Dealing with downswings
by ~ April 10th, 2009. Filed under: Micro level poker, Philosophy and approach, Poker and life.
In the last while I’ve gone through a few tough sessions. The most recent ones, down 4 buyins in each session, and these followed a much earlier much lighter series of down sessions.
I recall losing some confidence with the first series of down sessions, back when I had just begun my project of mulitable grinding. But the first minus 4 buyin session it didn’t throw me too much as I recall, I just pulled back a bit on the tables/session length/aggression, ran negative but less so for a few more sessions. Then, after a series of up sessions which allowed me to recover most of the loses from that series of down sessions, I hit another more than minus 4 buyin session last night.
On the surface this last one hit me less harder than the last one. I don’t slam walls or desks or anything like that while playing poker. I may have done that early on, I don’t recall, but I’ve been trained to accept both coolers (KK vrs AA all in preflop last night) and poor plays and suckouts (limp/caller when I hold KK, calls to the river with A5 having paired a 5 on the flop and hits a runner-runner wheel straight). In fact the only time I get outwardly emotional is when the bubble bursts on the 210 FPP satties that I play to use my FPPs. These start with 20 players and the last 6 get $10+1T dollars and I often cheer when the 7th place player gets knocked out. It’s like watching my team score a nice touchdown.
But the cumulative effect of a bunch of these losing hands contributing to a big down session is still tough, and though on the surface this last one was okay I’m aware of some anger deeper down, and that’s a concern. And because this one follows just after having recovered most of my loses from the previous one there’s the cumulative effect of being down again after having just been down not long ago.
I’m still over-rolled for this level so that’s not an issue, but trying to maintain detachment is not the same thing as ignoring ones emotional reactions. Somewhere deeper down I am experiencing anger, frustration, loss of confidence, generally a lot of unhappy-type feelings.
I’ve got a blog entry that I’m working on with the topic of prospect theory, but I’m finding some of the information contradictory so I need to figure out what it all is supposed to mean before I can put something together. Prospect theory may go a ways toward explaining something though; this last down session is one of my longest. Why would I continue to sit when I’m not running well? Often when I have good sessions I cut them short, in order to preserve my winnings, but run bad and I stay, waiting for the cards to turn. Partly, I just believe that I’m a winning player for the levels that I play at and eventually I will be up again, so I continue to play waiting for that to happen. I don’t think that I’m chasing my losses though, at least not in the typical sense of the phrase. It’s as if I’m trying to exemplify patience right away, trying to show the poker gods that I have the right attitude so please reward me. I’m showing myself that I can accept running bad and that I understand that the short term can be waited-out.
