4:54am: Well, mark this one in the books, today was my first out right losing session from a winning percentage perspective, since I started playing $100 heads up sit n gos. While I don’t mind losing, I have to admit the timing of this one is pretty bad, as I am coming of a pretty poor week, and in addition to this I just paid $1,000 in bills (all due on the 15th). I’m not sure what the problem is. I took a long and hard look at myself today and questioned whether it was my play or the cards. After going back through hand histories, I came to the conclusion that I’m just not connecting with the flop as often as usual today, and this whole week for that matter.

A big part of my losing night came at the hands of the SIX times that I lost a 70/30 when all the money was in the middle. Add that to the fact that I can only recall winning one or two coin flips all night long, and in addition to that I only connected with the board with AK 15% of the time tonight. Definitely a recipe for disaster.

Financially, this is my worst down swing, but that’s only because I’m playing higher stakes. I think there was one time I have ran worse than this, from an amount of hands perspective. I once ran bad for over 20,000 hands when I was playing $50 heads up sngs.

So let’s do a little review after having played nearly 600 $100 heads up sngs:

Wins: 351
Losses: 237
Win %: 59.6

Before this terrible run that I’m on, I was winning 62.2% of my matches, but clearly that’s out the door for now.

I can say first and foremost that confidence is everything when playing heads up sngs. Even I have to admit that with the sheer amount of misfortune I’ve underwent in the last 7 days or so, it’s always at the back of my mind that the match could be over before it even starts. There even comes a point sometimes when you’re all in with the best hand, your opponent turns over a hand that’s behind and you just assume you’re going to lose the hand.

All of these thoughts are completely understandable during bad runs, and I’d by lying if I told you that it doesn’t bother me. The difference between me and the next guy is, however, my emotions are always even-keel — which helps keep the bad days in check. I can almost assure you that you’ll never log in to HFL and see me report a four figure losing day. Today, I lost $320, and you know what? I can live with that.

Where you live and die in husngs lies all in the streaks. You’re going to, for the most part, win as much as you lose in the battle of the trenches, heads up. That’s because you and your opponent are going to be dealt an even distribution of cards. Where you will either lose or make your money will depend on your streaks. For example, if you check out my sharkscope below, I actually have a nearly identical amount of two game winning streaks as I do two game losing streaks:

The difference is that I have wayy more 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 game winning streaks than I do losing streaks, and that makes all the difference in the world. As long as the lows are never as low as the highs are high, then it’s going to be hard to lose money playing heads up sngs.

So how do you keep the winning streaks significantly higher than the losing streaks, as I have? Answer is simple: I have nearly progressed to the point as a player where I do not tilt. There are times, when I’m feeling a little uneasy about situations and I’m upset inside, but I rarely left it affect my play. So to that I say emotion control is probably the #1 most important thing about heads up sngs and profitability, followed by actual card-playing talent (which includes psychological and mathematical aspects).

I’m not sure when this run is going to end, but it cannot come soon enough. I hate reporting negative results to you guys, but unfortunate that’s the hand I’ve been dealt this week. Don’t worry though, I believe in myself more than you realize, and I know the turnaround is coming soon (and in a big way). Mark my words.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process