Please help me identify my leaks

[kekedarius]

A short tidbit on myself first: I've been playing poker since October of last year, and have been a winning player almost every single day since. There's only been two days where I finished in the red. I moved from 25NL, to 50NL, to 100NL, and finally to 200NL where this past Sunday I finally hit my first enourmous downswing. I had made $3000 and it's dwindled down to a pathetic $600. I think my play has been as constant as ever, but I just can't yield a profit. Maybe I'm being overly "results oriented", but I don't care because my results are terrible, and I can't get a grasp as to why. I've moved back down to 50NL and I'm still losing, losing, losing. For example, here's today's hand analysis via PokerOffice:

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/1520/profitar5.th.jpg (http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image=profitar5.jpg)

Yesterday wasn't any better, and the day before was even worse. Take notice of how many times I got each hand, and my profits from each. Why are they all so low? This has never happened to me before. I do the standard pot the flop (I actually do a bit less than pot size bet), 3/4 on the turn, 1/2 on the river, and I still can't squeeze any value out of my hands, or I get outdrawn (flopping a flush and running into runner runner quads anyone?). And before anyone says anything about my "high card" value, that's almost entirely cbets getting c/r on the flop and forcing me to fold the hand, or draws completely missing, though I will admit to stacking off 100 bb against a regular with a bluff one time (he flopped the nuts /images/graemlins/frown.gif ). Speaking of which, I'm not entirely grasping cbetting. It works fine for the first few orbits I'm at a table, and then the TAGs start c/ring and reraising any cbet I throw out there, but never when I hit! I've been trying to tell myself it's just varience, but do people really hit ~30 buyin downswings over 10,000 hands? It feels like I should've popped back up by now.

On to my PokerTracker stats when the downswing first started,
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/4387/pt1wg9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/9596/pt2sc3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/1325/pt3zv5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I talked with a couple 2+2ers online, and they basically told me to nit it up and be more cautious. The problem is that I do nit it up and am cautious. I'm really just trying to get someone to tell me either "this is what you need to do differently", or "you're doing fine kid. It's just varience", but I don't know if it's that simple. Outside of overvaluing TP, I'm feeling at a complete loss, and am borderline suicidal. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, 2+2.

[avfletch]

What you are doing wrong is letting a bad run of 10k hands affect how you feel about the game. I've just come through a 30k breakeven stretch and it sucks but you can't control it.

What you can control is what you do about it. Go through your hand histories, see where you got the money in good and where you got it in bad. Look for patterns and situations and see where they are the same and where they are different. Post hands up where you're really confused. Post hands up where you think you played it spot on and see if people disagree.

The only thing of interest I note about your stats is that your pfr isn't wildly different from UTG to button and it's almost identical from cut off to button.

[Triggerle]

Your sample size is too small. Read through the Microbrew thread and look at the graphs there. Losing 10 buy-ins over 10K hands happens to many people. Be grateful that you don't play limited bet holdem, where good players can encounter 100k hand breakeven stretches.

My advice: step back, take a week off from poker. Then start at NL50 and try to play well. Results will take care of themselves over the long run. Just be aware that the long run is longer than most people think. It might be that you were fortunate enough to not have run into something like this so far.

[kekedarius]

Thanks for the help so far guys. I'm bumping this for the day crew to hopefully throw some sage advice my way.

[EMc]

Ive played with you a couple times, late at night. You didnt stick out in any bad way, which is good.

[Gelford]

I just skimmed your positional stats, cause that is where the leak in uNL usually is and ...

... and what I see is the usual uNL pattern, you are making money late position and spewing early.


Having a VPIP of 20 usually means having a vpip of around 10 in SB and UTG and having a VPIP of 30+ on the button, and not having a vpip of 20 on all positions (being kind of rude)

Now stop completing junk in the SB, tighten up UTG and UTG+1 and on a different note, stop limping so much from CO and BTN.


That is my 0.02$ /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[b2l_cricket]

You stats are pretty similar to mine. My positional stats are a little better than yours and it is something i am still working on improving. Over such a small sample size you could have just OOP to throw those stats off a bit. The biggest difference is the Won money at showdown, which might suggest you are just running bad. Also two pair should probably be a winning hand. You could be running bad to make it a losing hand or overplaying your two pair hands.