Time to reflect

Poker is the strangest of games, massive highs followed by the deepest of lows. At the moment, I am in an all time low in my confidence. After the major tilt I had last week, I managed to pull myself together and pull back some of the loss over the 7 day period following, I did not play much, but when I did, I didn't make any mistakes.

Tonight however, I was back in my old calling station mode, stacking off too light yet again, I thought this was one of the leaks I had removed from my game, however it def reared its ugly head again. 3 times tonight I walked into sets and stacked off. Once with KK and I couldn't lay down post flop, even when I put him on a set or str8, I still called the river shove. Then stacked off with AQs on a QTx board after I had 3 bet pre and he flat called with TT. The final one was just a cooler after I raised pre with 88 and the board came T82. I bet the flop, got raised, I min raised and he shoved. My heart knew he had TT, but I am never folding in that spot, there are so many other hands he could have, I just would have to pay him off if he had it, which of course he did.

So after a good start to the month on laddies taking me 5 buyins up in the first two days, the next 17 days have been a 14 buying downswing, by far the biggest of my cash game playing days.

I thought I was prepared for it, but I guess I am not. the strange thing is, its not the actual amount of $$ that I have lost as I am well overolled, but its the blow to the confidence that I may not actually be able to make a profit out of this game and that I am not getting any better.

I really would like to take a couple of weeks off, but I might have to wait until June as of course if I stop now, I would end up losing my ground in the rake race on laddies which at the moment, if I can stay at my current loss for the month, will still make the month profitable as I would be getting $600 courtesy of lads/rake the rake.

The other annoying thing is that I always like to reach milestones, only small ones, but they provide me with incentives to play, the last one was just getting my laddies balance above £1000, which by the 8th of this month I had managed to do, however as you can see by the last 10 days or so, that balance has almost halved, again its not really about the money, its more about the failure.

So its def time to reflect on what to do. Some people say take a break, others say ride it out. I was one of the people that would always say ride it out if you are playing well, but at the moment, I don't think that is the case.

I think I will see how tomorrow goes, then I have got a live event down me local on weds, then a few winonas at the quiz on Thursday, so that will be a couple of days off at least. With the bank holiday coming up I think it might be a good idea to do a couple of day trips to take my mind of poker for a bit, hopefully this will clear the mind so I can get my focus back and start getting the graph pointing the right way again.

Anyway, for those of you haven't seen this clip, if you are as down as I am with poker at the moment, things could always be worse........always makes me smile



Oh, and if your not a poker fan and don't know who Dave Ulliot, the song is loosely based on one of my fave bands at the moment

The Ting Tings - Thats not my name.