Bad streak, Advice?

[OziBattler]

[ QUOTE ]
I've noticed when I'm running bad I get the feeling "the game owes me something."

The game owes no one anything. If I start to feel I'm overdue for a hit, watchout, that's when I start peeling without the odds to back my play.

[/ QUOTE ]

same here.....IMHO bad streaks are very rarely just bad streaks of bad variance, they are normally a a result of variance plus badplay/tilt. Over a sustained bad streak the bad plays can amount to more than you think.

As an example, I had a crappy session recently and bitched and complained to Str8fish about it via AIM (after all, thats what buddy groups are for [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) and he did what he suggests OP do in his post. ie He did a review and summed up my mistakes. It turned out that had I actually not played like a total tard then I would have actually been much closer to breakeven than my actual results suggest. Of the 25-30BB losses in the session I made 20-25BB of mistakes....much more than I thought. Wow.

*BTW its not easy to quantify how much you lost due to mistakes since a mistake preflop can cascade and sometimes you win when you make a mistake but with non-result approach it can be done to a reasnable degree.

also IMHO its not the "oh [censored], I missed another draw but that [censored] always hits his 2 outer" hands that kill me when i have bad streaks...its the combined sum of the smaller mistakes that add up between those big hands that drains your money away a 1-2BB at a time.

[kiemo]

I am down 240bb in my last 14k hands at 1/2.

The only thing I have learned during that period is that if I hit my 4 flushes more then 10% of the time and if you take away the river card I am probably up 200bb.

[Smurph64]

I have lived through two swings so far one 400bb and another one just recently that is still down bb wise but is up financially.

I use two main tactics to survive the BB downswing runs.

The first tactic I use is also probably not the wisest move. I multitable the lower limits. (but I will deny it if anyone asks)>

Playing 5 tables at once at the lower limits means I can't play my best poker but it does make me focus on solid proven tactics using tight aggressive play. I can't do it for long, about an hour but it does tend to flatten out the curve downwards as I don't need to worry about getting rivered if I am only pushing the strongest hands.

I then take the profits from the mt runs at the lower limits and let it ride on one higher lvl table.

I use extremely selective table selection criteria at the higher limits. I not only wait for a good table but the best position at the table as well. It takes time and sometimes I only get to stay for a few hands to a few orbits, leaving immediately when the table dynamics change.

I push each edge there very hard and bail very quickly usually 10bb swings either way. Its not the best way of course but it allows me to make moves that don't work in long term sessions. Sometimes being more passive than normal and other times being more aggressive.



So essentially I do a lot of hedging, more than I normally do. I take short runs higher and run longer at the lower limits.

The key for me is bankroll management, always making sure I have enough there so that I never feel short at the level that is giving me the hard time.

Physically rolled for $2, mentally rolled for $1 and emotionally rolled for 50c is sometimes the way it has to be.

I also tend to try and avoid looking at mistakes during this swing which is counter to what most people do. I look at the moves I do make that were right and focus my energy on trying to find those same patterns over and over again.

It does a lot more to my confidence than being hypercritical at my mistakes when I feel miserable about my play.

I wait for a more stable period of time to look at my spew.

[CrMenace]

Where's QTip?