Can you just be cursed?
EnlargeYo, Jul 02 2009
Hi there,
I have never really posted here, but as I decided to quit it I realized that it would be nice to summarize my time playing poker and share it with those who wanna read it.
I started playing 2 years ago. First freerolls, but never more than once a week and such. The true beginning was typical - deposited 30$ in December last year, played NL2 and built up. I was still learning the game multitabling FR playing typical ABC. I was doing fine and I really enjoyed playing as well as reading everything I got my hands on, watching every single piece of poker television ever released and listening to countless poker podcasts. I didn't play that many hands and was more devoted to learning the game, but still as the time went by I moved to NL10 after about 2 months and in March last year I shot at NL25 with 20BI. My first 3 days were awesome. I had 900$ and was having another great session and then bam, in 40 minutes I lost set over set to rivered quads 2 times, AA vs KK twice and 6BI was gone. I didn't really understand how this could happen, but quit that day and decided to play NL10 again the next day. Unfortunetely nothing was going ok and after 3 months of struggling I was almost broke. I withdrew my last 50$ and decided not to play for some time.
Three weeks later I was ready to play again with a fresh mindset. I deposited 200$ and played again FR NL10. After a day I was down to 30$. I decided to try sitngos I was always doing good at and built back up to about 500$ in a week. Started playing NL25 and NL50, as I thought I couldn't beat NL10 anymore. It went great and after running well for 3 weeks I was up to 1500$. I continued playing with some swings down to 800$ and back to 2000$ withdrawing like 400-500$ every month in the process. Then I made a shot at SH NL100 and got on a heater (first 4 days of November). After a week I was up to 4000$ and happy that I can finally play and enjoy it again. I remember saying "Wow, now that I have not been getting suckouted on every single time I will have to pay for it with a large downswing". Said it as a joke, because after so many months of running extremely bad I didn't really believe it could come back. I thought that it was a one time deal and I will just play poker with normal swings like everyone else.
Then came November, 5th. I lost a few buyins. Next day the same. A day after that again. I quickly moved back to NL50, but it didn't help and by the end of November I was down to 2k in disbelief. I decided to change the room to IPoker and play at Chili. I moved 1k$ there and played NL50 for some time. I didn't win a single hand playing cash games there. It just didn't matter if I had the guy down to 2 outs, to 3 outs, to 5 outs, to 9 outs - the result was always the same. Then I played one table FR sitngos and didn't cash in 25 in a row. I took me a month to go broke there. Every day I would sit, get suckouted on 3 times, quit for the day, come back the next day and the same thing over and over again. I've had enough.
I didn't play at all during Christmas. I came back in January to my old pokerroom where I had built my bankroll previously. I played NL25 and NL10 with my last 1k and it wasn't that bad. I had 13 straight winning days. I was still running bad, but the level of play somehow made me get a BI or half a BI a day there. Then I withdrew half of my bankroll and left myself with 600$. A losing day, another losing day and another one. I made a trip with my friends to play live. I won some money in cashgames, won a very small tournament and was happy. Came back ready to own, but I still couldn't win and almost didn't play at all after a few days.
Around April I decided to move to FTP to get a welcome bonus and play there. I couldn't believe it, as I played the nitty NL10 FR there and was running kings into aces 3-4 times a day. After 4 days I was down a few buyins, mostly because I lost 18BI KK vs AA and never won it even once. Then I ran with AA vs KK 4 times in a row and lost all of them. I was just pissed off and left FTP.
My friend knew that I was really good at Sitngos so he decided to put me on stars to play 6.50 turbo sitngos as I didn't want to deposit anything again. I shipped him the rest of my FTP money and got on a nice deal at stars. I was going to multitable sitngos and just going to go for goldstar. I was running ok for some time at steady 20% ROI getting to battle of planets high orbit top40 every week. My friend told me to give him some of my money as we decided on at the beginning and to keep the rest and build up again. Then I started running bad. One week, second week, third week. Every single time I had a good turbo shoving hand someone had aces, kings etc. I could never steal blinds, as every nit on the blind woke up with aces. I was getting coolered over and over again and when I was the favorite it didn't matter, as it was like a coinflip between losing and winning. I was constantly losing to underpairs flopping sets after getting it in pf. I decided to start counting flips as I was playing (turbo is obviously kinda flippish) and I won 283 out of 1000. Then I moved to normal sitngos. The level of play was awful and there were no regulars there. I guess people are more into turbo sitngos where they just use shoving ranges in their favor and play tons of them to get more fpps. At the beginning I was building back again, but then it again got bad. I've had enough and decided to quit it and go back to playing cash games. Today after getting it in good 20 times in a row, I busted the rest of my bankroll.
I've been running terrible for 8 straight months. Nothing helped. Reading books didn't help. Watching training videos didn't help. As I was watching leggo videos I realized that I wasn't doing anything wrong in general. I obviously had a few minor leaks, but nothing that would cause constant losing for a year. I consider myself to be a very bright and intelligent guy with a good feel for games in general. I tried to make myself believe that I was just playing bad and I had a lot to fix, but it just wasn't the case. I used to never go on tilt. Nowadays every single hand tilts me to death. I don't have streaks where I get 3 of my hands to hold up in a row. I have had streaks of 15-20 lost flips in a row (23 is the record) on the daily basis, but I didn't win 4 flips in a row for a year now. Anywhere I go I can't even get one good winning session. I have played a few tournaments to score sth big to make up for all the wasted time playing, but I was only able to mincash a few times thanks to playing good without showdowns and maybe getting one hand to hold up in the process. After the bubble period I have never won a major flip, got my hand to hold up or just run KK vs AA. I have met people through poker who noticed that I was pretty good and kept persuading me that everyone has downswings and it will turn back on in my favor soon. I obviously know that. But I just can't win.
I used to love poker. It gave me a chance to compete and earn some money (I am extremely competitive) at the same time. Nowadays I hate poker. I don't consider it to be a game of skill anymore. I believe that it has never been a game of skill. Statistics is not mathematics. There are just people who run better and people who run worse. Those who play well just maximize their winnings or go broke slower. I devoted every minute of my free time in the last 2 years (aside from school obviously) to learn the game and play it well. It backfired badly. I wasted so many hours that it is just painful to think about. I am mentally destroyed, I can't keep my mind straight anymore. I am an atheist, I don't believe in all the paranormal shit, but I just think I am cursed. I don't think I can play the game anymore. I can't think straight, I am scared of taking flips or getting money in as a small favorite. I don't believe I can ever win again. As as student I liked a few hundred extra bucks a month for small expenses. Now I think I would be better off just finding myself a part-time job.
To all the beginners: think twice before starting to play this game. You may be successful at it and earn some money or destroy yourselves in every way possible. Don't take anything for granted. Never.
regards, hope you don't hate me for wasting a few minutes to read it all, as I tried to make it as short as possible (and yeah, it's not really written too well. I am better at english than that),
Tomasz
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