Poker is something that has always fascinated me, and like most things that fascinate me I strive to learn about them the most I can, and then succeed at doing them. In school I always did good, even if I didn't give it my 100%. In classes I actually enjoyed I was often close to the top of my class, even if it was something that was outside of my skillset.
I've always been a breakeven poker player. I'd have downturns, then upturns, but for the most part I always seemed to be breaking even over the long haul of things. Well, overall I've been a loser, because I've made several deposits over the course my my poker career, but the money I'm playing on now started off as $200 on PartyPoker. I then bonus whored for awhile, and ended up with $1000 on FTP. Now I'm back down to $350.
I don't want to give up on poker, I really do enjoy it too, but it tilts me that I can't figure things out. I think have been figuring 'I'm better than this guy' and playing with too much arrogance (at every form of poker I've played). Why? Because I get cocky.
When I started at PartyPoker I was playing $11, full ring SnGs. I grinded that up to $1000, when I switched to $22s, and my confidence was SUPER high. Then I tanked all the way back down to about $150, eventually got it a bit higher, then started bonus whoring and grinded back up to $1000. After playing on Stars for awhile with this, and losing about $500 playing short handed ring games I moved my money over to Full Tilt so I could get rakeback. I continued playing ring games there, but got frustrated with my lack of success (considering how much better I was than everyone else), then started playing full ring SnGs again, mass tabling in an attempt to build my BR back up (and doing okay at them), and then I moved back to cash games because I find mass-multitabling SnGs to be rather painful. Again I sucked at cash games, but remained over confident in my skills, and eventually quit because work was taking up too much of my time.
I then came back, when I started this blog, re-committing myself to HU SnGs, which I still find very entertaining. I came in after watching several PokerSavvy videos by a HU SnG pro, and proceeded to win at about 15% ROI, making myself believe I was great. My BR was on the verge of jumping to the $50 games, when all of a sudden the wheels came off the bus. Now I'm not sure if it's because I was over confident or what, or if I had just ridden some really good cards to get where I was, but now I sit with a BR that only justifies myself playing the $10 games and feeling rather shitty about myself.
Maybe I'm wrong about being overconfident, but I really do feel it's made play stupid. I'm not sure if I should go back to low stakes cash games (.05/.10) and try to 2-table my way up, or if I should keep grinding $10 HU SnGs, and attempt to go into all my games with a bit more of a modest and open mind than I have been doing. I feel too much of my play recently (now that I'm on such a big downswing) is very reactive to how my opponents are playing, but in the opposite way than it should be. I because passive so fuckin' easily, because I'm always afraid of being trapped and what not, and then whenever I get it in good if feels like they keep hitting their gut-shots. I think another break is due, even if it just for a few days. I hope I can get this sorted out, because I don't have the financial situation to deposit money again right now (maybe that's a problem too?), but I don't want to give up on this game.
