By brad2002tj on December 16th, 2008 (more posts by author)

I haven't posted much lately, mainly because I've been trying to overcome a crushing downswing.

With about a week and a half left to go in 2008 and lots of travel around Christmas, my 2008 online grind is almost complete, and it was pretty much a mixed bag. I had some great months and some really brutal months, and I am really ending the year on a bad note and without much confidence in my game.

To start out with some good, my overal stars results for the year are pretty ok:



The downside is a brutal 180-man slide starting in October and continuing as I write this message. Over the last 700 games or so I've averaged about -$1/game:



The only reason that the graph is not straight down is that I've had some success in 45-man tournaments during that time, mitigating the overal SNG losses. However, all told I am finishing year 2008 with about a $2,000 downswing, or about 20% of my total 2008 profits.

In addition to the $6,500 made at pokerstars in 2008, I made around $3,000 at Cake and $1,000 at AP for a total online taking of $10,500.

Add about $2,000 made in live cash game and tournament profit for the year, and I cleared around $12,500 in total poker profit. My goal was to make $20,000 this year, so I will fall well short of that unless I happen to get a big score in the next 2 weeks.

I am in fact pretty disappointed in both the overall numbers and the recent downswing. I made nearly as much in 2007 while playing much less volume (although mostly from 1 big live score at WSOP-C). I think variance is really kicking me in the ass the last 3 months, and nothing hurts your confidence more than running bad for an extended period of time. I hope to recover my bankroll soon, and I willrenew my $20,000 profit goal for 2009.

See you all at the tables.