Return to poker :D?

Tssup readers? This summer I have went through some ups and downs in poker in terms of psychology. I started out just loosing shitloads in PLO and was disgusted with the results of like -33 bb/100 for 20k hands even though I been on the upside of variance as early as this christmas with same stats but +30 bb/100. Decided that since I only can play 3ish months per year I need something more stable. I then switched back to FLSH which I have a proven trackrecord of 1m+ hands with profit. The doomswitch continued and I lost a large part of my remainding roll. I was fed up.

I mentally retired from poker, instead of these swings I would so much prefer to get a job, having people to talk to at work and learn something new and right now until I finish my current degree in 3 years, I dont mind getting 3-4k$/month (without any swings :D), thats enough for me. I started the withdrawalprocess and registered on a few sites/companies that lets you work 2weeks there, 2 weeks there for people generally without education. I do however have education but after reading ads etc and job descriptions I just felt a bit grim and unattractive. I sent out 3-4 online applications and its just been 2-3 days but I dunno, it kinda dawned upon me that the job world is a lot more difficult. So it made me rethink on poker again.

I left a small sum online and I switched to a new game and so far it has gone well! I am up 700$ atm after losing 400$ yesterday but I wasnt playing that great. I hope that will work well and poker is almost fun again, changing games is cool!

Mentally switch perspective from a job to a slightly profitable recreation.

But I move to Spain soon and what happens to poker then? This game is not played, I can only play NLHE, FLHE and PLO in Spain. I did some calculations and it is not realistic that I will sustain a decent hourly at any game without tapping into saving to refund the BR, and I think I am not prepared to do that. What I think I will do is that I will leave 500e online, play 5c/10c on a 50 buyin-br around 6h per week. If I loose that then its game over. That would prob give me an hourly of laaame 10$/h which is just terrible and like 8 out of the 9 years ive played I had the mindset that I wouldnt play a hand of poker if I didnt win anything from $100 down to $30 depending on my success level. I guess what changed my mind was the fact that I find it quite relaxing (and stressful at the same time!) firing up a few table. Also, if I just put the 6h/week at these low stakes the loosing days would not be mentally straining, I dont have to break the mental barrier of reaching into previous years winnings, poker wouldnt take over my life, I wouldnt have to take long breaks because loosing thousands of dollars set me in a bad mood= better more consistent volume but also it would mean that I can very realistically play 10c/25c within one year and then the hourly would be pretty good actually. So I think I am not quitting, at least not until I lose my 500. If I lose that then a break would probably be good, I really do think putting this much time into poker have deterred me from investing time and energy into other cool things and who knows, if I had this kind of shitty streak 2-3 years a bit back and more actively pursued other things, I could have made a lot more than I did these 2-3 years in poker. Okay, I am getting a bit longwinded. Ciao

PS: Btw, I would like to say that I truly believe I could sell some stocks, put a couple of thousand dollars into FLHE 2/4 to 5/10 and grind away for a pretty good hourly but after playing very little this year and having the first loosing year ever, I have become much much much more riskaverse. Another factor obviously is that I can only do that 3 months per year, if I was in Sweden or which ever country I could grind with good rakeback on, I might think differently.

Laaaast chance of hope!

As I was withdrawing all the cash, I started thinking about if there were not another type of poker I could focus on that would be profitable too but perhaps less swings and like, something new and exciting. I decided to check out some Cardrunners and just grind away with only 250$ with and if I lose it, then it is truly over. The good thing is that I have won 5 of 5 days so far, its up to 850$ Im gonna continue to take this slow, keeping in mind that if I bust poker is out and we will see, it is extremly possible I am just running good.

The reason I am not mentioning the game is that it has a small pool and I dont want to get any more grinders if it turns out I am crushing it early on. I bet there is a lot of goldmines out there that people are not aware of. I would imagine like headsup flhe sit and gos would be great since recreational players seems to like SNGs and they might mistakenly register for FLHE instead of NLHE or whatever. The problem with that one though is the time-consuming-part, I guess it has to be $100-sngs or something like that for it to be worth the time.

