Taking a Look at My Game

Looking at my result as of late I see a weird thing. Over the last month, I have a negative return on my $10 sngs but a 48% return on my $20s. My sample size for both is small because I haven’t been playing as many sngs but it shows how variance can influence short term results. Now I knew that I was unlucky playing the $10 games but I didn’t realize the extent of the junk kicking I was taking. Overall, my historical return is around 40% for sngs but what a mess that run of bad luck was. I dropped over $100 in a span of 15 sngs playing the $10 level.

Last night was a a nice night in that I cashed in 3 of 4 $20 sngs and won a $75 token for the Blogger Big Game. The importance of the evening was not the results but a minor revelation I had after a suck-out I put on another player. I held AK on a board showing AJ10 and made a ¾ pot bet. My opponent pushes and I’m screwed. I know that I’m behind and prepare to fold when I did the stupidest thing. I called and my opponent shows AJ. The revelation I got after a Queen hit the board is that I was giving up on the game because of my misfortune. I knew I had a superior starting hand and got unlucky so instead of folding I gave it up only to get lucky. I had lost some focus and the ability to throw away a big hand. I eventually cash in that game and used this new found skill to finish the night without a loss during the rest of my play.

What I don’t understand is why I can play good poker for a long time and then fall back into donkey play. What do I have to do to maintain the level of focus needed to take my game to the next level? Winning the Mookie a few weeks ago charged me up and let me know that I can compete at a high level of play. But I think that in my own way I let the victory sway my thinking and feel that I will always make the right play, even if it is the wrong play.

The token race was nice and the triple up early was nice to. Pocket queens hit trips with an ace on the flop and two players paid me off. From that point on I stayed un involved unless I had a monster and made it easily into the top 5. I did have an interesting situation that saw me get pocket queens in consecutive hands and then get pocket aces on consecutive. What are the odds of this?

I’ve been playing at FT for about a month and a half. In that time I’ve never put the time in to qualify for any of the free rolls that they offer for loyal customers. Now at this point I can’t qualify for the November free rolls but I’m going to go for the Bronze level next month. The only problem is that my trip to Japan is going to get in the way. So basically, I will have to earn 50 points a day 20 of the 22 days I’ll be able to play. That comes to 4 $20 sngs a day if my math is correct. That is a commitment but doable.