Dealing with variance A.K.A. running bad for an abnormal amount of time.

So it's nothing huge but I've been running bad since the 9th of April. 3 weeks now. A run that has seen me drop 15% of my bankroll. This downswing occurred during a run of 97 MTTs and 24 SNGs. I've cashed in 21 of the MTTs and 4 of the SNGs. Not far off my normal in the money percentages but I haven't had any nice scores. I've bubbled a couple 180-mans as well as a couple 180-man final tables. I got 25th out of 1,875 people in the Midnight Madness on Full Tilt for $77 when first place was $3,400. Took a very sick beat to get knocked out of that when the pot I lost would have guaranteed me a final table. It's been a lot of that. I'm getting close to some very good scores because I've stepped up my average buy-in a little but I keep getting the door slammed in my face when it matters. Key pots are just not going my way right now.

So far this has not affected my game as far as tilting or playing differently. I'm sticking to my gameplan and what has been working for me which I'm proud of. I just have to ride it out. I've been through an extended bad run before, about a year ago, and I guess you just have to ride it out.

One of the things I'm going to do in the next couple weeks is decrease my volume a little bit and do some other things outside of poker. Like tomorrow for example, I'm playing golf with some friends at 11 in the morning. The weather has been great here in Long Beach, CA lately and when we played 2 weeks ago it gave me a little bit of the golf bug. That combined with the fact that my cable provider finally got The Golf Channel back and I'm really into golf again. I found that after working the Long Beach Grand Prix for 4 straight 18 hour days (in which I didn't play at all) when I finally got around to playing again after 4 days off, I was really excited and focused.

Hopefully it will end soon. I've been getting close to some nice scores and when one of these swing pots goes my way deep in a tournament, the grind will all be worth it.

If anyone has any suggestions or things that they do to try and counteract a bad run, feel free to leave a comment.

Adios,

SICKTIGHT311