How Sushi got his groove back

I wish I knew. For whatever reason it is, I've been putting together good sessions all weekend and am definitely trending upwards. Granted, there was a significant bump in the bankroll due to the rakeback correction but I've added on between two or three times that amount since so the adjustment is not all at play here. I'm particularly pleased with getting my green line turned around and headed north again because when I get the raw bankroll numbers climbing the rakeback numbers ascend even faster. It is possible to keep building your overall bankroll even if you are "losing" according to the raw score but beating the rake is necessary if you want to accrue money with speed and critical if you hope to move up in stakes.

A couple of things that I'm doing which I believe help are the following:

• Post my starting bankroll number. All I do is type my current bankroll number in a text document and put that number in the lower right corner of the screen. Then I put the FTP window right next to it so I can see at a glance where I am in relation to my starting point of the session. If I donk off chips I can immediately see the damage that has occurred and I know that I'll have to fight to get that back. And thanks to rake, gaining a buy in is definitely harder than losing one. Tilting off chips seems like the right thing to do in the heat of the moment. You might know that it is wrong and that you will regret it later but that doesn't stop you from paying way too much to chase draws or trying to push a bluff through. By getting real time feedback of your actions it brings the consequences front and center instead of sticking your head in the sand and looking at the damage later.
• Watching my trailing averages. Along the same lines, I have set up HEM so that in session view I just monitor the last 2000 hands which equate to the past day or so which is a short enough window to reflect the last session but long enough to smooth out variance. That allows me to easily inspect the hands that I just played since the latest session is right at the top of the list. But it also lets me keep tabs on how much I've made in the past 2000 hands. As of my last session I'm at $8.77 profit for the trailing 2000 hands which works out to a very healthy 44 big blinds/100 hands on the green line the rakeback figure would obviously be more. I don't expect to be able to sustain a number that high but by keeping tabs on the trailing average it makes me think more about each hand as it relates to that number and not about how it relates to the current session.

It feels really good to be north of $200 again and have a buffer to weather out a bad run or two. So the plan for now is to try to just put it in cruise control and continue to grind at current stakes. I want to keep better track of what I am doing so that I can bottle up the play good formula and refer to it when I start to stray from it. I'm getting in enough play per day to make sure that I clear my Iron Man minimum for the month. As long as I can combine solid play and hand volume the bankroll will fall in line automatically.