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Hey guys have a couple thoughts-questions I would like to get perspective on. I have played profitably for about 3 years and have moved up from playing an average buy in of about $10 to where for the last two or so years I have been rolled to comfortably play around a $25-30 ABI and have hit the worst downswing I have faced to date and have seen my roll go from just under 10k to a little over 3k since July. I FT the Stuper, shipped the $55 10k, FT the $27.50 and $22 6max twice all in a 2-3 week timeframe to put my roll at an all time high and other than 45 man sng rollsavers I havent even cashed for three figures since. It has been uncanny variance and cannot seem to win a flip or hold when I am ahead, especially deep. Last night I busted four tournies deep in or near money all for top 10ish stacks AK<A7, KK<66, AA<88, and KQ<KT bvb. Tiny sample, but indicative of about every session for going on four months.
With that said, and I dont want this to be a bad beat post, its not. I am just wondering how the pros and others deal with moving down when proper BR management dictates it. I typically put in a volume of 90-100 tournaments a month in the winter, we boat a lot so summer is lower volume but not by that much since the only session affected is my Saturday one. I cannot be alone in the regards that I make great money in my real job and only use my poker winnings for vacations and luxuries, as well as to build my roll to play the games I really want to play. I am not backed, and am not interested in being backed but am having a very hard time with mixing smaller buy in tournaments into my schedule to lower my ABI.
I guess my question is two fold:
1. How have you or would you deal with the emotions of moving down in stakes? Is this a huge leak, the fact that I have a hard time getting as excited about a $10 tournament as I do a $55 or higher?
2. When you experience this type of variance do you drop the number of tables you are playing or do you just drop your ABI and keep playing +ev poker to regain confidence and get a couple scores to regain the confidence?
Any advice from anyone will help, and I have thick skin so dont pull any punches. I understand variance, just have never been on the wrong side of it for so long and am struggling with dropping down.
1. You should feel perfectly okay with moving down in stakes, and should be playing your best in all of those games. When I am playing on Sunday, I will be playing $10 tournaments mixed in with $500s, and I'm just as psyched to get deep in any which one. Remember that your return on investment is the smaller ones is generally much higher than in the bigger buyins, so you should be excited if you keep things in perspective and remember that for $10 you have a chance to win $4k plus.
2. If I'm just experiencing variance, I'll continue to play as many tables as I can while lowering my ABI. If I feel like perhaps I'm not playing as well as I should, I'll take days off to look at videos online and see if there's anything vastly different between my game and what others are doing. Lastly, I'll look over my hand histories and see if I can find leaks in my game. I also might have a friend look at my hand histories to ensure I'm doing okay.
July 3, 2010
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Not that I am playing anything decently expensive right now but I used to play a ton of cash games so I can safely say the biggest and most important factor in dropping down while on a downswing is checking your ego at the door and not managing to convince yourself that these stakes are beneath you. Otherwise you're begging to lose at the lower stakes, too.
Based on what you said in your original post it doesn't sound like you've done that yet so I highly doubt you're bringing your A game to these lower buy-in mtt's.
wein's advice is really solid.
esp his point about ROI in smaller tournies. even though you may be making less money in them in absolute terms, your return in them is in some cases significantly higher than in MS/HSMTTs, so be grateful for them 😉 try taking a look at the OPR of someone like shaundeeb or djk123 back in the day to help you realize that mixing in smaller stuff is just part of your overall profit scheme.
he's also right that as long as you think youre playing well, then all you should drop is your ABI, but if you think you're maybe slipping a bit then yes, you should not only look to scale back tables and up focus, but also consider some time off to watch some vids/review your own play to see where you can do some plugging.
great to have you aboard, mang. glglglglgl.
Thanks Hag and everyone. I agree I have not been playing optimally in the smaller buy in stuff, especially after reviewing some HHs. I had spent all my study time in the bigger buy ins and had been straight autopiloting the $10 and under stuff. It is just difficult to be surrunded for so long by so many excellent players and finally have comparable success then have to drop down. May be standard for some, but this is the first real “serious” downswing i have had. I looked at HEM ans filtered out everything over $10 and I have almost an 80% ROI in the smaller stuff. HAd quit playing the 45 mans I used to crush, and after adding them back into my sessions i have had 4 profitable sessions in a row and shipped one and top 3 in 4 more in my last couple sessions mixing these back in. Sometimes you just need a mental check up. I did this before, stopped mixing in the small field stuff and only played huge fields that have insane variance.
Bottom line is I think you need some sort of ego to be successful at MTT poker, but sometimes it is best to check the ego at the door lol.
TPE Management
March 17, 2010
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If you are not backed, dropping down is part of the game. You have to be incredibly lucky to outrun variance and part of the skillset of a successful MTTer is bankroll management.
Don't look at it as a failure to drop down. Change your mindset to view it as a necessarily evil. It really is. If you're good enough you'll rebink and move back up eventually. Take it as par for the course.
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