Based off what I've been reading here and elsewhere, I've come to realize how important bank roll management was. I have previously been of the opinion that, the money isn't outside my comfort level, I'm perfectly fine playing 200NL in B&M and so playing 200NL online is what I'm going to do as well. But it's not that simple. It's not about what your comfortable losing, it's about having the confidence to continue playing your own game. This was the key. So I've just recently decided to actually stop screwing around and accept that 200NL is outside my bank roll. I started and found great success, then it all got pissed away, largely because I was scared. Tried everything, but wouldn't change. My tournament play would remain just fine, but get real money involved and I got scared.

So buckled down and got reading and an article that basically said, tournament play and ring games are not all that different. It said play them both the same for the most part, the only changes that need to be made, is adjusting your play to account for your "M" value at the current blinds.

Well that made total sense to me because (I know this is gonna shock you) The changing M factor is the only difference.

So I went through a process of

1. Ok I'll just do SnG's ..... boring
2. Ok I'll 4 table SnG's ..... boring and unpredictable.
3. Well maybe I'll just play 2 tables 200NL ..... ouch that hurt
4. Ok I need to move down in limits. So I started 4 tabling 25NL and holy crap. My play opened up to what I am used to.

I went from 16/7/1.5 to 27/18/3 and was absolutely crushing them. I stopped auto-folding to any sort of aggression. I'd learn who I could bully by investing in some bully tactics and then watched my marks reload over and over again. I'll have 10k hands in 4 days or so and I'll have good hard data on my performace then, but my confidence is back in anycase.

My problem wasn't that I was scared to lose the money, my problem is I was scared to not be a winner. Playing well within my bankroll, I like min 50 buy-in ratio, means that even if I drop 10 buy-ins I don't even really notice it and its not on my mind. So variance will stop affecting my play. And when my roll gets to $2500, which shouldn't be too long, I'll move up to 50NL and so on and so forth.

Do I think I have the skill to crush 200NL, yes I do, but then again I'm a cocky bastard. But I'll do it when I have at least 10k to back me up.

Thanks for the advice, I've seen it over and over again it was too hard to ignore.