Consistency is something I’ve been seriously lacking in - at least up until most recently. I think it’s actually my recent consistency that has made me realize just how big my swings were before.

Looking back at my ‘bankroll progress’ thread aswell as my stats for the 200 SnG challenge, it’s easy to see how large and wild my swings were. The fact that I was getting such large swings really hit me one day when I was playing 6-max 2/4 NLHE and had a -$600 day (with a $2800 bankroll). One reason my swings were so high, when I was playing up at 400 NL, was the fact that I was playing with scared money on top of the fact that I was playing way above my bankroll limits. A very dangerous combination. I knew I was playing with way more than the widely accepted standard of %5 of my bankroll, but with similarly large upswings, I got a little too ambitious and overconfident and ignored proper bankroll management. When you’re winning pots of $100 to $200, and even up to $400 pots by milking the chip-rich fish at that level, it’s easy to completely forget the fact that they can dent your wallet for just as much through a simple AA vs 75-offsuit hand.

Within a very small time, I’d run my $300 bankroll up to about $800, then up to $1200 with MTT wins. I started to play NL cash games, something I had little experience in as I’d built my bankroll from strictly SnGs and MTTs. I played $0.5/$1 then quickly hopped up to $1/$2, and after more success I moved up to $2/$4 - the tables I had only weeks before looked at in awe as people raked in average-sized pots that amounted to a large fraction of my bankroll. I very quickly learned how much money could be made in the very volatile 6-handed tables, but learned even quicker how much you could lose. I ran my ‘roll up to roughly $3000 (an amount of money that was surreal to me as I hadn’t deposited a cent) only to see it drop back down to $1200 within days.

I realized a few actual leaks in my play that were a big part of my swings, but even the ‘normal’ swings from bad beats at that level took more than their toll on my bankroll. This of course led me to some very tilted play which only added to the problem. It was pretty obvious that I needed to make some changes before I kept playing. For one, I withdrew a large portion of my bankroll to bring me down to the level that I thought my skill best suited. Another thing I did was stop playing cash games and almost completely stopped playing MTTs. It was, and still is, just too easy to win or lose large amounts in a single ring session, and my finishes in MTTs just weren’t consistent enough to make a steady profit. I wanted to find a way to build my bankroll with slow, steady wins (hello, SnGs!).

The SnG challenge really helped my bankroll out (in the beginning) and it was a great way of building my bankroll with consistency. I was doing so well with the $10s, and then the $20s and $30s that I moved up to the $38 6-seaters on stars very quickly, and was profiting quite nicely in the beginning. But once again, I was playing at stakes (and skill levels) just a little too large for my likings; when I would bust out on a bad beat, I would tilt like there was no tomorrow. My stats went from ~%50 ITM and ~%35 ROI in the beginning to %40 ITM and %10 ROI when the challenge was finished.

Well with that first SnG challenge behind me (thankfully), I started my new one in which I’m playing strictly 6-seaters. So far I’ve gone on a terrible run (due almost purely to the looseness of their players) at PartyPoker, did not cash at all in the two games I played at PokerStars, but my FullTilt stats are so phenominal by my standards that they’ve brought my stats up to this.

I don’t go on tilt for multiple games like I used to (see $38 SnGs), nor do I make ‘curiosity calls’ or silly spur of the moment plays that almost always put my tourney life in the hands of a gamble. The worst that has happened so far is just a bad run of luck (running into AA while holding KK on the bubble, QQ losing to KQ and other similar situations) that brought me a loss of 3 straight games. Aside from that, I’m cashing very frequently, and am able to do it with 2 tables instead of one which really helps. I actually feel like I’m playing consistently and hopefully I can hold these stats up for the entire challenge - knock on wood!