Am I cut out to cope with the variance in this game?

Well, it's already been a recurring theme in what is still a short blog, but today was more excruciating than anything I can remember. I started off with a nice little set of 14/23 for +$20, following it up with 16/23 for +$40, to make it +$60 for the day. All was going well, I was pretty happy and the games were looking good to play. Then suddenly it all went totally pear-shaped, and in my next three sets I went 8/20, 7/22 and 8/24 for -$24, -$44 and -$45 respectively. That's -$113 in just 66 games, and about three hours. So my total for the day was a confidence crushing -$52; not a lot to show for my five hours work.

The only positive is that I cleared another level in Stars' Stellar Rewards scheme, but as it's only $10, it doesn't even cover my losses for the day.

I genuinely feel I played OK today. I've already been back for a review and don't see many spots where I could do anything different, so I can't believe I've been so badly savaged when it comes to payout time. It was just short stack after short stack surviving until it came to me being the shorty, at which point I either shoved BvB into AA or had a strong hand cracked by some retarded call. And in the early part of the games it seemed that flops and action always developed unfavourably, such as raising QQ, getting called in four spots and flop coming a monochrome AKx, meaning I can't continue the hand. Or flopping something really strong, betting it, and getting called all the way by villain until they miracle something on the river.

OK, I accept that some of them have to lose, but I'm incredulous at losing so many in such a short space of time; in just three short hours I'd had my greatest peak-to-trough downswing at the $5.20s, more than 30% worse than anything which has gone before it, and my cumulative ROI had crashed by more than 1%.

If I had run at my long term average then my 112 games should have yielded a daily profit of just under $42, but the actual result of -$52.40 leaves me nearly $100 short of where I could have been predicted to finish the day. My cumulative profit for February is now a measly $48 over more than 600 games, at the rather pathetic ROI of 1.5%.

Halfway through the day I was really happy with the progress I'd made towards my goal of getting on the Sharkscope leaderboard, but now I'm over $300 behind 20th spot, when barely a few hours ago I was within $200 of getting there.

But I'm not going to give up; I know that I am so much better than the average moron who plays these games. But the difference between me and them is that they expect to lose, it's basically normal for them, so variant results are actually happy events. I just need to find a way to cope with the emotional rollercoaster that seems to closely follow my bankroll. I guess a bit more reading on the subject of tilt management is needed.

Let's hope the Saturday donks are more accommodating than the Friday donks were.