Confidence is a must

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve moved on to the $20 heads up matches. It didn’t start out as smooth as I hoped it would. I shot up quickly winning 4/9, a high 40% in the money rating, and life was good. I was up almost $130 when it happened: a bad streak.

I lost 6 heads up sit n gos in a row. I tell myself they weren’t to bad play but bad beats, but I think that makes matter’s worse. Bad beats can really mess with your head. When back to back games you lose with AA and KK to low unsuited non-connecting cards it can be rather demoralizing. I found myself having won 4 games and lost 11 with a net profit of $5. At least I was in the black, right? Wrong. I felt like I had lost over $200 from the games I should have won. Each game you win is $80 back in your account and a few times that $80 should’ve been mine, so my mentality was that I had lost $200-$300 and I was not in a good frame of mind to play poker.

I took a break, watched some TV, actually did some homework for school and told my roommates I was thinking of heading back to the proven lucrative $10 games. But I thought it out and decided I didn’t need to, I knew I could beat the $20 games just fine and once the law of averages starts working again I’d be way up in profit, and hey, I’d never been down in $20 games yet. So late last night I decided to open up 2 more games and lo-and-behold my hands held up and came out victorious in both of them, a profit of $120. So far it looks like this:

Won 6
Lost 11
Profit $123
Money 35%

I really need to focus again and attack these SNGs like I did the $10, and I need to pull that Money percentage up, but I know that if I stay confident I would have any problem. So when you feel like you just can’t win remind yourself that you have been winning and you just need to recenter and focus.

Now, if you happen to be losing a lot and it doesn’t seem like its always to bad beats you might want to think about dropping levels, but thats a whole other topic.

Check out this article about “Playing through a Downswing” for a quicker way out and a good mentality.

Related Posts

• Poker for leisure
• Cashing out
• Heads up sit and goes
• Backup plan: Building a bankroll from scratch
• Heads up SNG challenges

« Previous Post | Next Post »

3 Comments to “Confidence is a must”

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.