Variance, downswings, etc

This is my graph for Jan 2006, and exactly the time that I played $50NL. As you can see I've been having quite a terrible run for 3k hands towards the end. This was quite an upset, after having a steady sprint since late December, to throughout the first half of January. Ok so what the hell went wrong, I was $100 short (1 session!) from moving to $100NL... I'll try to figure it out here.

A few weeks ago there was a funny event, in which PartyPoker web people fucked up, and basically allowed everyone to register for their million cruise, and access the cruise information even if you weren't qualified for it. Apparently, someone found out a bug that you could downgrade your cabin for a $400 refund! Thanks to the power of the interweb, everyone got their free $400, and started withdrawing and playing $400NL. I tried to launder some money too, but they took it all away the next day :) I was busy studying for exams, otherwise I would have risked playing $400NL to bust some of the gamblers. Now, I sincerely believe that PartyPoker has cursed me for this, and I've been getting shitty bad beats since then. While I could usally keep quite a steady progress with my bankroll while playing, I stopped getting any action on my good hands, and all of my bluffs were read. And all of my monsters faced shitty cards turned into bigger monsters on lucky flops. Somehow I felt my usual card standards weren't good anymore, and the other guys were playing with maphack!

Ok the next issue... $50NL tables on party are tighter than asses of young roman boys! I kid you not, everywhere I go, the average vpip is 16... gl trying to get any action from these guys. And the times you bluff, they either have something or get lucky draws. That's enough ranting now, I got it out of my system. I'm back to $1850 roll now, and I guess I'll try that $100NL once I crack 2k barrier. I hope my downswing ends soon. Half a week more of school grinding, then it's gonna loose up a bit, giving me a few hours a day of playtime.

In the meantime, this picture summarizes my thoughts of my progress... why risk money playing, when I could save some money submitting TO THE MACHINE!?