Great Expectations

I was chatting to Rosie during The Bloggerment about going back to work in a couple of weeks and joked about how I should just quit my job and 8 table the 45 player,$12 sng turbo's on Stars all day."What's stopping you?" Rosie asked, and the answer is that after my recent 40 buy-in downswing at the $22's I just don't have the stomach for fulltime poker and the swings that would come with it.I've also never averaged 50 games ( the very min required to cover all bills) per day for more than a couple of days at a time and I'm not sure I ever could.

Playing very little poker over the last few months seemed to have weakened me mentally and made it far harder to cope with what are fairly standard beats and coolers.A 40 buy-in downswing over 60 games from hell would be hard for anyone to take, but as most pro's probably average around 100 sng's per day, my months of hell would just be a bad morning for those guys.

Anyway I have buckled down so far this week and although I'm nowhere near the volume required to play for a living,I did manage to six table the $22's quite comfortably yesterday and made $240 profit over 28 games.Before the last set of six I was up about $45 on the session and felt pissed off that I was still losing big hands at crucial moments.My expectation was that I should have been up a good few hundred dollars and a measly $45 profit was almost insulting.I then took a break and realised that $45 profit over 20 odd games would be about right running at a decent 10% return on investment.When I sit down and only play 3-4 games per night I'm not looking to make $8 profit, although realistically that's what I'll be doing well to make.Even after years of online poker it's still hard to get my head round the fact that I'm not going to win as often as I feel I should be.

I also 8 tabled the $12,45 player turb's on Monday and made a whopping $3 over a couple of sets.Despite a couple of 3rd places I felt should have been wins,I actually quite enjoyed the overall pace and quick decision making that came with playing so many games.

Hopefully I've shaken off some of the mental poker rust and won't hit another nightmare downswing,leaving me free to rack up some more volume and profit this week...