/ Matthew Pitt / 21 June 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Portoroz: Where I'll end up, eventually
"One day you will run worse than you ever thought was possible." I cannot remember where I heard or read that statement or even if it was made up in the recesses of my mind but one thing is for certain it is 100% true as I recently found out to my peril.
I actually find it quite funny that if I had written this blog entry on Thursday morning as I had initially planned to then it would be as different as different could be. You see, until Thursday I was quite literally crushing the $11 HUSNG on Betfair Poker and feeling great about my game. I had won 57.7% of my 130 games, had an ROI of 4.9% (before rakeback is taken into consideration) and I was running under EV too by a couple of buy-ins. I was feeling that confident about absolutely everything about how I was playing and approaching the game that I was making plans to start taking shots at the $22 games.
Then on Thursday everything went tits up, for want of a better expression. My session started badly with me losing my first three games but that didn't really bother me as I won my next four. Then I decided I felt comfortable taking a shot at the $22 games so registered for one and after a minute or so it filled and to cut a long story short I didn't play too good and deserved to lose. I then played another $22 game and managed to lose when I got my money in with a well disguised two pair only to find I had run into an even better disguised set of aces! Ooops! By the end of the night I had played 22 matches and only won 10 of them, which would usually be an almost break-even proposition but the fact I went 1/5 in my $22 games meant I booked a substantial loss, but for the most part I played well and just ran into hand after hand against the worst of players. All good fun and part of the game.
I decided not to play on Friday because I was pretty tired so had an early night but I hit the tables hard on Saturday, or should I say they hit me. I have never experienced anything like it since I started playing poker. Two wins in the $11 games were met with a run on nine consecutive losses, with two of those being $22 games. I simply couldn't do anything right. Have a set of threes and 82% equity on the turn and lose, some tool has 93o and beats my sixes all in pre, ace-nine lose to ace-seven all in pre and at least half a dozen vital flips. Oh and here's one with nearly 97% equity and one with 93%. [] skill game! The skills I learned from "The Mental Game of Poker" certainly helped me keep a level head but there is only so much reassuring yourself that you can do before even the most experienced of player starts to doubt themselves. From the 17 games I played on Saturday I actually ran 7.5 games below equity and I'm massively under EV for my sample of 169 games played so far.
On Sunday and Monday I stayed away from the tables because I couldn't get my head around how badly I was running and didn't want to risk playing whilst I was in the wrong frame of mind, which would only make matters worse, but I am hoping to play a few matches tonight and see what happens. All I can do is continue to get my money in good and make +EV plays and apparently it will all turn out for the best, or so they say. It's not all doom and gloom though because I ran like the wind when playing some PLO games, winning close to $90 from the 74 hands I played whilst quite possibly on tilt and self destruct mode. Oh the irony!
The bad run has actually come at quite a bad time too as I am almost certainly going to have to withdraw my bankroll or use a significant portion of it for life expenses. Moving house has been much more costly that I had anticipated and it has completely wiped me out. I would have been fine but the rear brakes on the car decided to fall apart and the brake cylinders started leaking so that cost me £220 and then all the £15 here and the £30 along with the fact I still have some invoices outstanding means I am on the bones of my arse at the moment, which isn't a good position to be in when you are a man who has no credit facilities.
The biggest life expense at the moment is flights to Italy because I have managed to secure a job as a live blogger for the upcoming WPT Slovenia, with a little help from Lee Davy. Although I will have my flights paid for me eventually, I have to buy them myself and charge back and the cheapest flights so far have been £280, £280 that I simply don't have right now. It looks like I will be getting the train to Manchester Airport, hanging around for five hours, flying to Munich, hanging around for an hour, flying to Trieste in Northern Italy and then getting a €100 taxi to Portoroz. Isn't live reporting just the most glamorous of jobs? I'm hoping it goes well because I have been told if it does then I will almost certainly be booked for the rest of the year, so fingers crossed.
I'll leave it there for now, congratulations if you have made it this far! Until next time, thanks for reading and good luck at the tables!
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