My Worst Losing Streak Ever?

I can't say for sure since I'm not willing to look back over years of records, but I think I'm in the midst of my worst losing streak ever! I know I've lost on 8 consecutive days in the past, and while I'm only on a 5 day downswing I've dropped in the neighborhood of ten grand since I got back from vacation! ACK!

After getting beat down for $3K on Wednesday, I lost almost $4K on Thursday. Then after two moderate $400 losses I lost about $2K today. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you that it sucks (you can tell how much by all of the exclaimation points I'm using!)! I feel like I'm playing OK, if not well, but for whatever reason I'm just getting smoked.

While there's never a good time to go on a major losing streak, this is really bad timing. I'm up against the wall with the end of the year looming and my FPP's not quite where the need to be (I'm at about 910,000 points for the year). I just can't take a day off to regroup which is what I'd normally do. I can't even drop down a limit since I need my point production to be a full capacity.

To make matters worse my account balance is getting a little short. Normally I like to keep about $20K in pokerstars, but after paying off a few backers for the FTOPS with transfers and the beatings I've been taking I'm down to about $5K. I've actually had to resort to depositing (GASP! I'll never live down the shame!) to keep enough dough in there for me to do my thing.

The good news is I'm not feeling as bad as you might expect. In fact if I could have any kind of winning day at all tomorrow I'd be happy. After all I killed last month and in about three days or so I'll be clearing a $4,000 FPP block. The only thing that has me worried is that perhaps the games have gotten tougher as a result of the economic crisis or perhaps I've changed something slightly in the way that I'm playing. When you play 4,000 hands a day, even the smallest change can have a big effect.

It's probably just the natural ebb and flow of the stakes, but the longer this type of thing goes on the more likely it's an internal problem and not outside factors so I'm constantly trying to reevealuate everything when I have a losing streak.

I just read a poker article today that quoted Winston Churchill. Apparently he once said "If you find yourself going through Hell, keep walking." I'm not going to dig myself out of this hole with inaction. When it comes down to it there's really nothing for me to do, but keep playing, try to play my best and know that it's going to turn around eventually.