Winter is over, the weather is getting warmer the spring flowers are in bloom and I've finished working on my winter season poker summary. The results however, are not great. It appears that I'm still in the middle of a massive downswing and my poker bankroll balance continues to drop faster than a gannet diving on a fish. So I figured that I'd better take a closer look and see if I could find some sort of clue as to what is going on. I went back into my records over the last six years and crunched a few numbers and then distilled the numbers down into a few simple conclusions in an effort to make some sort of sense of it all. Here's what I came up with:
* I showed a small (2%) loss in 2015 but 2014, 16 and 17 were all profitable years. 2018 was the first year that showed a significant loss.
* There were 3 negative seasons out of 16 in the four years from 2014 to 2017, then 5 losing seasons out of 7 in the last two years.
* The biggest contributors to losses over the last two years have been live tournaments, casino ring games and live re-buys.
* In spring 2018 and winter 2019 all game types were showing losses.
* Of all the online game types I've played over the last six years, only the low buy-in tournaments have shown a profit, along with a few seasons of micro stakes cashies.
* Live tournaments were mostly a winning game type up until late 2017/early 2018, when they became mostly losers.
* Live re-buy tournaments were doing okay in 2016, then became 50/50 propositions at best in 2017/18.
* All short-stack casino ring game seasons were in the negative.
* The downswing started in August 2017 and continued through to August 2019 with two short upswings between. In this period my bankroll dropped by nearly half.
Looking at this, it seems obvious that something drastic happened to my poker games some time in 2018 and has continued to this day. There are three possible explanations for this. Either I really am experiencing the mother of all downswings, or I've somehow changed my game for the worse, or the opposition is getting better. The trick is to figure out which of these is the most likely.
The Friday night live tournament is the one that I've been playing the most during this period, playing every week, 45 weeks per year for many years. It's fair to say that I have made a few changes to my game plan over the last couple of years, but I don't believe these adjustments have been significant enough to change my outcomes so drastically. Over the last year or so I've started following a policy of playing the 'big four' (aces, kings, queens and AK) much harder and faster in an effort to combat the extremely loose calling frenzy that you get in this game. I've also dropped the threshold at which I start playing a tighter game, giving me a little more time to play ABC poker in the early stages before I have to tighten up. I don't see either of these changes affecting my game negatively and besides that, they are both relatively recent adjustments that were begun long after my bankroll started its downhill slide.
As for the possibility of the opposition getting better, I don't think so. There are still about ten regulars who have been playing this game for years along with a motley crew of casual players who come and go as the whim takes them. The table dynamic is still much the same as it a has been for the last six plus years: one or two tight players who play a decent game with the rest of the table generally consisting of chronic and persistent calling stations. I suppose it's possible that some of the regulars have come to know my playing style and found ways to exploit it but the opposite is also true; a lot of the time I have a pretty good idea of what these guys are doing and where I am at in a hand.
The other live game that I play on a regular basis is the $20 re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. I usually play in this game twice a month, although the frequency dropped off a little this year because of my failed experiment with playing ring games at the casino. Although I've cashed occasionally at the Landmark over the last couple of years I haven't actually won this tournament outright for 36 games. Yes, that's right: 36 games! Bearing in mind that there is a maximum of 18 players in this tournament, this is an appallingly bad record. Looking at the stats, the results for this game are not nearly as bad as they are for the Friday nighter, but they have still definitely taken a turn for the worse in recent times.
There is some possibility that I'm now up against tougher opposition than previously at the Landmark. The regular player base has certainly changed and I think it's true that at least some of the new regulars are more solid players. But it's also true that the bulk of the players are still the usual assortment of casual loose-passive calling stations. Maybe it's just a matter of perception; as this is a turbo style re-buy tournament the variance is bound to be higher. I think, in balance, that my loss of form is most likely the result of a bad run of cards but there is always the possibility that I'm also getting outplayed to some extent.
That brings me to the Deep Stack Tournament, which is played once a month. Not only do I play in this tournament, but I also run it, which is an important factor. Unfortunately, I have lumped the results for this tournament in with the Friday night tournaments, so I don't have separate statistics available. But I do know that cashes have been few and far between over the last couple of years and I haven't had an outright win for a very long time. I went back and had a look at previous results a few months ago and noticed that my best results came a few years back when I was still only getting one table of players. Cashes dropped off noticeably once I started getting larger fields of players.
