Time Out

   You got to lose,
   You can't win all the time,
   Well I know pretty baby,
   I see trouble coming down the line.        George Thorougood and the Destroyers

   Well it's Wednesday night, but unlike many many previous  Wednesdays, I'm not playing poker. After celebrating playing over a thousand hours of poker in my last post, I am now taking a break from all poker play. It's amazing how quickly things can change over the course of a few weeks.
   I mentioned in my last post that my bankroll hit an all-time high in mid-April, but since then things have taken a turn for the worse. The 'flat patch' that I was in has turned into a sudden steep downturn. Since the beginning of May I've cashed very seldom in SitnGos (3 thirds and 1 first in the last twenty games) and as a result I've had the first losing month since November of last year. As Texas Holdem SitnGos are my strongest game, this is a bit of a worry. I can't help thinking back to this time last year when my results started to decline and continued on a downward spiral through to November ('Midwinter Nosedive', 23 July 2012). I don't want that to happen again.

   But the problem is not so much the string of losses as the nature of those losses. As far as I can tell, I haven't altered my basic game-plan, but I just keep getting beaten. I seem to have been suffering an incredible run of bad cards and when I do get good cards I hit nothing, or some-one else has something better, or some fool calls with rags and draws out on me on the river. Now this sort of thing happens all the time in poker, but it seems to have been happening to me non-stop over the last few weeks. All this has led to a great deal of frustration, and the more frustrated I get, the more I make bad decisions, which just leads to more frustration.
   Playing Seven Card Stud hasn't helped in all this either. Although I knew it would be difficult learning a new game and although I am playing at the absolute lowest level to minimise any losses, my frustration has only increased every time I play this game. I thought that Pot Limit Omaha was a game invented by Satan himself, but it may be that Seven Card Stud is his true favourite. The game seems to be specifically designed to minimise the value of starting hands and to encourage players to draw all the way to seventh street (the seventh and final card). The vast majority of winning hands are made on seventh street and it's ABSOLUTELY DRIVING ME NUTS!
   As a result, I've been increasingly playing on tilt. I go into a SitnGo session with the knowledge that my recent results have been poor and consequentially, I'm desperate to win. Then, when something bad happens I'm thinking 'here we go again' and I start playing recklessly. It all came to a head a few days ago when I played in two SitnGos. In the first I suffered a bad beat to an inferior hand and decided to just push all in pre-flop whenever I got a halfway decent hand. I was thinking, 'come on, call this you jerks!' Of course I got knocked out early. Then in the second game I persisted in betting 3/4 of the pot on bottom pair and a gut-shot (inside) straight draw on every betting round. I simply refused to give credit to the calling player for a decent hand and got beaten out of most of my chips by top pair. Well duh! After that I decided to take a step back and take a couple of deep breaths.
   I took some time to take a look at my records and see if I could find a reason for this loss of form. So far, I've found nothing. I've been playing at the same level, on the same site, and often against the same players for some months. I don't think my play has become predictable, and I don't think I was playing any differently when this decline started. As far as I can tell, I've just hit a rough patch: a run of bad luck.

   So it's time to call a time out. The expert consensus seems to be, when things are running badly, take a break. Trying to play through a rough patch is not generally recommended. So I've decided to give poker-playing a rest for a while. As I came to this decision on May 22nd and the winter solstice is on June 22nd, I thought a month-long break might be appropriate. I've already lasted a whole week without playing any poker, so that's a good start.
   However, I don't think it's possible for me to stop thinking about poker. I'll use the time to read up on SitnGo strategy to see if I can pick up any useful advice. I've already checked out a couple of interesting websites: www.cardschat.com and www.suntzupoker.com . Both these sites recommend a SitnGo strategy that is pretty similar to the one I'm already using. I've also found a book at the local library that might be useful. So I'll take a look at that and spend some time looking through some of the other stuff that I've printed off from time to time but never really taken a good look at. At this stage, I'm planning to make my last poker-less week completely poker-free. No study, no planning, no nothing. I've got a big family event coming up in that week, so that should be suitably distracting.
   Then, come the shortest day, it's back into the fray  refreshed, rested and ready for anything. That's my theory anyway.