Just finished an Empire Poker bonus chase. Very swingy. Ludicrously so, in fact, and last night I was staring down the barrel of a fairly depressing loss.

It must have taken about 1500 hands to clear the $100, which took me 4 sessions, played over the various evenings this week, and finally this morning. At first, nothing too weird happened, and after two sessions, as I mentioned in my last post, I was about 20BB up. Then came last night, and I could do nothing, absolutely nothing, right. It took me all of 300 hands to wipe out my profit, and then some. By the time I finished last night, I was far enough in the hole that even if I was given the bonus there and then I’d still have lost money. Humbug! The hand that summed my night up seems to have disappeared from my PC, but to cut a long hand short, I picked up AKo in the big blind, flopped a gutshot to the nut straight, with decent odds and good implied odds, and hit my straight on the turn. At this point, I have the nuts, and there are three players in the hand. A player to my right caps the turn, which can only be good news for me. Until a third heart comes on the river, and both my opponents show a flush. Two opponents, both drawing to the same flush (and I had one of their outs in my hand), which means there were 6 cards in that deck that could lose me that pot, and at 22BB it was by far the biggest pot of the night, and unsurprisingly, the river was one of those 6 cards. By the end of the session, I could barely pick myself up off the floor.

This morning, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more different. Despite losing with my very first hand of the day, holding KK and losing to a rivered Ace, I managed to win 13% of the 350 hands I played (usually, with my tight style, I’d expect to pick up 7% of pots on average, 9-10% on a good day), and I could barely put a foot wrong. I wasn’t particularly loose, although I continued my new approach of loosening up preflop and relying on my postflop play to keep me out of trouble, and in seeing 25% of flops, I won about 45% of the hands I played, which is pretty extraordinary - 35% would be a healthly figure for a solid winning player.

By the end of the bonus chase, I’d only finished a few BB down, so all in all I’m not too down on it. Of course, it’s worth reminding myself that over the course of this number of hands, how much you win or lose is almost entirely irrelevant. As these kind of up and down swings show, a few hands one way or another can have a huge impact on the bottom line, and it’s possible to run very very good for very short periods of time, as nsidestrate, another of the moderators over at the ITH forum, has found out.

Considering I haven’t played for a while, I feel good about my game, and it’s taken my mind off the disappointments of transfer deadline day on Wednesday…

Tags: Poker, Bonus