Snapping Out of it.

I think I’m snapping out of whatever poker suckiness I had gotten myself into.  It started last weekend when I thought I played pretty well in our home game tournament.  I lost a few coin flips at the end that prevented me from cashing, but overall I played pretty well.  I didn’t do so well in the second game but my early exit allowed me to get home at a reasonable hour.

Since I had planned on playing pretty late that night, I fired up a few tables on PokerRoom once I got home.  I played a ring game where I continued my losing ways, although just barely.  I also played a short handed SNG which I won.  

Later in the week I played a few SNG’s on Stars, cashing in the first two and ending up in fifth in the last one.  In all three I felt like I was making good decisions and reads, so I’m starting to feel more confident about my play.  

This morning, I broke my losing ring game streak as I was able to quit while I was ahead on both tables that I was playing.  

So hopefully I’m cured, and I can start playing with confidence again.  I think moving to Stars really helped as their tournament structure seems to work a lot better for me.  I don’t know if the blinds increase by smaller amounts, in larger time intervals, but Stars pace seems to work much better for me. I’m too lazy to look up the exact blind schedules on the two sites, but I always feel like I’m playing catch up in PokerRoom’s tournaments.  Even when I lose a big pot early on Stars I’m usually comfortable and I don’t feel pressured to try to double up right away.   Maybe its just psychological, but I really think I do better on Stars.  

The other thing that I think helps is that I haven’t been bonus chasing this last week.  I think when I’m trying to reach a certain number of hands to earn a bonus I tend to play more often than I should, and I make poor decisions that I wouldn’t normally make.  And when I’m playing poorly I tend to keep playing because I want to reach a certain number of hands, rather than just stopping and playing another time when I’m less tilty.   Of coarse that’s not going to stop me from chasing bonuses, I just have to be more careful when I do it.