"On the last episode of Aaron's blog...

We saw how depressing a bad run can be and the slippery slope that insues. First it's a couple tough beats, then it's a few more. Then it's starting to play weak tight afraid the next beat is just around the corner, so we miss value left and right. Next we take it on the chin again, and go into 'I don't give a fuck' mode...tilt sets in, but we don't know it yet. We've still convinced ourselves we're playing "the same as we always have..." Next thing you know, one, two, three 14+ out big draws miss in a row, the maniac gets the best of us...A sick feeling sets in as we click the "Cashier" button: all of my March profits have been squandered..."

So let me take you back to the first week of April, after the ending of the last episode. I stopped playing poker for an entire week. Not an easy thing to do, for a guy like me. I found myself sitting there bored, mind wandering to some hand I played a few months ago, or perhaps one of the tough beats. If there's one thing I've taken from the weeks of March, it's that bad runs can and will happen, and they're guaranteed to be worse than you think -- in fact, I'm certain I'll hit a stretch even worse than my March. Next time I'll be a bit better mentally though...

So after some soul searching and a lot of reading 2+2 I decided it was time to get back on the saddle... and no, not on the $200 games. Straight back to the $400s. I felt I could beat them but my confidence was a bit shot...As you can see by the graph below, the first few thousand hands contained more of the same downward spiral. Ugh...tough to swallow....To make matters worse, my evenings were spent supporting the clients left behind by the latest Java developers to leave our consulting firm. As a result, I played virtually no hands during the weekdays...Thankfully I started to run a bit better on the weekends...

My parents and grandma came to visit me over Easter weekend, we had a great time. I managed to even get a couple thousand hands in at nights and a few hundred during the day. Grandma took an interest in what I was doing. She didn't know a thing about poker, so as I was 4-tabling the $400 games, she sat beside me to take a gander. I began to explain the different hands and how the games work, "see grandma, I use those cards in the middle plus the cards in my hand and I try to make 1 pair, 2 pair, 3 of a kind, etc." It was fun, "see grandma, right now I have what's called the nuts, it's the best possible hand right now, so I'll go all-in". I happened to get called and bust someone while grandma was there watching. After seeing my $800 stack, she asks "so you're not actually playing for real money are you? just for fun ... right?" :-P Sometimes those of us caught in the online poker scene forget what $800 means to non-poker types, especially grandmas!

After my folks left, I kept grinding it out the following weekends in the $400 games. Before I knew it, the month was over and I only played 11,500 hands. I missed my goal of 3500 hands / week, but I managed to put together a +$5,400 month. It's good, and I'm happy, but it's nothing compared to what a lot of guys are pulling out of the $400 games. I've got a long ways to go before I can consider myself crushing it.

My goal for May is to keep the good run going. I played a nice session tonight to start May off right, booking a $1,000 win. I felt like I was playing (and running) very well. My bluffs weren't being called, and I made some thin calls of my own to scoop some nice pots. Running well breeds playing well, while running bad breeds playing poorly. Hopefully I'll keep things on the positive, however, I'm not so delusional to discount the fact that my next big downswing could be right around the corner...