Grinding

Things haven't gone that well over the last few days regarding luck but I think I've made some good decisions both on and off the tables. Firstly I have halved my BR by withdrawing $42k and putting it into a savings account ready to pay my masters fees and temporary accomodation for the next few weeks while I try to find some people to share a house with. This was because I started to realise that I really couldn't afford to lose that money and no matter how small the risk of it happening was, it was just stupid not to keep it secure i.e. free from getting tilted off at $5knl HU or something similar. The remaining money I can just about afford to lose but I must admit I feel that I have suddenly become sensitive to the figures involved, probably because the money is now directly related to something very tangible as opposed to just being a random figure used to "keep the score".

Anyways... having halved my BR I was left with ~$45k to play with which was plenty for $1knl, unfortunately for me I then had a nasty downswing which involved both tilt and bad cards which I have blogged about before I think. Anyway basically what happened was I went down to about $35k but then had a $9k day and a couple more decent days to get back to $49k about 10 days or so ago. Since that time I dropped to $32k partly due to me playing a huge fish at $2knl HU and losing 4 buyins of which 3 were suckouts and one was a flip: AK(me) vs 99. Since then I have just had a terrible run of cards and unavoidable situations ie I reraise HU with AKs and hit TP+FD on the flop and end up getting allin against a set. AK seems to be a horrible hand for me at the moment, I seem to lose every pot I play with it but twice this week AK has beaten my AA allin preflop. I must admit its good to vent occasionally but I prefer to do it in relative privacy since peoples reactions tend to be predictably harsh if someone has done well then had a bad streak.

Right now I am at just under $37k with around $900 in rakeback to come in at the end of the month. Obviously I won't be playing any more $2knl for a long time because I just dont like the variance and my BR is too low anyway. Recently I have tightened up quite a bit and I have started to play some $500nl again as well as the $1knl, this is because I want to regain some confidence but also because I have a bigger edge in those games there is less variance and at the moment I just want to get back to more than $40k and stop the bleeding. My game is very confidence based and relies a lot on concentration which is just so hard to do when you get sucked out on every time. So basically I don't feel confident to pull the trigger sometimes which is taking the edge off my game, I am not that good at "ABC" poker and a lot of what I do is based on me predicting how people adjusting to my style and using that against them, but of course when I'm not being crazy that doesn't work. So at the moment I'm just grinding things out playing a bit of HU and 6max and trying to get some confidence back. Normally the money wouldn't bother me at all but halving your BR then having a 17 buyin downswing can be pretty shit, once I have built up a bit of a "buffer" then I know things will be fine again but for now I just need to ride the storm.

Finally I've decided to play the WCOOP HU event on stars since its only a $320 buyin and atleast it will be some good fun. Thats all for now, I'll keep things posted.