Wow…It’s been entirely too long since I made an update here.
For a little over a month now I’ve been fighting with 25NL. So far, it’s kicked my ass twice. I started out winning for a few sessions, then hit a bad streak, started questioning myself, and things went bad. I moved back to 10NL for a while to recover my bankroll and get my head on straight again. Took another shot at the 25’s and had almost identical results the second time. I’m now recovering a few buy -ins at 10NL again, and planning my next (and hopefully last) shot at 25NL.
Moving up to $25 games had a much bigger impact on my mental state (and consequently on my game) than I thought it would. The amount of money you’re betting turns into dollars instead of cents. Losing just 1 buy-in drops you down 2 and a half of your usual $10 buy-ins. $25 doesn’t sound like so much compared to $10. But $50 seems like a lot compared to $20. Losing $75 in 10 minutes hurts a lot more than losing $30. I won nearly $80 in a single hand one night. I couldn’t even come close to that number in 10NL. The realization of how much real money I was actually playing with hit me like a ton of bricks.
I started questioning what I was doing, looking for ways to change my game and be more prepared. I started changing things…that was the fundamental mistake. Even when I went back to 10NL, I started off losing. It took me a day or two of playing 10NL to get all the ghosts and goblins out of my head and convince myself to just go back to doing exactly what was working before.
I finally sat down with a paper and pen and wrote down the positions around the table, and exactly what hands I want to be playing from what position. I marked down which are open-raising hands, which are calling hands, and which to fold if there’s already a raise out there. I told myself that I’m not going to deviate from this chart unless I sit and think, and make a change that seems like a good idea when I’m NOT playing. Making changes to the chart while I’m playing is not allowed. That keeps any kind of tilt out of the process. Once I started following my own advice, the numbers immediately started going up all over the place.
I still need to recover a few dollars at 10NL before I can “safely” take another shot at 25NL, but I’ll have a lot more confidence this time around. Having to drop down a level and build up again sucks, but I know I can do it. I think this time I’m finally going to get up there and stay.
May the fish be with you…