Taking a Step back and Jen Kicking Ass

This is a blog post that I wrote on September 10th. I had a few more things I wanted to add, but now I've forgotten what they were. Afterwards I'll have some comments from today.


I've been going through maybe the toughest stretch of my poker career over the past few months. It seems like no matter what I do my wins keep getting washed away by my losses. When you're playing for fun, breaking even is fine and most casual players would be thrilled to do so. When you're playing for a living, breaking even is a disaster. The bills don't stop showing up in the mail box just because you've lost with pocket aces what seems like 47,000 times in the last 2 months.

Not surprisingly, it can be stressful to lose or break even when you're used to winning. It's part of the job and every player no matter how good is going to go through some dry spells. I got the idea that I would write e-mails to any poker authority I could find and ask them how they deal with the losing stretches. Before taking this step, however, I thought I should first answer the question myself as if I were getting the e-mail.

So what's the best thing to do when you've been losing? Nothing will help you win more than winning. Well, what the hell does that mean? It means that you tend to play your best when you're ahead or you've had a string of winning days. When things are going well it's easy to stay patient, confident, have fun, and shrug off short stretches of bad luck. On the other hand when you've been losing it can seem like nothing is ever going to go right for you again and it's easy to start making non optimal plays in an effort to get even quickly. Another way to think about it is, if you're ahead $500 for the day, winning another $20 seems like a nice little bonus, but if you're stuck $500 it's easy to think "who cares about this stupid $20." Most of poker isn't massive bluffs or making full houses; it's taking advantage of small edges many, many times. When you start thinking about any amount of money or chips as insignificant you're in trouble.

So how do you start winning so you can keep winning? After all it's not like you were trying to lose before. One way to accomplish this goal is to take a step back and drop down a limit. You don't need to take it all the way to the floor and start playing the lowest limit you can find, but play for a little less money against weaker players and book a few wins.

Another thing that's important for someone like me is to get back to basics. I play poker in many flavors and varieties and while I'm good enough to win at all of them (I think), I'm certainly much better at some than others. Think about what your absolute best game is and in what form you are best at playing it. Maybe it's limit cash games in person, or 7-card stud tournaments online. For me it's traditionally been single table NL hold'em tournaments.

The most important thing you can do when you've been losing is do everything you can to win. Get plenty of sleep, eat right, drink less alcohol, and get some exercise. Treating your body right will help your mind stay sharp. Take every hand seriously. Set defined hours that you're going to play regardless of your results. Reread any literature that has helped you in the past. Do some critical thinking about your tactics. Do whatever it takes!

Now for my October 27th update. When I wrote the above post, I was feeling really down and my confidence was at an all time low. For the first time in 3+ years the idea that I might have to get a job squeaked into my head. I was still quite a few really bad months away from that possibility, but it just felt like I was never going to win regularly again. Deep down I knew it didn't make sense that I could win 34 of the first 36 months in my career and then just all of a sudden not be a winning player, but that's how it felt.

So what did I do? Well I took a day off and then got back on my horse. I also took my own advice. I started taking better care of myself. I dropped down to the $55 SNG's as opposed to the $100's. I backed off from 6 games at a time to 5 games at a time (it may not seem like a big difference, but it is). Guess what happened? I started winning again. Between September 12th and September 30th I played 17 of the 19 days, had 14 winning days and ended up winning $5,800. Somewhere in there I jumped back up to $100 SNG's and I continued to win through October. I took a week off at the beginning of the month when my friend Brian Ridgeway from Maryland and his girlfriend Andrea came to visit, but I've still managed to net close to $4,000 this month. $4,000 a month is a little below expectation. $5,000-$6,000 a month is par for the course, but considering the week off and the way things had been going I'll gladly take it.

Also thing were going even better until I took a major ass whipping two days ago. I was coming off a $1,400 wining day the day before, when I just got totally smoked. I played 27 $114 SNG's (I usually just refer to these as $100's) and when the dust cleared I had five 9th place finishes and only four money finishes. In the long run I've averaged a 9th place about 1 in every 25 tournaments and have made the money about 42% of the time so this was a real shock. It was like I was playing with a normal deck and my opponents were getting their cards from a deck with 10 aces and 12 kings. I lost with KK vs AA 3 times! That's only supposed to happen once every 5,000+ hands! I ended up losing $1,775 which was my worst losing day online since May. At least I was coming off a solid winning day.

Now back to more good news! As an added bonus to my recent return to respectability my wife has been tearing it up pokerwise lately. She is the only poker player in the entire universe who underrates her abilities. Most people who lose their ass on a daily basis will tell you how great they are at every opportunity. Jen on the other hand will swear until she's blue in the face that 1) she is not a good player 2)she is lucky to have more than $20 in her account 3)she couldn't beat a drunken 10 year old if they were playing their cards face up. This is not the case.

After taking a few months off from playing poker regularly for whatever reason she got back into it effectively because I made her (I'm a fiendish tyrant!). It all started with a pokerstars reload bonus. From time to time the websites will give you incentive to deposit more money into your account. What they do is match some percentage (usually around 20%) of your deposit up to a certain maximum. You can only cash out the bonus money once you've played a certain amount. In this case it was a 20% match up to a max of $120. For the average player it might take them a few weeks or even longer to earn the bonus, but it takes me about 2 and a half hours so I'm always happy to take advantage of these offers. While I knew it would take Jen much longer, I also knew this bonus would add a lot to her bottom line. She'd already started to play a little on the now defunct party poker so I didn't have to push too hard to get her to make a deposit on pokerstars.

She started playing the $55 SNG's which, not surprisingly, is the thing she is best at also (she's had some solid coaching). She was playing 2 at a time while watching TV in the evenings and it seemed like everytime I'd ask how she was doing she'd say "Oh I'm ahead $350" like it was $1.75. She earned the bonus in no time, but was having so much success that she kept on playing. In the beginning of October she picked up some more cash playing something a little different.

Pokerstars also offers what are called "multitable SNG's." There are a few flavors, but the ones Jen started playing were $20 buy in, 20 table tournaments. Basically the way it works is as soon as 180 players register for the tournament it starts. There are always exactly 20 tables of 9 players and they always pay 18 spots with the exact same prizes (18th pays $43, 9th pays $61, 5th pays $234 and 1st pays $1,080 just to give a few examples). Jen played 1 of these every day for 5 days and made the final table THREE TIMES including one 1st place (she also got a 5th and a 4th)! It was pretty sweet for her to pick up $1,500 playing $20 tournaments. It's amazing how much easier it is to beat players who suck instead of players who are just a little worse than you.

In the past few weeks Jen had been working on another deposit bonus on another site. This one is a 100% match up to $550, so it takes MUCH, MUCH longer to clear it. But her success has continued.

How much has she won? She won a fantastic $2,600 in September and an insane $4,200 in October! It's amazing to win that much money in such a short period playing 2 games at a time. Notice that in October, she's made more than me while working 3 days a week and doing the lion's share of the cooking and cleaning. It makes me feel like a real dead beat to read that sentence. I'm lucky to have her.

So why isn't she quitting her job to pursue a career as a poker pro? If you asked her she'd give you three reasons: 1) she is not a good player 2)she is lucky to have more than $20 in her account 3)she couldn't beat a drunken 10 year old if they were playing their cards face up. In addition to those main points I think she doesn't want the pressure of having to play or having to win. If you look back at my post about going pro, you'll notice that one of my main points is if you're going to play for a living you better LOVE to play. It can't be something you sort of want to do some of the time. With that said if she wanted to quit and play more I'd be all for it.