Uuuuugghhh

I'm broke...not in bankroll terms, but my recent swing has killed my spirit totally. I'm sure you all know it and have encountered it, but some people deal with it better than others, but I'm a pansy and can't hack it at all.
Putting immense effort into something for 6 months and then just not being able to win a hand doesn't compute with me. Maybe I'll review the hands in a few weeks and see plenty of bad play in there too, but I've looked at stuff 2 days or a week later and my conclusion is still that I just can't find a way to win.
Its very hard to accept and very easy to put down to variance and running bad but is it really possible to drop 12 buyins over 10k hands due to running bad, or do I have to accept I'm just not very good, despite reading forums, watching cardrunners videos, coaching, everything else?
Is it is, then I question if its the game for me. As an old gent who was getting berated by Phil Hellmuth said, "If this is Poker, then I don't want to be a part of it".
I don't really know what to do now. My initial thoughts are to withdraw some of my bankroll which stands at about $5.4k and buy some crap so I have something tangible to show for this fucking torture! Then I'd drop down to $50nl and start again. But then I think there's a chance that maybe there's a tiny miniscule chance that I'm good enough to actually beat $100nl and I should continue. I dunno really...fuck the whole damn lot of them :-)
Time for a break anyway...Length of said break to be confirmed.

Dancing with the Doomswitch

I haven’t updated in a while for a few reasons, foremost I’ve been taking a beating! I moved to a new site and made $1k there in 3k hands and then took a shot at $200nl about a week ago today, and I instantly lost $1k in 1k hands and was shell shocked to say the least. Obviously I moved down to $100nl again and I’ve been trying to get back in order, but to no avail and I’m down a further $300 over the following 5k hands which brings me to today. My play has definitely been affected by the swing and I’m making some tilty calls and shoves and being passive in bad spots for fear of the swing continuing. This is clear from my won w/o showdown going back to its old ways. This if for sure the low-point of my 8 or so months playing poker so far. I’m really terrible at taking the rough with the smooth and I got far sicker about losing the $1k than I was happy to win the $1k the week before.

I really have no handle on the fact that 10 buyin downswings are commonplace in a 50k sample, and that 10-15k breakeven stretches are quite normal. I bought the ‘ Zen and the Art of Poker’ book a while back and I’ve been reading over it over the last few days and it’s definitely helped to calm me down and get me thinking better.

Over the last day or so, I’ve switched to just playing 4 tables and trying to concentrate on every decision to get my thought process back and its looking up a little bit. All I can do is keep plugging away and trying to make the right decision every time.

One great point I read in the book is about trying to win every hand. I always used to get just slightly annoyed if I didn’t win a hand where I VP$IP but the truth is you’re only going to win at showdown and in hands where you’re the PFR about 55% of the time max…this means that almost ½ the time, you’re pissed off, and human nature means that you remember the losses more than the wins, so overall if you go in with the mindset of being even a tiny bit upset when you lose a hand, you’ll end up very negative overall and I think this lets the inner-‘nit’ thrive. So the goal is to try and just make the right decision vs. the opponents range and let whatever happens happen.

I still have about 57 buyins for 100nl, and I’m going to stick with it until I get to about $7k or get some confidence back, which might be in 2 weeks or it might be in 6 weeks. I’m still on par with the goals I set myself at the start of the year, so I’m gonna try and think positive….If I was offered a guarantee in January that I’d be where I am now in terms of bankroll and development I’d have snapped called.

Finally, I’m just going to make occasional updates every now and then as I was kind of getting bored of the weekly report thing. GL!