guess i\'ll never get this game
 

This is a frustration post. How can anyone build a br or win consistently online. Because of br issues I am relegated to the low limit games. I am by no means a great player but dont consider myself a bad one either. Some of the frustration comes from what I consider moronic play. I cant believe the people who call off all their chips with top or mid pr and weak kicker only to get lucky on river or even those who call a reraise allin with a gutshot draw. Is thinking and frustration correct or are those plays good plays? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

Why are you made that people are giving you money 89% of the time?

I'm confused.

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

Just remember the following:

NEVER blame yourself if you go all-in with the (up to that point) best hand an lose!
If you want to think about your play and why you didn`t win a special tourney, go through the tournament history and think about where you might have missed a spot to make some chips, think about were you spoilt some chips but might have know better. This is how you become away a better player - not by thinking for days and days about how you busted out with an equity of 60%!!!

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

I guess I'm the unlucky one then because 9 of 10 times I end up losing the hand. Thats why I'm frustrated. When the money goes in I'm usually ahead. I have been knocked out so many times or crippled by bad beats. I definitely do not win 89% of the time.

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

[ QUOTE ]
I guess I'm the unlucky one then because 9 of 10 times I end up losing the hand. Thats why I'm frustrated. When the money goes in I'm usually ahead. I have been knocked out so many times or crippled by bad beats. I definitely do not win 89% of the time.

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Poker is a frustrating game. MTTs are probably the most frustrating variety of this frustrating game. The reason is that all of your ROI comes from a few top finishes, but those are few and often too far in between. I've seen a few people post a line that has helped me a lot with my game. "If you're not getting it in bad sometimes, you're not getting it in enough." It used to be the case for me that if I was all-in against someone, barring a real cooler like KK v. AA or something, I had the best hand. However, what I did in the process is pass up a ton of +EV situation to get to that spot. So, when I did end up getting AI, I had a smallish stack, and even if I doubled up it didn't help all that much. So I would get down to 7 BBs, double up, then fold a few orbits and get AI again, and eventually lose and be out before the FT. I saw it as me getting unlucky, whereas really I was lucky to last as long as I did. When I started playing more aggressively and pushing smaller edges, my % of cashes actually went down, but my number of final tables and ROI went up substantially.

Even now, it's a very frustrating game. Bond18 is a great player...read his WSOP trip reports in MTTc if you want to see what it's like for a professional player during a bad swing. Even the best players (and I'm certainly not close to being one) go through long streaks where not much good happens, and it's terribly frustrating. That's why I'm never quitting my dayjob, never going to try to do this for a living...I think I'd go crazy if I had to pay my rent with poker. Keep studying and working on your game and it will turn around, that I can promise, but it may take some time.

edit: just an example, if I take my top win this year out of my database, my ROI goes from 104% to 40%. If I take the top 3 out, it goes negative. That's the fine line that we're walking.

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

[ QUOTE ]
I guess I'm the unlucky one then because 9 of 10 times I end up losing the hand. Thats why I'm frustrated. When the money goes in I'm usually ahead. I have been knocked out so many times or crippled by bad beats. I definitely do not win 89% of the time.

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these thoughts are normal progression for a poker player, about everyone ive seen goes through it one tim eor another, and some people never get over it (see matusow). the beats arent personal, theyre part of the game, jusy keep playing and improving and youll escape the thoughts. i went through the same thing, and i realize beats are part of the game, and selective memory makes you forget the times you do win as an 89% favorite, since youre "supposed to"

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

[ QUOTE ]
selective memory makes you forget the times you do win as an 89% favorite, since youre "supposed to"

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This may or may not be true for OP (maybe he's one of those on the one in a million unlucky streak). I know sometimes, for example, that it seems like I'm losing with AA everytime I get it. Yet I can look at my pokertracker data and see that I'm getting it roughly one in every 220 hands and it is winning about 85% of the time, pretty much what it should.

There is a relatively new book, "The Poker Mindset," by Matthew Hilger that does a lot to put some of this in perspective (search for threads in the books forum for positive and negative comments). I would recommend it.

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

Thanks dunkman and pants for the advice and encouragement. Wasnt sure if this was just a stage in my progression or if i was losing my mind lol

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

thanks big I will check it out.

Re: guess i\'ll never get this game
 

[ QUOTE ]


Bond18 is a great player...read his WSOP trip reports in MTTc if you want to see what it's like for a professional player during a bad swing.

[/ QUOTE ]


To be entirely fair, Bond's swing isn't even THAT bad. Yeah it sucks, but I'm sure even he would commend that having a FT in the midst of it all pretty much shows that he did run well enough once to get a big shot at money.


That said, I had to explain to a bunch of people how I'd never go pro playing poker. I would much rather have a day job, have a steady income and siphon a little of that off into my bankroll in order to play bigger games if I must, but mostly just building my roll slowly.