Never Blog About Running Good, Ever, Ever, Ever!

When I am running bad for a decent amount of time, I try to resist blogging about it. Eventually, I just have to. Writing stuff down tends to make you think things through a little better, and blogging about your losing streak seems to always do the trick. You examine your (poor) play, write down your thoughts, and try to hit the felt rejuvenated. For some reason it always works. The streak ends and you are back on track. This is one of the huge benefits of blogging, in my opinion. I have killed something like three bad streaks almost immediately by simply blogging about it.

Now for when you are running good. Never, ever, ever, ever, blog about this. It's bound to kill your streak. You try to examine why your running good, and come to the conclusion that your Gods gift to poker. You are the shit! You are so proud of this that you have to tell the world. Worst of all, you start actually believing it. This will kill your streak faster then anything. Believe me!

I post my bankroll from time to time. Mainly to document my progress. I was running bad at the start of the year, and my bankroll gains were pretty pathetic. Then I got on a hot streak, and won about 3k in 30 days. Finally, I could brag about how good I am, and post some nice results. I even tried to figure out what I was doing right during the streak. Big mistake!

Posting these results, put a lot of unneeded pressure on myself. I felt I really needed to keep the pace up, and post another huge gain. When I took some bad beats immediately after the post, I started really pressing to get the roll back in positive territory. This was disastrous to my game. The good streak ended immediately, and a bad one ensued. It's taken this long, but my game seems to be coming back around. The interesting thing about poker (at least for me), is it is best to let the money come to you. If you are trying to hard to win, you are bound to lose. It is best to just sit back, and wait for great situations, and let the fish feed your roll.

Another problem I run into is chasing too many bonuses. My bread and butter site is FullTilt. I clear about $30/hr consistently multitabling the .50/1 nl. At PartyPoker, I do as well, but have a much more limited history. I have been able to win on every site I have played at so far. But PokerTracker does not work on all the sites I play at, so I only have Tilt, Stars, and Party well documented. When I chase bonuses, I typically clear around $10/hr on just about all of the sites
. I played about 10k hands on PokerStars recently to get up to SilverStar, and clear a couple of reload bonuses. I am about break even for all of this work. I would have made 1k+ on FullTilt had I stayed there over that many hands, but they have not had a reload bonus in a while. Why give up a solid $30/hr to chase a $10/hr bonus? Because I am stupid. Thats why.

I went back to FullTilt cash games over the weekend to switch thing up, and I am glad I am back. They also started another reload bonus last night, so I have no reason to leave. I am going to plow through the $300 bonus, and qualify for the last 20 seat WSOP freeroll. This should put my bankroll back on track.