NC confidence

[five]

Many of us have experienced large downswings. I had almost recovered from a 400BB+, but then hit a significant slide to send me back to the depths. You know how it goes. You sit down and fire up two tables, and nothing goes your way. You lose your big pots, lose your small pots, everyone defends successfully, you defend unsuccessfully, down 50 BB. You calm down, and go back. Rinse and repeat. You stop playing for the day, and resume the next day. Another big loss.

How do you get your confidence back after getting pummeled in both the short-long term and the short-short term?

When I sit at a table, I am kinda scared now. I dropped limits. I dropped tables. I dropped my HUD. I got coaching. People tell me I am a good player, and that its just a matter of time, and that I should be confident in my game.

I guess my question is, how do you tell if you are running well or playing well? Running poorly or playing poorly? When I say I had almost recovered from my downswing, I was on a huge heater. I could do no wrong. Was my play any better? Probably not. But it sure felt like it. Most of my plays are not standard, but read based. How do you assess the validity of a read based play? A semi-bluff that folds the dude, or gets there feels so much better than a semi bluff that gets called and misses. But both could have both been good semi bluffs. Or you get KK against a maniac, and value bet/raise him on a Q7224 board, to find out he has J2o and had turned trips. Obviously you are still putting in bets and not folding, but if you had known he had the 2 you would have wanted to fold. There are times when you “play well” but still make mistakes according to Sklansky’s Fundamental Theorum…So the question is, running well or playing well? Running poorly or playing poorly? How do you tell?

[bobhalford]

You can't really tell. When you are running poorly you do tilt somewhat even though you won't be aware of it.

The only thing you can do is continue studying and playing. It's also good to mix things up and play live.
Live games are so fishy that you can't really go wrong. Might help in the confidence dept. as well.

[Mossberg]

Constant session review - examine key hands from each session. Understand how and why you should have played it in a different way. Post hands you're unsure of. I think you should be able to determine approximately how many bets you're leaking in a session, compare that to the total amount lost, and you can get a decent idea of how much bad play is negatively affecting your results. The thing is, this review should be done whether you're running bad OR good. It should be a constant process of learning how to better your play situationally, and learning how to minimize losses when you're running poorly.

For me, I've realized a couple of things now that I'm pulling out of what was a -500bb downswing. First, I needed a break. I mean a complete break. Even for just a day or two, just to get out of the house and get a change of scenery. For me, this makes all the difference in the world. It usually takes me about 1 day to get over a small/medium setback. For example, when I lose 120bb in a day, I will feel sick about it, but have an urge to keep plugging away. I will usually wake up the following day and sit back down "trying to make it back".. In a sense, I'm fighting a war with unhealed wounds, and this quickly leads to into a disastrous snowball effect. The losses will be that much harder to deal with when I'm still choked up about the previous day. So my personal solution is to take a solid day off when those feelings start creeping in. Maybe read a book or reply to a few posts, but FORCE yourself to stay away from the tables.

A few more things that have helped me:

-avoid checking my account balance or pt stats every 10 minutes. It's silly and makes us naturally act result-oriented, when as poker players, that is something we aspire NOT to be.
-end a session early when I'm feeling short on patience. Sometimes it doesn't matter how good the table is, I need to get away.

It sounds to me like you're taking the right steps though. Continue to get help through coaching, move up or down based primarily on your confidence (bankroll willing), and continue to play less tables until you're feeling like you're back in the groove.

Running bad and playing bad = we will naturally play worse and make more mistakes when the cards are falling against us. Don't feel bad about it, just learn from it.

Running good and playing good = the opposite of the above statement. The most important thing here is to stay in-tune with our play because it's easy to forget we're making mistakes when we're taking down all the pots.

Anyways, I'll stop with the rambling. Good luck man.

[Peter Harris]

just finished my 200 hand sample for the next 2+2 swap session, and it's a standard -43BB 5/10 run.

Bottom line is, we're here because we think we're +EV gamblers. We deal with variance.

- Don't play at a level where the $ losses emotionally affect you. I just kissed goodbye to $430 but did so well aware of how things go.

- Review your sessions. Even better, get someone to review them and discuss/thrash out opinions. Join Happydaz 's session review group!

- Post 1 hand per session you want SSSH to discuss

- Try and find the "one hand a session" you KNOW at the time you played badly. Mine today was calling down A4 pairing the 4 to a BB PF 3bet when he checked the flop (mmm hmm) and of course he had the overpair. Sneaky PF check radar doesn't work - bang goes 2BB. Find a few of those, you're minted.

- Run good. Sometimes you don't for days, weeks. sometimes months. Possibly years. Try and be zen-like.

Gl.

[five]

I'm properly rolled for the limits I play, and don't mind dropping down if need be. Obviously losing hurts, with the degree of hurt proportional to the degree/time of loss.

I guess what I am most concerned about is how you know you made the right play. I come from a FR background so all this loosey goosey 30/20 six max play makes me feel uneasy, and unconfident because I am not always sure I am making the correct play, and I am making many many more decisions...