Advice needed

[Heisenb3rg]

[ QUOTE ]

making money in this game is actually very easy. Just table select well, seat select well, always play well, never tilt

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lol @ this being easy.
Easy for some maybe...
But losing 2-5k , when your constantly in situations that you are very likely to win 2-5k is not easy to handle.
This isn't just a number to some people, this is cash dollahs.

IMO if I played at my thinking peak I would be obliterating my limit (sorry if it sounds arrogant) but playing disciplined , calculated and motivated poker 24/7 is very very difficult and a skill in itself.

[Guy McSucker]

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This isn't just a number to some people, this is cash dollahs.


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This is, I think, the root of my problem. 15 months ago it wasn't cash dollahs for me: it was all just numbers. My income from my job versus my outgoings in life meant that I had no need for the poker income; it was all just gravy and sat in my bank account earning interest and paying for trips to Vegas etc. Then I had to move cities for a new job, and buy a new house. The whole of my poker reserves got spent on the house, my income rose, but my expenses rose too (god this city is expensive!) and buying a new house just costs a lot: new kitchen, new bathroom, redecoration etc etc. Now every cent I have for poker is potentially at risk of needing to be spent, and every cent I win or lose has a real financial impact on me. Since this change, I haven't won at all.

So it seems I can't play poker well when it's for money.

Guy.

[unfoldable]

Then you know what you have to do.

A money-induced-tilt-experience i made often goes like this: i have two good sessions and start getting greedy. I want the money and i want it now. So next time i play i get overaggro and impatient and play hands that show up way down in any preflop charts. I wake up when i find myself getting caught on a expensive multiway bluff with QTo just because i thought i could steal the blinds or push them off their hands anyway....

[chezlaw]

In another post you said you have trouble leaving a table when running bad for a long time. I suffer from that as well and wonder if amongst my many leaks thats one of the biggest.

Its very tough to play with a bad image and its so easy to change tables. Sometimes a table is just too good to leave but the rest of the time why don't we do it?

Fresh tables and maybe a 5 minute break - how many BB/100 is that worth.

chez

[DespotInExile]

1. Drop down to more than 1 step beyond your main game. The money feels meaningless if you drop low enough. Then you'll be able to play better.

2. Stop multitabling. I always tell myself this, but I get so bored if Im not running 3-4 tables. But your poker wont really improve if you're multitabling and playing a stats-based game.

3. Take more notes. By taking notes, you're forced to think about the other player's characteristics and how you should exploit them. When you're thinking like this, you're not playing ABC.

4. If you can handle it, stop 6-max. I personally couldnt do 1 table of regular poker, but its not a bad idea if the the variance is killing you.

[naphand]

Man, I look back in this forum after a long absence and McSucker is making the same posts as he was 2 years ago... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Seriously though, Guy if you cannot tell if you are running bad or playing bad you need to revisit the basics, as suggested by a.n.other poster.

The advice on game selection is spot on, the best thing you can do to help yourself (to other's chips) in-game.

Yes the games are a bit tougher with fewer yankers around, but the Europeans are quite bad. The main poker sites still seem to have the same or more players (with the exception of Paradise who seem to have almost no-one). Of course I know nothing of Party, I warned y'all about playing there long time ago...

Guy, you must learn to observe and categorise players, especially as you move up limits. This is very important. But you must also be able to ask yourself during and after play "did I play that as well as I could?". Not only does this help you make good decisions at the table, it also keeps you sane when the cards run bad.

As it happens I am just rounding off a 50K flat spell and my first-ever bumper downswing (500BB), but I made plenty last year so am not complaining too much. The thing is, I know I am on a bad run, because I can see what the others are playing. Surely you can see when a players overplays his hand and gets lucky? surely you know which players you can get a free card from and those that will 3 bet? which you can confidently value bet 2nd pair against? you know when the last 6 of 7 sets has lost it is not bad play on your part (or at least not all of it).

If you cannot, then you need to get down to some study.

And Hey Chez! Loved your post. I have been thinking exactly this over the last 2 months. I have come to the conclusion that how we play when running bad is a HUGE factor in our overall WR. I play great when getting good/fair cards, but a sustained run of poor cards (and I mean 20,000+ hands horrible) and I can definitely see my game crumbling a little. Precisely how much this is worth in terms of BB/100 I cannot tell yet but I do believe it is very significant. I seem to reach a point after a long long bad run where it gets much easier for me to get pissed off I am beginning to think I should take some coaching on this aspect of my game as over the course of a year I am getting 2-3 bad months, pretty average I guess but that could be 20% of the time playing as much as 1-2BB/100 less well, maybe worse (?).

