Swings & Roundabouts

A thought stuck me the other day with regards that elusive thing called consistency. Hull City were playing, and we've been enjoying a pretty decent run of winning games playing a style of football where we pas the ball around in an eye pleasing fashion. At the level at which we play, the more common style is play much more direct. The direct style is one I supposed I'd describe as a 'levelling' style, ie you're never going to be the best team in the league playing it, but it does stop a lot of silly mistakes that make you the worst side in the league. If you don't have the players to take the higher variance route of passing the ball around, then knock it up to the big man up front and you can't go far wrong.

We lose two games on the bounce, and suddenly posters in forums are saying things like 'we need to stop fucking about with the ball so much, we need to learn when to hit it long' etc etc. This viewpoint is pervasive enough that there's bound to have been managers out there who've thought exactly the same thing and made drastic changes to a proven successful formula based on a few short term results. For me, I think the ability to learn not to completely overhaul things based on a small sample is something that only comes with experience.

Young football players are notoriously inconsistent. Being young, they start off like a house on fire. One or two bad performances though and confidence can be shot to pieces. During this time they'll be over analysing things, wondering if they've been 'found out', worried that maybe they were lucky to play so well in their first 11 or so games.

Experienced players have their tried and tested playing style. Someone like Frank Lampard is not going to change up after a few mediocre performances. He'll keep doing the same stuff and eventually things will turn around. He knows this.

I have been massively guilty of changing up all the time throughout my whole poker 'career'. A style that's given me a month of winning goes the window with 3 bad sessions.......

I made a huge leap though around a month ago. I'd been playing for 7 or so days, doing the same things that I'd done the 4 weeks before that netted me $10k 4 tabling at 200nl. Over these 7 days I broke even and basically nothing seemed to be going right.

For the first time though I just kept plugging away doing the exact same thing. I timed on my decisions, made notes, inferred reads, asked questions, planned some adjustments, and then pressed the corresponding button. Q another heater. After 3 years playing poker full time, I've finally made the jump in experience that tells me not to worry.

So after a breakeven start to December that's where I am again today. I just need to keep doing the right things, and I feel a million times stronger mentally for knowing that if I'm still breakeven in 7 days or so then that's absolutely fine.

I need to knock deep tables on the head for a little while though. Results have not been stellar there, and have tons of swings. Dodgy can attest to another failed 500bb pot bluff this morning, and basically it makes me ask too many questions of myself and my game. 100bbs, I I can play a completely low variance game at 200nl and do very well. That's my gameplan the rest of the month. I'll post interesting hands as and when they come up ...........