I'm a little confused

At the end of January all was well in my nice cosy little DoN-grinding world. I won about half my races. Four times out of five my pocket aces would hold. And all those 70/30s? Well, someone would only bink the ace about 30% of the time, meaning the rest of the time my pair would win through.

Now the last few days have shattered that somewhat idyllic illusion. Seems I can't hit a thing. After a string of losing sessions I've spent more time today reviewing games than I have spent playing them. I've spent ages on the stove playing with ranges. Hours were invested in looking to see what shoves I might have missed. I came up thinking that I'd just pretty much run bad; either +EV hands were not holding up at showdown, or I was always shoving my SB into someone holding KK+. I'm not saying that I played every hand absolutely perfect, but there weren't any obvious and glaring errors which I could see being repeated over and over again. So I loaded up a session for today and figured it would all work out in the long term as long as I put in the effort.

90 minutes later nothing had changed, and I was another 10 buyins down. So I quit after less than 40 games. Once again I reviewed the games to see what was wrong, and I still can't see anything. I've even started wondering about some of my fundamental views about this game, views which have seen me through nearly 10,000 DoNs with a profit which I consider decent, even if it is nothing outstanding. But this year I've played almost 1,000 games, at a profit per game of little more than half of what my long-term rate was at the start of the year. My long-term profit per game is now down to 80% of what it was on 1st January.

For the time being I have to just keep telling myself it's variance, and it will work out. I wouldn't say I'm on tilt about all of this, more that I'm a little down about how the results have gone despite my play. I'll confess to one tilty call right near the end of my session today, when I had KK and there was an ace on the flop and I lost half my stack to Villain's value bet on the river even though I knew he had the ace. But generally I wouldn't say I'm easily put on monkey-tilt, because I know in my heart that I'm still making mostly good plays.

Anyway, to give myself a bit of respite from the doom and gloom I decided to play a set of ten of standard STTs instead of DoNs, the 10-man $3.40 turbos which Stars run. I was (sort of) disciplined about doing it, in that I decided I was totally prepared to lose the whole $34 it was going to cost me, without needing to reg for more to "win my money back" if they all went pear-shaped and I didn't cash at all. I was considering it as entertainment to allow my brain to have a bit of a freeroll to get over the bad beats I feel I'm taking in the DoNs. If I cashed in any of them and got some money back then I would just consider that I was getting my entertainment a little cheaper than I expected. I'd still get a small handful FPPs back as well.

These were the first "normal" STTs I had played in a long time and at first I had to keep reminding myself of things like the fact that here I could be aggressive with AK in the early rounds instead of open folding it, or mentally prodding myself to remember that JJ doesn't necessarily have to be setmined or folded. And all the other stuff that goes along with a game where the aim is to actually win chips instead of just trying to avoid haemorrhaging them.

After I got over that little mental block I started to feel comfortable, and once a couple of the got to the bubble I suddenly realised how bad the play still is in some of these games. It actually amazed me to see how tight people are even in these once the bubble approaches, trying to limp into the cash.

Once I'd pegged who were the regs and who were the donks it was all pretty much ABC, and I managed to cash 4 of the 10 games, and bubbling a fifth. 40% cash rate was actually more than my set of DoNs for the day, LOL.

I ended up with two 3rds and two 1st, which meant not only did I allow my brain a bit of entertainment but I also cashed for $42, for a profit of $8 on the set. I know it's not exactly the stuff of millionaire's row, but it was nice anyway, felt particularly good to be taking down both the games which I got to heads-up.

That's it for me for today though. I will start again tomorrow refreshed and sure in the knowledge that good plays will mean good results in the long term.