Yes, the inevitable downswing. I've heard about it, read about it, seen rants about it but I've finally experienced it. And it sucks. Oh man does it suck. AA just never seems to hold up, getting 1-outed on the river a few times, multiple preflop raise callers to my AJ+ and not even getting close to hitting the flop... it's just brutal.
What's even worse is moving up a limit in the middle of a downswing. Yup that's right, I officially moved up to 5NL on Wednesday after hitting the golden $150 target. I was initially supposed to move up on Tuesday after having an 8 buy-in Monday but that's when the downswing started and I dropped 10.5 buy-ins. Managed to recover all of it in Wednesday's first session so moved up during the second session.
I won't go into details about the downswing. I won't rant and rave but it really is demoralising when you raise pre, hit top pair and then run into a two pair or a set or get sucked out by a flush draw. Already raising pre and hitting is hard for me right now but then losing stacks to a hand that I'm easily beating pre is just.... arrgghhh. It's just really a usual downswing, getting unlucky running into hands, cold decks and getting sucked out on. Now I'll be the first to admit that I have uncovered a few leaks (losing too much on just pairs due to being dominated) and made numerous mistakes but it's not just that which is causing me to lose stacks.
Running bad has also made me deviate wildly from LAG spewy to super tight TAGnit. I think I've reached a good medium where I'm playing at about where I was at 2NL (15/13 - 17/15) but there were times I began to doubt my style, my play and just poker in general. I'm glad to say I don't think I tilted much and instead of crawling back into a hole I went to rewatch some DC videos and that did help me get back some perspective and confidence, but I was really wary until my recent winning session. But anyway, that's all I'm going to say about it.
A few surprising observations I have about 5NL. It seems to be much different from 2NL where it's pretty common to see AFs hovering around 1. At 5NL people seem to be much more aggressive so this whole aggression thing really caught me off guard causing me to make some really bad plays thinking people were bluffing most of the time. Also, table average VPIP always seems to hover around the 25% mark, and even that's a stretch sometimes compared to the standard 30%+ at 2NL. And it's pretty hard to find your standard 2NL 40/2/1.0 fish here which I can take advantage of.
Overall I do think that the standard of player here is better. They tend to not chase too much, make better bets and raises and just generally aren't as loose as those at 2NL. This of course, sucks for me. I rarely have been able to do my usual bang-bang-bang three streets of value as people usually give up by the turn unless they have something really decent and I don't see people stacking off preflop with much worse than QQ or on the flop with just top pair for example. Oh and there is just SO much more 3 betting and squeezing at 5NL it's crazy. I mean, I guess it's good in a way as it helps me get experience in 3 bet pots but I was very taken aback by just how aggressive it is even preflop. I'm pretty sure I've even been 4 bet bluffed a few times (I did manage to pull one of these off). Whoever said 5NL is exactly like 2NL is talking out of his ass, it's just complete bullshit. It just seems like a totally different game.
In fact the game just seems to be full of regs whose stats are pretty decent. I think it's mostly because if fish "just feel like playing" they'll just hit up the 2NL tables which are at the top of the lobby and they won't even bother to scroll down to the 5NL tables. I would even go so far as to say that a lot of 5NL players are 2NL players who are moving up, and if they are moving up, means they're alright players and beating 2NL at a decent rate. This is clearly reflected in the number of 5NL tables - there always seems to be so few. Maybe I've been spoilt with the 60+ tables at all times at 1c/2c but seeing 30 tables is kinda disheartening and makes table selection hard. I would even go so far as to say that I reckon 10NL is easier than 5NL because it's at the top of the "Low" section in FTP's lobby. Of course, that could be just me talking out of my ass due to some of the brutal beats I've had this week.
Moving on from that though, I've managed to release I think 3 payments of my deposit bonus which is about $18.59. This is important as it's probably the only thing that's kept me above $100 so far apart from the one winning session I've had at 5NL. Rakeback as well recieved about $8 on Friday. Oh, would like to point out that it really is easy to clear the bonus at 5NL - I haven't really been paying attention or inputting them into HEM like I did mainly because I was taking beats at the table (hah) but I imagine I can clear a level in a normal 2 session day.
A few hands here, including some sick beats:
2 mistakes I see here - I probably should have raised preflop more and I should have shoved the turn instead of practically minraising. Wouldn't have changed the outcome but still. 1 out 1 time!
Sorry, I meant 1 out 2 times!
Just a hand from 1c/2c. Biggest single pot I've won at these stakes (5 buy-ins!). It goes crazy on the river.
So that's the week. Been running pretty bad for about 5000 hands but hopefully I'm emerging from that. Probably not gonna play a session today, a bit tired and could use the break. On another note, may go to Crown tomorrow but we'll see how it goes. I don't expect to be playing too much this week since I'm heading back on Tuesday so I think Monday will be my last for a while unless Streamyx has suddenly decided to become half-decent. So I'm stocking up on videos to study while in KL then who knows...
Summary:
- Starting bankroll: $127.06
- Ending bankroll: $111.01
- Gain: -$16.05
See how it goes man...
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