It seems to me that I may be a victim of my own success regarding this tournament. For years I was trying to get the player numbers up and now I have finally succeeded, getting an average of 20 players each month. But some of these new players come from outside the pub/club scene and are actually pretty good at the game. As well as that I am running this tournament single-handedly while also playing, which means that I'm not able to properly concentrate on my game, especially in the early stages. As if that wasn't enough, my bankroll has now dropped to a point where the $50 buy-in for this tournament is now outside my maximum buy-in level. In short, the Deep Stack Tournament is no longer an optimal game for me.
This year I've also been playing a few short stack ring games up at the casino. I was trying out the Short Stack Strategy, buying in for 25 big blinds and playing super tight and looking for a good opportunity to get all my chips in the middle. Although there was one occasion where I made a bad decision and lost all my chips as a result, I don't think I can ascribe my lack of success in this game to playing badly. Most of the time I was just following the SSS plan; basically playing by the numbers. The fact that I lost money in nearly every session can only mean one of two things: either the Short Stack Strategy just doesn't work, or my losses are part of the Great Downswing. The latter seems more likely.
Looking at my overall results, the losses in the casino games have definitely made a difference to my bankroll balance. But the cashies were never responsible for the primary loss in any season. So if I hadn't played in these games I would have been better off, but I still would have been looking at a loss. As it happens, I always had an exit strategy in place for these games if they turned out to be losers, so the door is now closed on these casino ring games (well, almost closed).
As for my online poker games, it's harder to find patterns from these games. That's because I've played a variety of different games over the last six years and it's hard to know whether I've played enough games to be able to draw conclusions. I certainly believe that online games are tougher and as a consequence I generally play at the micro stakes level. Looking at the figures in more detail I can come to a few conclusions. Sit and Go tournaments have been just plain awful. The ring games I played 5 or 6 years ago had more negative than positive seasons but the ones I've played this year have been slightly better. Most of the tournaments I've played in the last three years have shown negative results, but the lower buy-in games I played in 2016 were actually pretty successful.
Those results in 2016 suggest that I should go back to the low buy-in tournaments on 888poker. At the moment I'm playing in micro stakes ring games, playing a minimum stack of 40 big blinds. I'm deliberately keeping the buy-in low to minimise any losses. At the end of this year I'll take another look at online games and make a decision. Unless I start showing some spectacular results from the cashies the message is clear; I should go back to the micro tournaments.
After all that, what conclusions can I come to? Well, I don't believe that conditions at my main live games have changed significantly enough to affect my overall results. I would say that I'm still 60% confident that I am in the middle of a downswing rather than a sudden and catastrophic loss of form in these games. But as far as the Deep Stack Tournament goes, I think this game is no longer optimal for me so, reluctantly, I need to stop playing in it. However, as I'm the organiser, I'll at least have to play out the last two games for the year. Then, next year, I won't be running it and even if someone else takes it over, I'll still be giving it a miss.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realisation that it doesn't really matter whether I'm being toyed with by the gods of chance or whether I've somehow lost my poker mojo; the solution is the same. If I'm on a downswing then all I can really do is keep playing the game as well as I can. And to make sure that I am doing that, I need to keep analysing my game. I need to keep looking at sample hands and determining whether I am making the correct decisions, regardless of the results. And if I'm on a downhill slide as a result of bad play then the same applies; keep looking at my game and checking that I'm making correct decisions. In other words, analyse, analyse, analyse. It's something that I've been trying to do more of anyway and this just makes me realise how important it is to keep analysing my game.
I've been reading a bit of advice on handling downswings recently and one of the commonest pieces of advice is to take a break from poker. I tried this when I had a rough patch a few years ago and it seemed to work. But I'm not contemplating doing that this time, at least not in the immediate future. This is mainly because of the Friday night tournament. Firstly because this is mine and my wife's regular weekly night out; it's more than just a poker game. The other reason is the yearly points prize. I figure I still have an outside chance of getting my points up and getting close to the $1000 top prize, or at least the $500 for second. So I plan to keep playing poker to the end of the year, regardless of the results.
Having said that, the Friday nighter usually has a break of a few weeks over the holiday period so, if my bankroll has continued to decline at that point then I will probably take the opportunity to take an extended break from all poker. A few weeks lying on the beach or firing up the barbecue instead of looking for the next game to play could be just what I need. Come to think of it, maybe I'll do that anyway, regardless.
