Moving down in stakes, playing 'wildman'

Have I mentioned March has been wreaking havoc on my bankroll? Well, it is. At the beginning of the month I started to play 25c/50c LHE RUSH 6max more or less exclusively, with a bankroll of 45 BIs. Four weeks later my BR has dipped to 35 BIs. I've looked at my stats and I'm playing pretty much the same way I did in February, during which I posted my highest 1-month profit. So, yeah, March sucks big green donkey dicks.

I took a couple days off to review hand histories and see if I can identify any glaring mistakes, and honestly, what I see has changed is that my opponents are calling down with bottom pair, unimproved small/mid-pairs and other assorted trash an insane amount of the time. (Which would be great if the deck breaks even and I could hit a hand now and then.) Add to that they are catching their 4- and 5-outers vs. my overpairs at a higher rate than expectation, and basically I have a disaster on my hands. 10 BIs may not be much to a NLHE player, but for LHE, believe me, it's huge. I either have to move down for a while or flounder where I'm at, so I'm moving down. Even if the run-bad continues I'll have slowed the bleeding. Looks like success at the 25c/50c limit requires a bit more gamble than I'm used to, but if that's the case, I'll also need a bigger BR to handle the swings.

I have 87 BIs for 10c/20c, and my first session went well, winning better than 3 BIs in 2 hours. Think I'll give it at least a week before I take a shot at moving back up.

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I thought I might share a game I play when I'm running bad and tilt is setting in. I play what I call "Wildman". I have about 4 million play chips on my PS account. I sit down to a play money LHE table, play every hand, cap preflop, cap flop, cap turn, cap river--every hand. It is absolutely hilarious and always cathartic. Just mash the BET/RAISE button every time it's your turn to act. Fifteen, twenty minutes is all it takes before it's 8-ways to the river every hand. If you're looking for a way to kick tilt to the curb, and have some play chips to work with, I highly recommend it. Twenty minutes of Wildman is all I've ever needed to get over tilting.

M