One of my biggest "problems" that I have [mostly] fixed in the past year.

[frob23]

I recently updated some of the stats on my spreadsheet where I record my sessions. I don't have a poker tracker so I have to log everything myself. I am a little bit OCD about it though... so it works out. One of the things I did was change most of the important stats to ptBB from $. Since I often play a variety of limits (from $2NL to $25NL depending on my mood), the swings in $ value might or might not be meaningful.

For example... a $45 swing... at $4NL, that is massive... at $25NL, it's standard. By looking mostly at the dollar value, I wasn't really getting a true picture. I play very well bankrolled for the majority of my games (as you can imagine if I am playing $4NL with a bankroll large enough for $25NL) so swings of certain amounts weren't too meaningful.

This relates to my biggest problem from a previous post... and that was my horrible 10NL stats. Where I was winning in just about every game but 10NL. And, I suspected it was from a couple things... and, to be honest, I think it was tilt.

When you put it as ptBB... you can clearly see a few times when I went on crazy monkey tilt. Almost all at 10NL. You will see a fairly steady line... small sessions... occasional big wins or losses... but generally trending upwards... and then you suddenly see a -500ptBB (10 buy-in) drop in less than 2,000 hands... in fact... in two sessions [tables]... which I was playing at the same time. And then you go dig into that... and you see a session where I play 500+ hands on two tables... and proceed to drop 5 buy-ins... then play a couple small games... and suddenly find myself in another session where I play 500+ hands on two tables and drop another 5 buy-ins.

Where did these drops take place? 10NL. And I know what happened. I would play a good game... get unlucky and drop a buy-in. Then I might get unlucky again and drop another. And suddenly, I was convinced I wasn't going to leave the table until I got the money back... because the other players were just getting lucky and I was better than them.

It doesn't even matter if that last line was true... because I had started to tilt... and I wasn't playing better than them. Next thing I would know, I would be down massively, had been playing longer than I wanted (3+ hours when I intended to play 1), and still pissed.

I might then go to $25NL then next day (this is actually typical) and I would play uber-tight because I was stuck. And since I played full-ring... and at $25NL you can still get paid off when you are uber-tight... I would make a buy-in or two there... and recover my 10NL losses or most of them.

Then I would go back to 10NL... in all honesty... still pretty tilted from the session before... and proceed to repeat the above performance. It might have been a day or two later but I was still thinking of how I dropped so many buy-ins before. And I would start off playing just as bad as I had left off. My bankroll swung wildly while this was happening but the net result wasn't too bad. It was generally negative but you wouldn't think my 10NL sessions were doing as much harm as they were.

I started limiting myself to 2.5-3 buy-ins max... per session. And I started to hold myself to stricter time limits if I was losing. I still have a couple points now where I drop about 10 buy-ins... but they are over 15+ games. And they don't represent this mega-tilt any more.

The thing is... I wasn't steaming or angry. I wasn't throwing stuff or swearing. I was just off my game from what had been going on and I was thinking wrong and playing wrong. What is worse, I no longer cared about losing "another buy-in" because I was already down so much. I would make dumb shoves and calls because, "I might be ahead but if not, it's just another buy-in... I'm already down 4." And other bad logic.

I think I have got that under control lately. I really started working on that about 35k hands ago and I can see the difference in the chart. Those long extended losing sessions aren't there any more. And, while I might have a couple big losing sessions, you almost never see 3-4 of them practically back to back.

I did a lot of damage to my ptBB/100 rate because of those. It's only like 3.8ptBB/100 right now... If you select for times after I started working on that, it's over 6ptBB (depending on when you start tracking it). Still not great but that is a lot better... and I did have some really horrible down-swings during that time where don't appear to be tilt related.

Edit: Why did this happen at 10NL and not 25NL or 5NL? Because losing $20 on 10NL was losing a lot of money to me. If I lost a buy-in at $25NL... I would rebuy once more with the intention of being done if I lost the second. Period. And I had a very "bankroll-centered" view of it. This was not $25 so much as it was less than 4% of my bankroll. Well, at 10NL... it was "only" $20... less than a $25NL buy-in... but still enough to bug me... I mean, it's money I could imagine spending... and it was going to be a lot harder to get back. It was harder to not associate the money with it. Then, when you got to 5NL and lower... it's $10 or less... nothing much really... and it wasn't hard to leave down less than $10... that's like the cost of going to a movie. Even though the money is real... it's not an amount that is going to bug me.

[Hakimakli]

Great Post. I hope u learned from the past :-)

[kuelbreeze1]

I really like your post. I'm new to online poker, but over the last 9 months I've played almost every day. Made my first deposit last year in September.

Over the last 9 months I've set up a system that works for me. And my little system is there to offset the very tendencies you are talking about.

Granted our stakes might not be the same, but the concept would work the same regardless of the stakes. I really got to thinking about this when I saw a video from Ferguson on Full Tilt about bankroll management.

If I lost half my buy in at a table I close that table and start another, or get on the wait list for another, whatever the case is. If I double up I do the same thing (unless the table is simply too juicy to leave, as i'm in the lower stakes right now-.10/.25 PL OH).

The reason I do this is I might have a tendency (just as you mentioned) to say "The hell with it! I've lost half my buy in, screw it i'm all in, i can buy in again" or I'm up triple my buy in and might avoid certain pots to protect my winnings-play too tight in other words. Or maybe I triple up and get too loose and reckless because i'm already up so much. Happened last night when I put an opponent on pocket aces (OH) with his pre flop raise and called him to the river hoping to bet huge on the river when I flopped three 9's. A second jack came and HE put out a HUGE bet and I snap called still stuck with him on aces, and of course he had a jack...lol

So the two buy ins that I gained were gone, I limped out of there with a 10% gain instead of a 300-400% gain.

I only use this when I'm playing more than 2 tables, which is most of the time. I like 4 at once. If I'm just grinding it out on one table I don't use this, unless I lose half my buy in right away I'll go ahead and stack up again.

[frob23]

I guess I haven't completely "fixed" this issue. Tonight I managed to drop nearly 5 buy-ins. Some of it was bad luck (AK v AA type stuff) but other stuff was bad play. At least a two buy-ins can be accounted for by being on the wrong side of a flip. And the tables weren't bad so I kept playing... I played way longer than I should have... and actually played 664 hands and ran -37.1ptBB/100 for all of them. It was ugly.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day. And I'll rebuild it. Sucks to set myself back like this. In the last 3 days, I have erased most of the gains in the week before than where I was running hot.

Edit: Granted this wasn't 3-4 sessions back to back. In fact, almost all of these losses are from a single table. I should have quit when I was down a couple buy-ins but the game was so loose and weak that it seemed fine. I just kept getting second best hands all night.