The Roller Coaster

Some people, pros even, won't play No Limit...

It’s been a wild few weeks for me at the virtual tables. The good news is I won a tournament. Huzzah! It was a Sunday $100k guarantee on WSOP.com.

During my previous 36 attempts in that event…I had never so much as cashed. You read that right! Thirty-six bullets (including rebuys) and not a single dollar to show for it. But on the thirty-seventh bullet, I turned a 77 buy-in profit. My ROI in that particular event is now over 100%…with a cash rate of 2.7%!

Unfortunately, my success was short-lived. In the early Bracelet and Ring events that have just kicked off online, I’ve cashed only one out of 21 bullets—and that was in a $100 Ring event. My ROI over that time is -89.7%.

These crazy swings are simply to be expected if you want to play tournaments at any kind of volume. Something that always helps me deal with this maddening phenomenon is to broaden my outlook. Yes, I’ve gotten crushed over the last week, but even if I widen my scope just a little to the last month, then I’m safely ahead thanks to my win.

Better yet, let’s go even wider. Since I started tracking my results carefully mid-pandemic, I have a 44.5% ROI and a 14.8% cash rate over 169 bullets (buy-ins plus rebuys). Even this isn’t all that big of a sample size, but already the numbers look much more sane, and pretty close to what I could reasonably expect. Of course I would love for both numbers to be higher, but that’s why I’m constantly trying to improve. Not because of some short-term down swing, but to increase profits over the long, long, long run.

In the short run, I can get it all-in with Ac5c on a board of JcTc4c and lose to Qc8c (this happened in a recent Ring event). In the short run, I can also be in eighth place with eight players remaining, then win my next two flips to suddenly get heads-up and then continue to run good to win the event (this also happened, in the $100k guarantee last month).

It’s not about the short run. While I know you’ve heard that sentiment a million times before, it’s one thing to hear it, and quite another to feel it in your gut. Bad runs are not just possible, they’re inevitable if you play long enough.

Enjoy the good, don’t harp on the bad, and always try to get better. That’s the only formula for sanity.