unfairly attacked him... so Monday Night John Stewart retaliated:
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elative; background-color:#e5e5e5;padding-left:3px; height:14px; padding-top:2px; overflow:hidden;'>The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Tuesday was fun as Cramer made the rounds of all the NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC shows to fight back. Some examples:
JIM CRAMER: A comedian's attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!
MEREDITH VIEIRA: Okay, but you know what he's saying about you, that you advised investors to buy Bear Stearns. You said you were taken out of context.
CRAMER: On October 6th, 2008, I came on this show and did something you're never supposed to do if you have a stock show. I said people should sell everything. That was thirty-five percent ago. Whatever he says about Bear Stearns, this or that, that was a call that should have wrecked my career, and it would have if the market had gone up.
Gogo John! This is the type of interview that needs to be happening, not all the soft ball BS that regular reporters do. It's crazy that a comedy news show is doing the best reporting and most real interviews out there. Plus it was civil (some cursing but overall respectful), which was a great change from the MSM talking heads who just yell over each others BS. I feel like Cramer actually redeemed himself a little bit and at the end of the day this interview left a bit of hope that something productive came out of it, as Cramer seemed to have been put in his place and made promises to make changes in his approach to his show and reporting... we'll see if he lives up to that or if he goes back to the same BS he was doing before.
Any other lost fanatics bother to buy/play this game? It's kind of like being in an episode of lost. The gameplay is nothing special so far, but what makes it enjoyable is when the cinematic scenes come up and it's like you get to watch new LOST scenes.
I've got this new 23" monitor and the game doesn't seem to understand how to set up on a widescreen so it looks pretty funky, and I can't find any video options to change it. The only video options they have is brightness. WTF rite?
I find that the more poker I play the less video games I want to play. At least that's how I've felt for the last few months. I tried L4D and was disappointed, never played again. Tried fallout3 and was disappointed, stopped playing. Now I'm messing with this lost game and as a game it sux but I'm such a lost addict that this game is something I think I will finish.
It's weird though, even my 2 staple games, BW and CS, are boring to me. I guess with BW I just suck so much that the game is frustrating. My APM is shit so I tend to lose cause I can't control anything. It's like I know what I want to do but can't get it to happen cause I'm too slow. So I lose stupidly and get frustrated. No fun at all. As for CS, it's just overall boring. Haven't had a lot of shooting people desires lately. Plus I wanna play the original dust, not dust 2, but that's like impossible to find these days, especially on source.
I miss having fun video games where I got totally absorbed. Halflife 1 and 2 were great for that. All the hitman games. The first splinter cell game. BW and Warcraft were like that when they first came out. And there was a great war game called flashpoint that I totally loved years ago but there's nothing like it now and the game is so old that it looks like shit and isn't fun to play anymore. And COD4 modern warfare hooked me and I beat it in a 1 night marathon session. Halo1 kind of had that effect on me, where I was absorbed in a new world and time just flew by. Halo 2 lost me about halfway through and I never finished it. Actually the only new game that I've played and been really into was Gears of War. Fucking sweet game. Can't wait till GOW2 comes out for PC.
Mostly I'm spending gaming time on the Wii playing old Zelda's. I beat the NES version and am on the SuperNintendo version now. I started Ocarina of time right after I beat twilight princess but the contrast btwn the 2 was too strong. The graphics and gameplay were far inferior and it was hard to get past it. So I figured that if I played NES/SNES versions then Ocarina would feel like an upgrade, heh.
My god, this has turned into a super long video game rambling post. That was not the intention. I just kinda got started and went off.
To sum it all up, I miss the good old days of amazing games that had a great storyline, awesome gameplay, and sucked you into a new world. Games that you think back and remember them as a place you went or experience you had, where you don't even remember the keyboard or monitor, but your memory is as if you were actually there. God, I have memories like that from my childhood of games like DOOM.
I'm bored and see that no one got to read my attempt at a funny post about Palin hilarity, hence a bump.
btw it's weird that all of LP's degen's are slowly becoming solid non-degen players... marshall and neilly are changing their ways. At least neilly is still taking risks like the drive accross the country, which should be fun to read about. Props to him for that, it's a ballsy move to make and honestly if I was single I'd probably do something like it.
Luckily we have this new sebboss to fill up the shoes that marshall and neilly are leaving empty!
Couldn't think of a title short enough to encapsulate all the lols. Yeah, I know, who cares about these poor kids, leave em alone, blah blah. But I can't help but laugh to see more of Palin's hypocracy and BS come to light.
If you dunno what I'm talking about, Bristol Palin (Sarah Palin's Daughter) and Levi Johnston (her baby's daddy) have broken up after months of lies and BS about how they were gonna be married after Bristol's teen pregnancy was revealed during the presidential campaign.
Now's Levi's sister, Mercede is telling all exclusively to Star and the picture she paints of life in Wasilla, Alaska is not a pretty one. Bristol, 18, has virtually cut Levi out of the life of their two-month-old son Tripp.
"Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible. She tells him he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash'!" Bristol won't even allow him to watch the baby for a few hours -- unless he's babysitting!
WASILLA, Alaska — Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby. Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided "a while ago" to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family's home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.
He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.
Bristol Palin said in a statement that she was devastated about a report on Star magazine's Web site that quoted Levi's sister, Mercede, as saying Bristol "makes it nearly impossible" to visit the teenagers' infant son, Tripp. The baby was born Dec. 27.
"Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to `cash in' on the Palin name," said the statement, which was issued through the governor's political action committee. "Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth."
SarahPAC spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton did not immediately respond to calls seeking further information. The governor's spokesman, Bill McAllister, declined comment.
Sarah Palin revealed her daughter's pregnancy just days after being named John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. She had said in December that her daughter and Johnston "are committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child."
In an interview that aired on Fox News last month, Bristol Palin said her fiance saw the baby every day and described him as a "hands-on" dad.
Johnston and Palin had said they were considering a summer wedding.
"We both love each other," he told the AP in October. "We both want to marry each other. And that's what we are going to do."
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Associated Press writer Anne Sutton in Juneau contributed to this report.
I always felt bad for the guy cause he knocked up the one girl at the one moment in time where there was no way in hell he could get an abortion. He had to hope and pray that McPalin won so that he could live the good life and get paid to stay with Bristol for the sake of Sarah Palin's image. But he was screwed cause by the time Palin lost it would be too late to get an abortion. So the kid was coming whether he wanted it or not and then the election turned out shitty for him. They've slowly pushed him out and now he's just another "white trash" high school drop out with a kid he will rarely ever see and national fame for some embarrassing shit.
The hypocrisy and BS emanting from the Alaskan governors mansion is just unbelievable, and I have no idea how so many people actually thought so highly of Palin. And no, I'm not saying that the "shotgun wedding" is the one reason Palin is horrible, it's just another thing on a long list of disgusting traits, actions and behavior on her Part that makes me SOOOOO happy that she and McCain didn't win.
I think it's easy for most of us poker players to forget how bad things are getting. I'm personally having my biggest winning month ever so I definitely don't feel poor or scared about the economy. The poker tables aren't as juicy as they were 8 months ago, but it's still easy to make money. Poker players are not really getting hit by the wave of suffering that is touching most people in the USA and is starting to spread to the rest of the world.
I was shocked today when I was at my part time job, which is with a non-profit organization, to find out about tent city's building up in California filled with lots of middle class professionals that were hit when the economy went crashed. We're officially in the worst recession since the great depression with the highest job loss, and the global economy has shrunk for the first time since world war 2.
Tent cities are springing up in California as thousands of people hit hard by foreclosures and big job losses say they have nowhere else to go.
Many of those seeking shelter had good jobs and stable family lives until the economy spun out of control.
Some 300 people call a tent city in Sacramento home, including Tracy Vaughan, who moved to the city with her husband six months ago.
"We both worked for the same company, we both got laid off on the same day," she said.
"So yeah, it just kind of happened."
Another resident, Erich Platz, says there is no work to be had, making getting by tough.
"Nothing going on in concrete, nothing going on in carpentry, the housing - there's no boom any more so it's busted," he said.
Tent cities are cropping up at an alarming rate. Many shelters have run out of beds to accommodate the growing number of homeless.
Garren Bratchin from the Loaves and Fishes charity says the organization has seen a 20 per cent jump in the number of homeless people using its services.
"It's been entire families, not just the guy that decides to leave his wife and get drunk - whole families; three or four, five people at a time," he said.
New figures show in February another 650,000 Americans lost their jobs, fuelling fears tented communities like this one will become more common.
I encourage all of you to do what you can to help. For the ballers who only have to play a week or two a month to bring in big cash, you can give some of your time. Personally I enjoy my life a lot more when I spend a few days a week working at this job and helping out than when I only poker 24/7. And if you're not the type to give time, give money. It's win/win cause you can deduct it from your taxes and instead of the gov getting your monies an organization which is on the ground helping people can get it.
If you're not a baller you might be getting affected by this recession yourself and be on hard times. But if you're doing ok you should look into things like food and clothing drives in your local area. There's a lot of that going on and if you have extra things laying around there are a LOT of people who need em now.
Non profits and community organizations which have been around for years trying to help the needy and improve local communities are closing their doors because they can't get funding. Granting foundations have tightened up because all their money was tied up in the stock market or Bernie Maddof, so the money they used to get interest on and grant to nonprofits has shrunk in half or worse. Without regular people donating what they can lots of great community organizations and nonprofits will disappear. Everything that isn't government or church run is facing the high probability of shutting down.
I work for a non-profit called PeaceJam that brings Nobel Peace Prize winners together with youth to work on service projects, teaching them the skills they need to get active in their own communities and make a difference, and giving them the inspiration via the Nobels. PeaceJam is mainly funded by grants but now grants are hard to come by, so I am seeing first hand the hard times that nonprofits are facing. But even though nonprofits are facing the possibility of shutting down they're working hard to help all the people getting screwed. There's constant clothing/food drives being run outta our office these days and lots of other service projects taking place. Many people are trying to help but things are just really bad right now.
I have no idea what the solution is to all of this but I do know that a lot of good Americans are getting screwed over right now so anything we can do to help, or are willing to do, is going to be much appreciated. I hope you guys look up local nonprofits / community organizations in your area and either donate time or money, cause either would be very appreciated right now. I'm positive about that.
Here are some sites you can check out to find nonprofits in your area:
http://www.missionfish.org/ - you can donate part of your ebay auction proceeds to a non-profit thanks to these guys
http://www.mtdn.com/Default.aspx - This is Make The Difference Network which is a social networking page for non-profits and donors to connect.
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