I was snug in the little car, safely tucked at the side of my father. The seat-belt was fastened and the big padded bar lowered to our laps. I’d made a dash for the first car the second the attendant said I’d passed the height test.
My first ride – finally I was tall enough. My heart pounding, I grinned at the attendant as he grasped the big red lever. He hadn’t noticed how I’d stretched ever-so-slightly up on my toes as I stood next to the height sign. Unconcerned with me, he pulled the lever and the little car jolted forward, as did all the little cars connected to it from behind.
The cars slowly crept up and up and up and up. At the top, the track disappeared for a second, then reappeared as we plunged straight down the first dip. That was just a tease. An hors d’oeuvre. The entree, the monster, was coming – the Big Dip loomed ominously ahead above the trees.
One of the key tenets of being a good poker player is bankroll management. It’s critical to one’s success – if you don’t have a handle on your bankroll, you are highly likely to go broke again and again and again.
My bankroll has suffered, of late, from relaxed diligence over the past few months. I’ve also been playing out of my limit – just barely – but enough that I’ve had too many sessions playing with “scared money.”
My online bankroll took a big hit when, at my last Full Tilt session, I stepped up a limit and dropped a third of my stake. That was very foolish. Offline I had a long stretch of profitable sessions, only to see those dollars all but disappear in two short stints at the tables.
A couple of months ago, I started logging “snapshots” of my online and offline bankrolls. At the end of the month, I count them up and plug the totals into a spreadsheet. Today I made the graph above. My bankroll’s looking a little queasy.
No-limit will do that. Having abandoned the grind of the limit tables online and the crap-shoot of the 3/6 tables in the live arena, I’ve stretched the bankroll – ever so slightly – and stepped into the “number 1 car” at the no-limit tables. As you can see by the graphic, I have been on a bit of a ride…
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We were thrust to the top of the Big Dip then left our stomachs behind as we dove and twisted and roared through the trees. We sped toward the tunnel and, once through, the cars slowed abruptly, coming to a stop. Wide-eyed and out of breath from screaming, I looked up at my father.
“I wanna go again! Daddy, let’s go again! I wanna go again!!”
And we did.