After this weeks horrific start I strung together 4 moderate winning days which somewhat lessened the damage.

Wednesday + 1 ½ buy ins
Thursday + 1 buy in
Friday + 1 buy in
Saturday + ¾ buy in

I spent very little time playing this week but am pleased I was able to get back on track in such a limited amount of hands. While cash games aren’t a major part of my long term poker goals, I would still prefer being more successful at them than I presently am.

One major “leak” over my first 3 months at the 6-max tables is easily identifiable. This isn’t a leak in how I play a certain hand but rather an overview of my results after what I consider a fairly reasonable time frame. After looking at my daily results I see that my biggest winning day has been for ~ 4 buy ins. I already have 4 losing days that equal or exceed that with my worst coming a week ago of ~ 10 buy ins.

From August thru October I played a total of 77 days. I had 53 winning days and 24 losing days for a 69% winning clip. What isn’t impressive about these statistics is that I essentially broke even during this time.

What all of this means is that my losing days have been on average far worse than my winning days. I believe this is due to a couple of factors; I have booked many winning days where I won a single buy in give or take. Upon reviewing those days there were 2 commonalities to them. One was I was short on time and had to wrap up my session. Unfortunately at times I only have an hour or even less to play. The other may be due to sheer variance. On the days where I had more time to play I often found myself ahead 2 or more buy ins. What rarely if ever happened on those days was the positive rush. When sitting with a good sized stack I’ve rarely won a really good sized pot. Mind you I’ve lost quite a few. I’ve reviewed my play and believe that I’m playing OK. A lot of those 2 and 3 buy in positive sessions turned into a 1 buy in win as opposed to wins of 4 or more buy ins. Variance?

What does all of this mean and what can I do about it? For one thing I believe I need to be more cognizant of my losing days and try to walk away from them before they get too far out of hand. There are just some days where things are going poorly and they just stay that way no matter what you do. Last Sunday is a prime example of that. The other concerns being ahead in a session and giving it back. On this one I’m going to just have to have some faith and patience on. I have to hope that when things are going well in a session that I’ll have some days where my wins compound instead of reversing course on me. It’s surprising that it hasn’t really happened yet and therefore I believe I need to give it some more time before I reassess this again.

If however this pattern doesn’t change I know it will be nearly impossible for me to be a winning cash game player, despite booking winning days at a clip of better than 2 to 1.

-Doyle-

Still no tourneys for me this week though I’ve been reading and thinking plenty about them. I've been continuing to play cash on a daily basis. I've continued to build on what was already a solid week. Last I left off I was ahead slightly more than 3 buy ins for the week.

Thursday + 1 buy in
Friday + 1/3 buy in

With Thursday and Friday in the books I'm ahead 4 ½ buy ins heading into today, the final day of the week.

I’ve been very happy with my game lately. I feel I’m concentrating better and making proper decisions more often than I’m not which is all that I can ask of myself.

The reality for those of us who don’t put in major volume each week is that our short term results are more highly influenced by the fate of the cards as we don’t have the benefit of speeding up the big ‘V’ (variance). This may be one of the most important things for me to keep up front as a poker player. In the past I’ve fallen victim on many occasions when a handful of negative days and bad rivers creep into my head and affect how I play. I believe that this was my recipe for failure thru September and the 1st half of October. The difference between succcess and failure for a lower volume cash game player can be as little as one decision per day which is why it's so important to play 'well' at all times.

Just think about how many times you've made a river call knowing your were very likely beat or you fired that 3rd barrell just knowing that the calling station you're up against can't fold mid pair and your A high just isn't any good. Eliminate 1 bad decision a day and add all of that up over the course of a week and think about how much $ that can amount to over time.


-Doyle-