Wednesday, March 08, 2006

The curse of the poker player: Losing months

Well the 1st week in March has almost been as good as the 1st week in Feb! CRAP!

Considering that I took the Mrs away for a long weekend in Brussels and I’ve been away for 4 days in March the poor performance is pretty impressive. It must be something to do with getting a good month closed down and then relaxing and playing like a total arse for 3 or 4 days. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that as far as trends go, months where I have a bad start usually end up ok and visa versa! So it’s up hill all the way from here to avoid a poor month I guess.

I need to sit down and have a good look at the stats and hands where I’ve been getting hammered. Periodic lessons learned sessions are always healthy. I usually do this after each month end. Look back and identify where things went wrong and what can you do to stop it happening again… this months start would suggest I need to work on it a little!

I’ve been trying to boost my average monthly earnings. Now this may sound really obvious but I think the impact of a bad month is seriously underestimated by most people. If you are playing for a living then losing months are a pox on your balance sheet that will kill your average income.

Looking back at my 2005 I had a really good month in early summer where I cleared more than £15K, this was followed by a bad month where I dumped £8K and a month where I just about broke even. I have no doubts that the 8k loss would not have been sustained if I’d not won so much the previous month. At the time I justified it in this way. The figures sound fairly impressive for the level I was playing at but when you look at the impact of such wild swings on your average monthly earnings …..

Net 7k profit across three months… 2.33K ave per month. Now don’t get me wrong this beats a loss but it’s only marginally more than the average rakeback per month. Compare to someone pottering along playing a less volatile (dull?) game and creaming 4k a month out without too much effort.

This all sounds fairly obvious, but I’ve lost count of the number of good players I know who go on a decent 3month run, think they can run over everyone and then throw it all away in a short space of time.

There’s nothing more depressing than losing 6k in a month and working hard the next month to get it back… you look back at the past 60 days and think “Shit! I’ve played 50000 hands and I’m exactly where I started!”

If you can turn your bad months into a break even months then in this example you’d have 3k a month ave to show for your efforts. Work hard to avoid losing months and when you come to your year end audit the healthy profit will look after its self.

Thanks for all the feedback by the way! Much appreciated.

Good Luck,

Jim

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello lovie, thought I'd drop in and see how you are getting on. Lots of love to you and mrs splash
Mrs Walsh

Highstack said...

I seem to recall that you had a bad spell previously just after taking Shell away. I think you should just tell her no more holidays :)

I hope that you are both well and I am sure things will turn round for you this month Jim.

Form is temporary, class is permanent :-)

Anonymous said...

Maybe a change of name will do you good. My views on your play are solid, however you dont take much money off me nowadays at all, just because I know your game. Therefore the pots you win against me are small, and the big ones I get away from. Obviously you play mainly the same bunch of players day in day out, and maybe a change of name would be good.

This I think would make the smaller pots bigger and the bigger pots more oftem.

I think youve got a great game, alebeit at times a little predictable for someone who plays you for 40 hours a week.

Criticise my thoughts where you like please, even on MSN if you wish.

Cheers Mate

Heaven

Posh said...

[tc shakes head at huge amounts of money described here]

I don't have any idea if it's relevant but I've look carefully at my performance and of the times I lose, over 90% of my losses occur in around 5% of my days. My approach is to set a firm stop loss. Have you considered that? I mean, don't limit the up-side but lock in profits (or limit losses).

anyway, good luck
dble

Anonymous said...

Interesting read. Just thought I'd say cheers for the advise on poker tracker on the bf forum last week. What a pain in the ar$e. GL.

Pete

Wonky said...

Dibble... I don't really like stop losses. If I'm tilting then usually I can get away from the game, again if the table is poor I don't mind walking away from it. But if the table is ripe and I've just been sucked out twice then there's no way I'm leaving.

Having said that I've had two really bad days this month that I'd be more than happy to do over with a stop loss in place!