Other than yesterday’s tourney score (which despite the tourney win, I am pretty sure I still lose money on the day), I have been on one of the top 5 worst runs of my career. Some people ask me what happens during very bad runs and mainly what has happened this particular time is that I am very rarely running a big hand into another slightly weaker big hand and another huge reason for running bad is that I am running into the top end of my opponent’s range nearly every time.

So what I mean by running into the top end of my opponent’s range is that let’s say against an aggressive opponent I raise a hand like AT. The flop comes T56 with 2 spades. I bet and get check/raised. Now there are games out there where you can consider folding, but at high stakes the check/raise is air quite often and mostly draws. So AT is a pretty big hand against what they usually have. So you can get it in on the flop or call and get it in on a lot of turns or play it a variety of different ways depending on the stack size. Well, what keeps happening is that my opponents have a set seemingly every time lately. When they don’t have a set, they have a flush draw that gets there.

Bottom line is that I just can’t win a pot right now and I am in some serious jeopardy of recording my first losing month of my career. I have never had a losing month primarily because I play so much poker that it is really hard to lose money over 100-200 thousand hands in a month. I have had tons of nasty 100k+ hand streaks where I have broke even or lost, but they have all come from the middle of one month to the middle of another month, so I have always scratched out a nice paycheck each month. While I have to think that over the next 7 days things will turn around, I am not optimistic given how deflated I am right now.

One thing people often don’t think about is that it is a great disadvantage in poker to run poorly. Now I know what you are thinking. “Of course it is a disadvantage to run bad in poker duh.” But what I mean by that is beyond the obvious reasons it is a disadvantage to run bad, there is also the reason where when you are getting all of the money in in a dicey spot and running into the nuts all the time, you aren’t learning anything about your opponent’s game, yet they are learning all kinds of things about your game. All you can see is their top set type of hand and they are seeing your entire range of hands since you are getting the money in with all sorts of stuff. So it is a MASSIVE disadvantage to run as bad as I am running because there is no question that people are learning things about me and I am gaining little to nothing on my opponents lately.

It is also a huge disadvantage because we are not robots playing poker here. We are human beings and when it feels like you run every damn hand you play into the stone cold nuts, all of a sudden when someone raises you on the flop your instinct is to not want to play back at your opponent with hands you might fight back with when you are not running poorly. After all, who the hell wants to play back at someone who has the nuts every hand?

So anyway, a lot of why I wrote this was not to whine (after 7+ million hands, it still is painful, but I am definitely getting used to it), but rather to let you guys know that everyone runs like total shit from time to time and for very long periods periodically. I know a lot of you watch TV and see guys like Doyle or Ivey and just assume that they print money every time they are at the table. That is far from the case. These people have (I can’t verify this, but am certain I am not wrong) all had massive ups and downs in their careers and while they may not want to admit it, I am certain they have felt at one point or another that maybe they will never win again or that they have lost their touch etc. The thing is, it happens to everyone and if you are getting endlessly screwed at the tables right now, you are not alone, trust me.