November 2010 Poker Results - Still Bleeding

This is my fifth losing month in a row. Sure, I only lost about four buy-ins in actual dollars. (The big blind graph is skewed because I played two different levels in stakes.) That's really not too much. I've lost more than that in a single day. So losing just 4 buy-ins for the entire month isn't bad. It's a little less than last month, and a lot less than the two months prior to that. Still, I've been running so badly for so long now that I pretty much question how I was able to be a winning player for over a year. Especially when I look at how things have turned around so horribly.

At this point, as sad as it sounds, I would've been thrilled to just break even for a month. I think I might actually cry tears of joy if I made even just $1 after not having a winning month in so long.

I don't want to make excuses. I do make mistakes. I also run into horrible variance on a regular basis. (See the AA hand I posted recently for a perfect example.) This seems to happen more than the mistakes. (I'm always looking for the mistakes so that I don't repeat them.)

Look at this version of my graph to see what I mean. The thinner green line is my expected value. Simply put, it shows what my expected profit would be when the money goes in. As you can see it at one point (not coincidentally, the largest drop off) it wildly diverges with the thick green line (the actual profit) going way down, while the EV line goes up.

I just can't seem to string together a consistent string of winning sessions. Even when I do start winning, I'll suffer one huge loss, and then just constantly get hammered on over the next few days. It snowballs and suddenly I'm dipping below the zero line.

I bust my ass. I play 365 days a year. I haven't missed a single day since I started playing. Even if I'm sick, I manage to squeeze in a half hour. When I'm not playing I'm studying the game. To put in a ton of work and have negative results sucks. It's incredibly frustrating to have this sort of sustained losing streak. It's completely destroyed my confidence. I try to have a positive attitude, but it's getting harder and harder.

On the positive side, I've mostly managed to learn to quit when things are going badly. I did stick around past my stop loss on one session, and it was a mistake. That's saved me some money. Of course, it's problematic when sometimes a single hand (like getting it in pre with AA deep-stacked) goes over my stop loss. I generally make the correct plays, and repeatedly get punished for it.

I'll just keep putting the work in at the tables and away from them. Busto or robusto.