Struggling

The heading on my blog says about dealing with the trials and tribulations of playing poker for a living. Its easy to post when all is well and you are winning tournaments and since a lot of people don't write blogs or talk about it when things are going tits up a lot of people are left with the impression that playing poker for a living is a piece of piss. Around this time last year I was on a pretty big downswing that ran into the SCOOP festival causing me to miss some of the higher buy in events because my confidence was so low. It was off to to the WSOP after that where things didn't improve and I bricked the whole trip and I was seriously doubting my ability and continuation of playing poker. All it took was a few decent scores online and my confidence came flooding back, as did the big results on a consistent basis.

At the moment I'm on another pretty big downswing that has started to affect my confidence and my ability as a poker player. Since I won the $1k on full tilt back in mid January I have had almost no scores of note and given the fact I have been playing a lot higher volume than normal due to the FTOPS then it all adds up to a pretty bleak period. I said the other day that after this week I wasn't gonna play any more tournaments apart from Sundays until the SCOOP starts again in may. I'm pretty sure this comment was just born out of frustration and time will tell if I'm able to stick to it since despite getting shit on every day in tournaments I still love them......

I'm a little worried that if I keep playing high volume and keep running bad then a similar thing will happen as last year when it just keeps snowballing and my confidence is super low heading into the SCOOP/WSOP which is far from ideal. By taking a step back now for an extended period I'm hoping that I can come back for the SCOOP feeling confident again since I wont have been playing and losing for weeks on end.

That's probably about enough of me feeling sorry for myself and moaning about poker so ill wrap it up there. Just to confirm that me and Chris donated $9500 to the American red cross as a result of the FTOPS bet and Chris is gonna donate another $500 to a charity he chose personally. We were able to pick on the website that our donation be used for international disaster relief so it should go towards helping the people of Haiti as well as those in Chile after another devastating earthquake.