Bouncing Back

With January behind me I can finally breath a huge sigh of relief, December was so bad that I was genuinely worried I would have to give up the Poker life all together. How bad was it? In the last year I had one month in the red, unfortunately it was the first full month since taking the decision to turn Pro when I could least afford to lose money.

Thankfully I had enough put aside in case of just such an eventuality but my bankroll took a proper pasting. Worse than that my confidence was in terrible shape and as much as I told myself it was all variance I couldn’t help but begin to doubt my abilities. I dropped down from the £3/£6 limit all the way to 50p/ £1 and still kept shedding money, the problem with trying to win money back is that it is far harder to stay patient and wait for the right spots you end up trying to force the game which is not the ideal way to play when your confidence is low.

The worse my situation got the longer I played and the less daylight I saw, when I did finally try and get some sleep it was usually not enough and more than once I fell asleep at the computer, tiredness definitely kills bankrolls. Overall my situation was grim but I would not have had the confidence to go Pro if it hadn’t been for the fact that I could rely on John the Greek for good advice and as ever he didn’t let down. His advice was simple, play less!

Having forced myself to take a break the next step was to take a philosophical view of my losses, Rudyard Kippling asserts that all the world is yours and that you are a man, if among other things, you can make a heap of all your winnings and risk them on one turn of pitch and toss! This seemed to be exactly what I had done in December so taking the long view I guessed I could look forward to global rewards and affirmation of maleness, what can I say when a man makes cakes exceedingly well I am more inclined to pay attention to his musings!

Ultimately however it was not the philosophy that changed it was the game – I moved to No Limit and the rewards where instant. From the 5^th of January I have been on my best ever run my and on the last day of the month I had officially won back all I had lost in December as well as making my January target which is the equivalent of doing two months in one, Im Back!

January was also a good month for Tabloid who despite having to be encouraged to sit down at the £50 pot limit game at the Gutshot now seems to be a permanent fixture there parked behind a chip mountain. I haven’t seen much of his game yet as I have been grinding away with less spectacular results on the pony table but I have played on those tables more than enough to know that the kind of results he has been having are no fluke, he definitely has game. In fact I am trying to get him to make the trip to Vegas this summer.

I am hoping to meet even more academy members in February after at long last meeting the Jester who was actually remarkably sane and humble! If you are in London and looking to play let me know