Retrenching

Save for Later

Manage your BR.

Nah, play for the big score. You’re due to break out of your downswing.

Those are the conflicting thoughts that have been going through my head the last few weeks. After cashing in the NAPT Mohegan Sun ME in early April, my BR was extremely healthy. I took out a big chunk for house improvements and TPE startup funding. Then I went on a 200 ABI downswing. It ate up nearly half my roll.

As it got worse and worse, I would make a deep run and take an awful beat with 20-30 left and think I was on the verge of breaking through. So I never dropped down. I’ve gotten used to playing anything I wanted. This includes the nightly majors like the PS 100k, FTP 75k, anything really on sundays. For the most part I never blinked at playing anything under $216. I would just reg and go. For over a year since my breakout score in the FTOPS ME this worked just fine. Steady flow of income, positive ROI and no real downswings.

April and May of 2010 are a different beast. It’s the dreaded, long awaited, regression to the mean. I’ve never seen anything like this downswing.

So to keep my BR from serious risk I am immediately shaving my ABI from ~$100 to ~$50. I don’t need to go this far down according to rational bankroll management rules. I could probably get away with a $75 ABI and be just fine. But another 100 ABI downswing at that rate would really screw me up and force me into ~$50 ABI without choice. I don’t think that’s good for my pysche. And I don’t think that’s good for my game.

It’s a bit weird to skip the events you are usually playing every night. It’s weird to skip events that you’ve won like the Nightly 100k. But you have to let your ego go. After a few days i’m not feeling the remorse anymore. It helps to know that if i didn’t cash so much I wouldn’t be that bad off and could have kept playing.

I know i’ll be back there soon enough, but if I don’t do this now, my BR might actually drop to the point where I really would have to get majorily lucky to get back to that ABI level, as opposed to run decent, which is where I think I am now.

So what does that translate into. Here’s my old typically nightly schedule:

FTP

• $26 – 8pm
• $162 – 8pm
• $30r – 8:30pm
• $216 WSOP DS – 9pm
• $55 – 9:30pm
• $26 – 10pm

PS

• $27.50 – 8pm
• $109 Turbo – 8:30pm
• $20r – 9pm
• $162 – 9pm
• $55 – 9:30pm
• $10r – 10pm

Typical buyins with rebuys – $1009

ABI – $92

New nightly schedule:

FTP

• $20r – 7:30pm
• $26 – 8pm
• $12 Daily Double A – 9pm
• $12 Daily Double B – 9pm
• $55 – 9:30pm
• $26 – 10pm

PS

• $11 1RA1A – 7:15pm
• $27.50 – 8pm
• $5 2RA1A – 8pm
• $8 Turbo – 8:30pm
• $20r – 9pm
• $55 – 9:30pm
• $16.50 Turbo – 10pm
• $10r – 10pm

Typical buyins with rebuys – $520

ABI – ~$37

I feel zero pressure with this new schedule. I felt a ton of pressure with the old schedule as my downswing continued. The wildcard here is that Stars is running a $30r 3x turbo WSOP sat at 10:30pm. I crush these. I won one of my WSOP seats last year on this tourney (different structure this year but still 30r) and I won two NAPT seats on this structure. I will probably be playing it nightly. But I feel ok with that. I cashed it last night for $700. Paying one seat but cashing down to 14 seats, I busted 10th with KQ < Q9 for top 3 stack. If I include this with about 7 rebuys on average, my new ABI is $50.60. Still light years cheaper than the past and mentally easier to accept if i brick a night.

I feel the tide turning. I had a deep run in each of my last three sessions. 18th in the 10r, 6th in the 28k and the cash in the 30r WSOP sat.

I’ll keep this blog update with my progress and when I decided to move my ABI up again.