Ugh

What a brutal week. I haven't really updated because I really haven't felt it lately. 

I had a terrible week at the tables, starting early last week and going on a 13-14 BI downswing at $25nl. Granted, I'm sure one of those BI's was due to extreme monkey tilt, but I just couldn't seem to get anything going. Alot of it came in one session where I should have just set a stop loss and called it quits, but thought I could play my way out of it. I think I ran Kings into Aces 4 times, had an underset 3-4 times, and generally ran bad in all my flips or against draws. I've never seen so many flush draws get there, I swear. 

After dropping that many BI's, I decided that I really needed to drop down and work my way back up, which so far has gone alright. I cleared a $50 bonus at FT, and am working on clearing a $100 bonus as well playing mostly $10nl. So far, so good in that regard, and I think the BR is back up around the $500 mark. Not nearly where I wanted it to be, but not too much I can do about it but keep working away. 

The $100 bonus is actually on an old account from an address before I moved and didn't have rakeback on. Haven't used it in a while, but thought this might be the best time to really work on my game and get back to the basics. I quickly transferred $125 to that account and started playing NL25, which was a mistake. After dropping a BI, I quickly realized if I wanted to actually clear the bonus and make a bit of money, I needed to take it slow and steady, so I dropped and actually played some NL5! Wow, what a change. I'm amazed at how lightly people stack off there, and I'm guessing I could probably make more playing NL5 than NL10, lol. After getting a bit back playing NL5, I bumped up to NL10 with just over 10 BIs, cleared the first part of the bonus and have (I think) around $145 there now. Really, only a $10 profit overall, which is much lower than it should be as I made a few spewy calls. I really need to stop doing that, and cut my losses in hands. I find it alot harder to fold a hand at 10NL and people seem to just want to give thier stacks away super light, but every time I get into a deep pot with someone they seem to finally have it. Making 2-3 slightly better decisions and I'd probably have another 2-3BI's. 

The other change I made playing for the $100 bonus is I'm back down to 2 tables of Rush. Too many times playing 4 tables I found myself making bad decisions that I could avoid if I had been paying more attention. I miss the straight draw that gets there, I miss a 4 flush board (once), things like that. Playing 2 tables lets me concentrate a bit more.

Hopefully I'll have most of this second bonus cleared within 2 weeks and be back up to where I was last weekend, even a bit higher. I don't want to end up just clearing this $100 bonus and not actually making other money on it. I want to be able to clear the whole $100 and add another $100-$150 in winnings on top of that. I do need to get it done in a decent amount of time so I can get in some hands with Rakeback, but I feel the bonus is slightly better for me overall than rakeback will be. 

The other thing I'm not sure of is if I'll be able to play in the rakeback freeroll this month. I missed it last month and really wanted to play in it this month, but I have a work change on the 13th starting at 11pm and going for 10-12 hours. Of course, the freeroll is on the 14th at like 3pm, so we'll see if I can either drag my ass out of bed or stay up for it. Its a $20k freeroll, so I'd really like to play this one. 

Hopefully another update in a few days... I deserve a good upswing, and hopefully it comes shortly so I can bump back up to NL25 and get back on track. I'm still working on fixing some leaks, but am feeling more confident in my game now than I was when I started this challenge. I don't know if I'm more detached from the money but running a 2-3 barrel is OK for me now, providing that I feel its a +EV move.

I'd really love to do some sweat sessions or get a few coaching sessions, but don't know if its money spent wisely at this point. We'll see how the next few weeks go and what the prices are. I think a few coaching sessions could up my winrate significantly, but it might take a while of sustained winrates to offset the cost. I think if I keep studying my game and really try to nail down what I feel are the major leaks in my game I can show more profit. Time will tell!