written by beset DeucesCracked Coach
published over 5 years ago

Despite the fact that my main games for the last couple years have extremely high variance, I had not had a losing month for over two years up until January.  A lot of this is a function of anal game selection and playing a ton of hands each month.  Since I started playing for a living 50k hand months have been pretty common.  So, while I have had a number of marginal break-even type months, losing months were unknown to me.

After running very hot in December playing mostly $5/$10 blinds $1000 capped buyin Pot-Limit Omaha (including a very memorable 35 buy-in upswing), I took the first week of January off and then proceeded to have the worst 30k hand set of my life, finishing it stuck around 15 buy-ins from limits $1/$2 PLO up to $10/$20 PLO.  I also played about 5k hands of break-even Omaha Hi/Lo from $10/$20 up to $30/$60.

I say all that to say this:  I haven’t felt like writing about poker.  It is hard to feel competent to write any good Omaha strategy discussion feeling beat-up and tilted.  I have however, learned a lot over the last six weeks.  I have always been of the mind (to be fair, however, this hasn’t come up much, since I have ran so good over the last couple years) that break-even/losing play should induce reflection and a sense of personal responsibility.  Sure we can all crunch the numbers on what sort of variance is possible in mid and high-stakes games where minimal win-rates are common even for the best players.  This process takes a couple hours at most and while comforting and interesting, does not yield much that can be used productively in the future.

Instead I took some time to reach out to other players with experience in the games I play in.  I had a few people sweat me.  I had some very good discussions with a couple players who had been beating up on me in these games (unbeknownst to me a couple of very good high stakes players had dropped down in limits with game conditions worsening and, to say the least, did not consider me a very formidable opponent).  While analyzing this set of hands certainly revealed that I was running “bad” in 60/40 or coin flip type situations, as well as in crucial deep-stacked pots, I also realized that I had become too passive post-flop in some very common spots.  Also, I was showing down too light against certain players.  Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, I had lost much of my fearlessness at some point in the run, which had some unfortunate consequences for my post-flop play.

The last two weeks after taking a short break I have dropped down in stakes and started mixing more NL and LHE into my routine to help clear my head.  I’ve broke even a lot and booked a couple small wins.  More importantly, however, my head is feeling clear again and the perma-tilt I was descending into seems to have subsided.  So, hopefully I will feel clear and confident enough to provide some interesting Omaha strategy discussion for the readers of this blog soon.  Also, Rob has been nagging me to makes some Omaha videos for the instructional site.  When I get back from Vegas this weekend this will be at the top of my list.

Thanks to everyone who has supported and assisted me during this last month—the dramatic end of my epic online poker string of winning months.

DeathDonkey.com