Also played some MTTs for my free tokens on different sites and yesterday I was doing well. Of 850 people I was 4th with 17 to go. Looked down at AA on the big blind, utg chipleader raised 3x and sb calls, I do like 15x and chippy ships it. It shows KK and obviously flop goes KQ2 and J on turn to give me a little hope but something raggy comes on river and I am out :(. If that is not a tell that the pokergods want me to quit then I dont know what is!

The end - at least for a year +

Hello! After my return to Sweden and the online grind, I just lost and lost and lost. It was not that many hands (20kish) and the loss was "only" around $3000 but it just kinda reminded me about the ps and downs in poker, how bad I have felt at times and how ungrateful it could be. This year I played mostly PLO, a new and swingy game for me and even though I prob could grind FLSH for a decent salary, it too has variance. After loosing 8 or 9 straight playing days (I took a few days off etc) I was just done. I told myself that I would grind out the rake I needed for some bonuses and then just cash the shit out.

This is kinda what I did yesterday, soon I wont have a single dollar at a online poker site. This kinda makes the future a bit different. If i decde to fully stop playing poker then I guess I would have to find other income when I am not studying. I have 3 years left btw at university and basically I could just spend the 3 months per year I have free doing nothing but with the cost of uni etc, that would just feel awful.

Anyhow, I think ill take the rest of the summer to work on a few new projects that actually is uncharted territory for me and learn something new, maybe some of them will generate the income and that could possibly be the end of poker. If that doesnt pan out I might consider a return to poker next summer. I have some cash from poker winnings that I put into mutual funds and its possible that I could put the profit from that into a second try. Of course I could put it but it is just the mental/moral aspect, right now I do not want to take any "real money" to put into poker again.

Poker in retrospect
All in all I have to be decently happy about my poker career so far even though I would have wished to make more money (I know there are a lot more that made a lot more). 9 years of playing has allowed me to purchase a nice apartment, travel to 30+ countries, visit Vegas a few times and all that while studying fulltime at university for 8 of those years (making me TOO educated, haha). The later years has been a battle uphill. 2013 was decent, but 2012 was a waste of time, 2014 the first losing year after 40-50k hands and 2011 wasnt that impressive either. There is a lot of things I could have done differently to have a lot more stable results (why the fuck did I have to play 100/200 once and 50/100 a lot (30k hands at least) , even if I only played higher if major fish was there (60 vpip+) and like one year I made "only" 40k$ since I lost like 80k$ on 50/100 or something like that. Also some year I played a bit too much HU while multitabling. I have done well playing FLHE HU historically but the variance can be quite brutal there if you do not hit. One year I lost like 15k$ at FLHE HU with stats like wtsd 45% won sd 40% (insane!), if I had just stuck to 3 handed+ I would have done better. The same thing early one when my PLO-game wasnt too great, I freaking played PLO 5/10$ at times, loosing i think 30k$.  Anyways, all the gambles I did at higher games was soooo +EV since I always played with huge fish but I was very unfortunate that they almost never worked. I guess I have a few hundred thousands of sklanskyBucks to cash out at the imaginery bank. Those would have been nice to have gathered!

Ohh well, could'da would'a should'a! It kinda is tempting to actually continue somehow, perhaps trying out the 8games or something but even though I am sure I could use the lessons I have learnt and turn out an okay profit for august with time, you have to weigh it against the shitty sides and its prob +lifeEV for me right now to stop and at least take a break, perhaps for 6 months, 1 year or forever. I realize how I am seemingly put in way too much effort into this post, writing all high almighty but it is kinda difficult to realize that you are about to remove a big part of your life. I am quite happy putting this time and energy on other stuff I have neglected in the past. I hope I will actually pursue those things and not replace them by something less productive, like watching tvshows. Or 8game!? Ahh I am tempted....  Gaah!! Very tempted..