Yeah, a few days ago I invested $50 onto Paradise. By the end of night one it was up to $90. Later the next day it was above $160. The following day it was built up to over $210. Later that evening it was over $250. That's a 400% gain in approximately 48 hours. The original action was stricltly $0.50/$1 and $10 + 1 Sit N Go's. Once the bankroll got up to around $100 I started playing 5-handed $1/$2 tables. The jump from $210 to $250 included about 20 hands of $2/$4 play, from which I netted a small amount. A couple hours after I signed off after cracking $250 I hopped back on. Again I was off to a good start, running it up to almost $300 in a short while, all at $1/$2 tables.
I decided to jump up to the $2/$4 game, but my $100 buy-in sank to $70ish in a few minutes. The $2/$4 games on Paradise are not offered in the short-handed format, so I had to deal with 5 extra people at the table and essentially 5x less winning hands. That can make a short streak of good cards that lose pots extra painful because there are no "pick-up" pots in between. Anyway, I bailed on the $2/$4 and continued playing two $1/$2 tables. For hours and hours I sat there, trying to maintain my game, but the action seemed to have turned and I was no longer finding myself in profitable situations. It seemed like every hand resulted poorly. Big hands were not paid off, while other big hands were beaten by even bigger hands or completed draws. Have you ever noticed that the time when all your opponents start hitting their draws is also the time that you can't seem to hit one to save your life? I had so many double digit draws (10 outs or more) that didn't hit during that session, it was sick. By the end of the session I had busted out completely. Well, not completely. Knowing that I would do exactly what I did I earlier withdrew $100, "ensuring" that I would not tilt off all of my money.
Actually, I'm going to just lay this out there. I am thoughtful enough about the way I play poker (read: good) so that if I dump $200 in one session playing two tables of $1/$2 it means that I was the recipient of some pretty unholy bad luck. And I don't mean bad cards (as I've always said, bad cards don't lose you money; good cards that get beaten lose you money), I mean bad luck. If I had simply hit a streak of ugly starting hands I would have lost $50 at the most.
Ok, that's the "I lost so I must have been unlucky" version. Anyone who's read this blog knows that that's not a good enough answer. Not for me at least. In poker one controls one's own destiny, including "luck." Should I have gotten up after losing a moderate amount ("moderate," ugh, I'm bitching about dumping $200 in a $1/$2 game - I'm sooooo broke right now)? Should I have table-hopped more until I found a more suitably textured game? Should I have started playing differently? Was it a Sunday night and as a result the Paradise software was screwing me in order to keep the weaker players in a few wins and therefore keep them playing (and paying rake)? The A. to the last Q. is almost certainly "no," but it would a nice compliment to my poker playing skills if the only time I lost money was when I was the victim of a large-scale conspiracy to con me out of my money by elaborately cold-decking my hands. Actually, come to think of it...yeah, that's what happened.
I've got some things to think about.
