Since this weekend I've been on a major downswing losing almost 1/3rd of my BR (my BR is $3266 now). I still have a $266 profit for this month, but loosing so much in such a short span of time felt truly bad. The downswing was a mix of way to many bad beats, tilt and bad bluffs and calldowns. This downswing has been a wakeup call for me though, because since yesterday night when I lost over $800 while taking a shot at NL200 I've realised the following:

- I've been to greedy! I started out June focusing on to become a better player, and to strive to make the correct plays in every hand of poker I played. I quickly lost this focus though, and when I wasnt playing I was thinking more and more (and talking more and more to friends and family) about the possible big money involved in playing higher stakes, being rich etc etc. Having this kind of focus on poker is truly bad, and you will never become a good player if you focus on poker this way.

- The first one or two weeks I focused on evolving as a player and improving my game. But slowly while I began focusing more on the big money involved I stopped improving my own game, stopped posting so much on FTR and stopped looking over my own HHs in PT.

- I took a shot at NL200 with 20 buyins yesterday - nothing wrong with that in itself. But I should have stopped when I lost 2 buyins. I wasnt playing my A-game, in fact I tilted because of two bad beats, and because I was greedy and wanted to make even bigger money, I stayed at the tables and played. And I ended up loosing two buyins more when I tilted and tried to push someone off the nuts twice with ace high. Meh.

- More tables = more $$$. I normally play 4-tables, and I can handle that pretty well. At one point I played 6 tables. Yeah, this is doable, and it also went ok for me. But when trying to fix some major leaks in my game I shouldnt do more than 4 tables. I can 6-table properly, but with that many tables I'm not able to play optimal poker and I'm not able to focus on fixing my big leaks (at my current level of skill - it will come in time though).

- I dont play enough hands. Only getting 10k hands in pr month is not enough. The key to solving this problem is to play longer sessions. Most of my sessions has only been around an hour. Playing longer 2-4 hour sessions would allow me to get way more hands in pr month.

After realising all this, I'm going to take the rest of the week off from poker. I'm going to the "Roskile Festival" tomorrow (gonna be awesome btw), and when I get home on monday I will start playing again with the following goals:


Goals for July

1. My focus should be on making the correct decision in every hand of poker I play, and I shall strive to perfect my game and fix my leaks. I've been way to resultsoriented in the past, I will not fall into this trap again.

2. I will 4-table NL100 for the rest of the month. No more than 4 tables, because I will focus on fixing my leaks and improving my game. My goal is 20k hands for this month, which should be doable if I play 2-4 sessions.

3. Besides playing I will study this game more:
- I will reread "NL:T&P" and write notes while reading it.
- After this reread I will join Cardrunners.com and watch and learn from their videos.
- I will review HHs in PT after each session and post any hand I'm in doubt about.
- I will check the FTR-shorthanded NL forum every day and reply to as many posts as possible.