DoN SnG Challenge Update 10

Unfortunately my good run didn't last. After my last DoN SnG Challenge Update things continued to go well and then disaster struck. I experienced my worst downswing ever in these games. Over 30 buy-ins.

The current DoN Challenge bankroll stands at $810. It was up to $883.61 at it's peak before the downswing. I was looking forward to moving up to the $10 DoNs by now but that is going to take a little more time.

Since the last update the bankroll has increased $25 and my win rate and ROI has been 55% and 0.5% respectively. Nothing to get too excited over.

In addition to winnings from the games I also earned a $50 VIP Stellar Reward  as well as a $50 VIP Reward Bonus so things aren't so bad.

A number of factors contributed to the downswing.

Running Bad

Nobody want's to hear bad beat stories so I'll keep it short but man did I get unlucky. It got to the point where if I would flop a set I'd start trying to figure out how I would lose. A turned or rivered bigger set, straight, flush you name it. Even flopping top set against bottom set and getting it all in on the flop only to lose to rivered quads.

Aces versus any pair all in pre-flop it felt like 50/50 they'd suck out. Same with kings. I'd either run into aces or lose to a set. I couldn't even beat Ace-rag because they'd hit trips, a 4 card flush or straight, etc.

I'd flop the nut straight or flush and lose to flopped two pair that filled up on the turn or river.

When I had someone dominated they'd find a way to suck out.

This is the graph of my $5.40 DoN Challenge games for may.

The green line is my actual winnings and the red line is the Luck Adjusted Winnings. The red line shows what might winnings would have been if I didn't get unlucky. Normally my red line tracks right along with my winnings as it did for the first few hundred hands.  At the end I was down over 35 buy-ins bellow my luck adjusted winnings. I've never seen it this bad. That's about $200 I seem to have missed out on.

During the downswing, when I found myself all-in preflop and I had only a 20% chance to win, I only wound up winning less than 10% of the time. When I had a greater than 80% chance of winning I'd only win around 72% of the time. Basically, I was getting sucked out on more than normal and I wasn't sucking out as much as normal. It's a limited sample but it all seemed to happen at once.

After the downswing, my red and green lines were a little closer together.

Technical Problems

My mouse was failing which caused a lot of problems. I discussed some of them in my Logitech M500 Mouse Review.

My mouse was cutting in and out. I had a big hand a few times and was stuck wiggling the cord trying to get it to work as I timed out.

I also had some network problems. After loading up a few tables and only playing a dozen hands my network connection failed and by the time it came back up it was difficult to salvage the games. The next day after loading up a number of tables my connection went dead for hours and I lost all those games.

Tilt

The bad beats, mouse and network problems really got to me and probably contributed to the downswing being as bad as it was.

I think I was playing well at the beginning of the downswing but then started making bad decisions because I was getting frustrated.

Other Factors

Something was just strange, I can't put my finger on it but I have some suspicions.
I did play in a few games with players from the Chinese Double Or Nothing cheating ring that Daleroxxu recently discussed in his blog but not enough to account for the downswing.
There were times that it felt like everybody was stealing my blinds and calling my shoves with any two cards but never calling other player's shoves.
By the way, if you'd like to find out if you played with any of the chinese DoN cheaters and you use Holdem Manager, run the following SQL Query against your Holdem Manager database.

SELECT * 
FROM 
  tourneyplayerdata 
WHERE
  player_id in
   (SELECT player_id FROM players 
      WHERE lower(playername) in ('jessica318', 'wudiyg',
         'jane1023', 'gucci53', 'lazzzzzzy', 'renhe88',
         'Xuanyu.L', 'chenxr', 'flypretty', 'nayouyi',
         'hzlsl', 'freetime1955', 'xxwpk168', 'microsoft25',
         'wenpk15888', 'strong arm A', 'degreexia', 'ellena054',
         'jinse888', 'liuli888', 'rara999', 'dcbm288', 'linyin',
         'yangguangze', 'pakerster', 'yutian', 'wenpk15888',
         'coroinpu', 'maomao1832', 'hslj001', 'psnyls', 'goloverez777',
         'leaders668', 'guiliang', 'chijianli', 'xiawenju', '147222',
         'wzem618800', 'mnbqwe12', 'wzhongz', 'superxia', 'sishun'));

It will return the tourneynumber (and other columns) for games you've played against those users.

That's it for this update. Hopefully this doesn't happen again