Official October Thread: General Discussion

[Requin]

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I guess I have no choice but to try it (after a vacation from poker, that is), but I'm surprised so many people think 1/2nl will help me. If my brain is mush and my game is bad, what's to keep me from continuing to lose down there? Also, "running over" people is definitely not in my arsenal right now; my game consists of like 90% crying calling.

[/ QUOTE ]that's fine since there are some spewtards down there, and more importantly they don't vbet thin enough

[Clayton]

ddubois i think ur best bet is to take off from poker for a week and get ur head right and understand why you are playing poker (look at ur girl, then look around you for crying out loud, yer in FKING HAWAII)

then when ur week is up, get into IRC and talk hands a bunch and play a lot of 1/2 and get back to going psycho and raising and reraising, not calling and checking blabla.

also if u know yvesaint @ all, talk to him about it. few months ago he was convinced he could not beat 100nl, he took 2 months off for school stuff, and came back and ran up a 400nl stake into like 175k or more (?) in a very short timeframe.

[Christophers]

I haven't lost many pots these past 3 days!

[Morrek]

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You lost 27k at what stakes? And over how many hands?

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It's a bit nebulous, because I bounced around 2/4 thru 5/10, and had multiple downswings across all limits, separated by some brief reprieves at the lower stakes. But I'd say about 9k of this downswing was 5/10, about 6k of it is from 3/6, and about 12 [censored] k at 2/4. Over 45k hands, since September 9th.

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Either way, move down, watch some videos, start every session with a good mindset(if you need to take a few days off for this DO IT)

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Yeah, I took a week off in August after some soul-crushing at 5/10. But maybe that wasn't long enough, because I didn't fully recover psychologically. To be honest, I would force myself to sit down to play, and a feeling of dread would wash over me.

I always watch all the videos I can, and honestly, they mostly seem pedestrian to me, like I'm not taking anything away from them, because I already know all that stuff. Maybe I do have an ego problem or something.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're probably not realizing it but (without having played with you) you've most likely been playing pretty bad. The good news is you can change it. You can play better. But first I think you have to start thinking about the game quite differently.

I dunno, I kinda get the feeling that you're almost trapped in a life you don't want. Or atleast in a job you don't want. I'm not in a position to judge you though but please think about this. Is poker really what you wanna do with your life? Does it get you were you want to go? "I would force myself to sit down to play, and a feeling of dread would wash over me." - If you still feel like this today then this is definitely where you need to start. It's nearly impossible to play good solid winning poker (atleast in my experience) if you feel like this.

THEN if you decide this is what you want to do, then I think you have to start playing 1/2 (or maybe even .5/1) for x hands. I've posted about this before, but I'll do it again: I was close to busto once and moved down from 3/6 (with some 5/10 shots) to 1/2 and still couldn't have a winning session to save my life. Then I restructured my game a bit, played a short winning session at .5/1 (seriously like 300 hands or less) and just felt completely differently about poker on the whole. I immedietly moved back to 1/2 and played soo much better than I did earlier, and, well, it's been going pretty well since(playing 10/20 and 25/50 today)

[john kane]

christophers please teach me how to play. i will come to your house in manchester and watch.

seriously, i am so depressed about starting this job on monday.

[AceCR9]

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I guess I have no choice but to try it (after a vacation from poker, that is), but I'm surprised so many people think 1/2nl will help me. If my brain is mush and my game is bad, what's to keep me from continuing to lose down there? .

[/ QUOTE ]


you thinking your game is bad is the problem- if you have a negative outlook you WILL lose.


for me I will play a limit or 2 down whenever I feel I am not playing well, or am running bad. it helps me a lot mentally(I feel like I should easily beat lower games and I do). It also "stops the bleeding". sometimes just having a few + $$ or even breakeven days when you've lost for a week+ straight can be huge

[soah]

as opposed to just taking a week off entirely from poker, I've sometimes found it helpful to just play a different game for a while - small stakes PLO or LHE or something. I use a bunch of brainpower trying to figure out htf to beat those games and when I return to NLHE I'm no longer on autopilot because I've pushed the NLHE strategies into the back of my mind and I have to spend a day or two trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.

[DerekJCEX]

ddubois have you ever hired a coach?

[Christophers]

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christophers please teach me how to play. i will come to your house in manchester and watch.

seriously, i am so depressed about starting this job on monday.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't start the job?

[bigbabyjesus]

To be honest, if you are who I think you are on FT dubious, I've always though of you as tagfishy and someone who just needed to fold a little more, especially against nitty people like me.

It's probably also true that I think most people suck, but just throwing it out there.

Do you table select at all? It's something I do much more these days and I believe has helped my winrate and reduce variance.

Moving down to 1/2 will help you, no doubt. You can pay the bills at 1/2 while you get your confidence back.