Damn lies

I’ve decided to fudge my poker graphs a little, so here’s where I fess up to what I’ve done.

You can click the thumbnails for larger versions if you want, but it’s pretty clear what happened from these tiny versions anyway.

My doomswitch was flipped a few days ago.  Everything I touched turned to shit, and the graph I posted on Friday was only the start of it.  I’d already sunk four buy-ins on Poker Stars and I thought a change of scenery might do me good.  Especially as I’d already achieved Gold Star status on Stars for next month but was miles away from the next level, earning a few more FPPs wasn’t really going to matter.

I found a $25 freebie in my Party Poker account and a $100 reload bonus on Empire.  Often I’d just blitz through these on $1/$2 limit, but as I have a no-limit goal right now, what harm could it do to carry on playing for my NL50 target on here?  Quite a bit, as it happened.

Five more buy-ins dribbled away before I’d unlocked the bonuses.  $250 down for $125 of bonus – not good at all.  Though I got lucky on Party to start with, 250 hands wasn’t enough to realise that this game plays rather different to what I’d gotten used to.  By the end of 1000 hands on Empire, I’d just about figured that out and almost stopped spewing.  Almost.

So I’ve decided to write off the hands on Party and Empire.  Quite naughty I know, but it makes my graph look so untidy otherwise, and a little deception is worthwhile if it helps to keep me motivated.  My original plan was, after all, to see whether I could beat the NL50 game on Stars in particular so I can tell myself somewhat convincingly that it’s not too bad to discard some bad results.  OK it’s still cheating, but I’m not counting rakeback or bonuses (so far worth at least $600) in my profit figures, so it all cancels out in the end.

The comeback begins now, with only a four buy-in mountain to climb to get back on track, not nine.  Suddenly that seems much more achievable.