What do you do when you are running bad

[MrWooster]

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Ive been playing a bit on .10/.25 and its been a pretty awful week where last sunday LAGs tore me apart taking me down 8 buyins. My fault and I shouldnt have been playing tired, so I took a break the entire week. Finally played last night and within an hr im down close to 4 buyins where my flushes are just being outkicked and my set was cracked by a guy i thought was on tilt flopping a flush. Stopped playing for the night and tried again today where I lost 2 buyins within 3 hands on bad beats + missing out on a 1st or 2nd place finish from another bad beat to take 6th.

I usually am getting my money in way ahead to be rivered. Its at the point where I dont even want to play AA/KK. So just looking for advice on what you guys do after these variance streaks in cash games...which books do you read again to try and cover some leaks or do you just take a break from poker completely

[/ QUOTE ]

hehe - I lost 20BI at 10NL last week, it happens, I got unlucky a lot, and I played badly a lot. Downswings happen, and big downswings also happen, and big mega 10-15BI downswings also sometimes happen, you just have to power through them and surf the heater on the other side.

FWIW, once you have had a 10-15BI downswing, you are much more ready for the cruelty of poker - I learned more loosing $200 at 10NL that I could have learned by spending $200 on poker books.

[Nightlight87]

Well today I lost 8BIs at 2NL cash games, I knew I was making bad calls even before I made them. I just couldn't stop myself because my head just wasn't in the game. Bad beats happen, suck outs happen, and for me playing tilted happens you just have to try to get away from the game before you do too much damage to your bankroll. Now my head is clearing and I'm about breaking even.

So if you're playing tired or tilted just do what you can to get away and relax for an hour or two and then come back and kick ass [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[JJT]

When a poster mentions losing 10BIs, as an example, does that mean however much a stack costs, through the course of one session he's losts 10 stacks of chips?

[Nightlight87]

I dont know about other people, but yes I count a buyin as a full stack of chips.

[metsfan88]

As long as you know that you are good, you can't let losing money discourage you. You have to get into a state of mind where when you lose, you know that it doesn't matter that much because you will eventually win it back plus more.

[skip8118]

Well playing this sunday I started pretty bad again, went down 2 buyins where I fell in love with trips vs a set on a semi short stack, then my big loss was K J on a 9 9 A J J board having him hold AJ. Tried a SNG where I went down later in the match with A 8 vs A 7 and while playing a 11 dollar rebuy satellite I lost QQ vs AJ hitting a 4 runner flush.

Being the degenerate that I am I continued to play, but it shaped up rather nice. After dropping two buyins in the beginning, im up 5 buyins from the start. I did lose KK all in preflop again to J 5 hitting a boat, thankfully he was semi short stacked and another player put all his chips in with AK or else I would have likely titled off my bankroll

[dedenburn]

*grunch*

drink, repeat.

[lucky_mf]

If running bad leads to playing bad, stop losses are a good idea. If you can run bad and it doesn't affect your play and you still have the desire by all means keep playing.

Lucky

[KenProspero]

I'm mostly a limit player, but ......

The question is why are you running bad. If, I'm positive that it's variance as opposed to my stupid play, I'll continue playing.

The problem is ... unless you're very experienced, how positive can you be? You may think you're playing ok, but really making mistakes, have a tell, etc.

So,I presumptively set a stop-loss limit 30Big Bets in limit. If I hit this, unless I can really convince myself that it's just bad luck, I'm out of there. I have so convinced myself once, I think, but I have to be really positive.

[RapidEvolution]

Maybe September is just a bad poker month? I dunno, I came back to read this after losing 4 BI's in my last 400 hands. I agree with Lucky, too...sometimes running bad can lead to playing bad. (I think this is what happened to me today) lol