Which brings me back to Guy...

Guy if you are not working on yourself as much as on your game you will hit a plateau and never get off it. There is only so much you can achieve with good technical skill, math and player-profiling, at least for on-line games. How we personally deal with horrible runs, or aggro lags that just keep hitting etc. has nothing to do with technique or math, it is about us. What are you doing about it? If your answer is "I take a short break, have a cup of tea/kick the dog, and get stuck in again" it's probably not enough.

The new naphand likes to practice understatement.

[naphand]

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Every time I've started to feel a little jaded, I've switched it up a bit, and it always seems to work because I get that "Eureka, I get it now!" moment again

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And you have plenty more of those moments to come, especially if you are still cold-calling UTG PFR's with hands like 56s/KQo in CO... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

You were last month...

Tee-hee.

[sethypooh21]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Every time I've started to feel a little jaded, I've switched it up a bit, and it always seems to work because I get that "Eureka, I get it now!" moment again

[/ QUOTE ]

And you have plenty more of those moments to come, especially if you are still cold-calling UTG PFR's with hands like 56s/KQo in CO... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

You were last month...

Tee-hee.

[/ QUOTE ]That was two years ago I was doing [censored] like that. It couldn't have been last month since I zero poker applications on my laptop from October '05 to March '07.

Now I 3 bet both [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] (though I admit to CC'ing more than I should with low sc's on the button with a LAGGY UTG/HJ raiser and a caller or two.)

Seriously though, yesterday one guy berated me for 15 minutes straight for 3-balling him with KQ.

[sethypooh21]

Though your first post is awesome...this in particular:

[ QUOTE ]
And Hey Chez! Loved your post. I have been thinking exactly this over the last 2 months. I have come to the conclusion that how we play when running bad is a HUGE factor in our overall WR. I play great when getting good/fair cards, but a sustained run of poor cards (and I mean 20,000+ hands horrible) and I can definitely see my game crumbling a little. Precisely how much this is worth in terms of BB/100 I cannot tell yet but I do believe it is very significant. I seem to reach a point after a long long bad run where it gets much easier for me to get pissed off I am beginning to think I should take some coaching on this aspect of my game as over the course of a year I am getting 2-3 bad months, pretty average I guess but that could be 20% of the time playing as much as 1-2BB/100 less well, maybe worse (?).

[/ QUOTE ]Is quite good. I think that we have a natural tendency to want to get it all back at once, but much like there is no five-point shot in basketball ("not yet!" I hear you say) there is no way we're going to win back 50BB in one hand, but in trying to do so, we turn into just the kind of LAGGY spewtard we love to play against.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Though your first post is awesome...this in particular:

[ QUOTE ]
And Hey Chez! Loved your post. I have been thinking exactly this over the last 2 months. I have come to the conclusion that how we play when running bad is a HUGE factor in our overall WR. I play great when getting good/fair cards, but a sustained run of poor cards (and I mean 20,000+ hands horrible) and I can definitely see my game crumbling a little. Precisely how much this is worth in terms of BB/100 I cannot tell yet but I do believe it is very significant. I seem to reach a point after a long long bad run where it gets much easier for me to get pissed off I am beginning to think I should take some coaching on this aspect of my game as over the course of a year I am getting 2-3 bad months, pretty average I guess but that could be 20% of the time playing as much as 1-2BB/100 less well, maybe worse (?).

[/ QUOTE ]Is quite good. I think that we have a natural tendency to want to get it all back at once, but much like there is no five-point shot in basketball ("not yet!" I hear you say) there is no way we're going to win back 50BB in one hand, but in trying to do so, we turn into just the kind of LAGGY spewtard we love to play against.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Naphand, good to see you again.

Sure we can try to not play worse when running bad and its probablt what costs us the most but my point was we should seriously consider changing tables anyway.

That's because everyone else is like us, they also play better than their average when running good and if we're running bad then they're running good (particularly against us). Therefore if we've been running bad for a while we profit by simply changing to an otherwise equal table.

chez