"not playing well"

Ray said something like we all have to admit that sometimes we are not playing well. So, for those of you who admit this, please explain!


Do you know what the right play is but make a different play anyway?


Do you misread a player, or not track players between hands?


Do you fail to adjust your own strategy and tightness to match a particular table or opponent?


Or do you just not know anything you are doing wrong, but cannot clearly pin your losses on bad luck?


I have long had a saying something like "If you can't do it drunk and tired, you weren't very good at it to begin with."


I generally play bad simply because a better player outwits me, and there isn't a whole lot I have to do about it because it's not like I can just get better all of a sudden.


What I am trying to understand is how you can recognize and label your play as bad relative to your own play, and yet not correct it and bring it up to standard!?


El-Roi

I call to much on the river when I know I'm beat. I just have to see that he really did manage to suck out even though I know he did. You know the deal, a caller suddenly comes to life when the only hand that could have been helped by that last card is a gutshot or a bad kicker that you had dominated. I _know_ I'm losing but I just can't help myself.


Sometimes I stick with a game I know is not good if I'm stuck.


Most of the time feel when I'm tilting but I just can't help myself. Sometimes I just have to blow away the rest of my chips.


Just some of the ways in which I'm playing bad. ;-)


Sincerely, Andreas

well. you sometimes see you played a hand badly looking back and maybe you cant be sure you can correct your deficiencies next hand. maybe you can. i cant always, sometimes i can. you seem to infer you can always. so you are destined to be playing in the biggest games and winning all the money as perfect play will win so fast no one can compete. i guess poker as we know it is over.

El-Roi(doesn't that mean "the king"? Elvis? /images/wink.gif ),


First off, I must take exception to your motto,"If you can't do it drunk and tired, you weren't very good at it to begin with."


If you are "very good to begin with" you may still be competent under the above handicaps, but you cannot be playing your best. For myself, if I am "not playing well" it may merely mean that I am not playing my best. Anything much less, much of the time can, and should be unacceptable. Talent is almost beside the point. Poker success, no matter the game, is achieved by CONSISTENTLY making better decisions than the opposition over a long period of time. Some of these decisions by themselves may not seem to make a big difference, but they all do as sum, no matter the significance of each. What we're trying to do is repeatedly get into positive situations and avoid negative situations. Many of the situations are only slightly positive or negative and, again, each by itself may not be very significant, but as a whole they add up to ALL of our wins and losses. In order to consistently make these conditions well most of need to be in an optimum frame of mind. What this entails besides having the rest of our lives in some kind of order, is being able to cope with adversity such as bad beats or rulings and being able to quickly get over any mistakes that we make ourselves from time to time. Failure to deal with these things is going to make it difficult to play our best. Often, we're playing with only very small edges and it matters much more on what we do, than who our opponents are and what they do.


As to some of the mistakes that I make, these can include not adjusting my play to the style of game I'm in(this is more likely to occur when the texture of the game has changed dramatically in a short period of time), pushing a hand too hard out of, maybe, frustration in the face of evidence that I'm in trouble and my most common mistake: playing too many hands out of position in an effort to win more or get unstuck because I think I'm "good enough" to get away with it, even though I know "intellectually" that the very best players cannot win if they play "too many hands."


Your post seems to suggest that one cannot learn to play better after some certain point. This is definately not true. ANYONE, and this includes the best there is, can learn to play better. Some learn more quickly than others but that is beside the point. I refered above to "talent." One of the best things that I have ever seen or heard of regarding "talent"(and I read this in a fortune cookie, I swear) is "talent does what it can, genious does what it must." Well I've always liked it. Anyway, I hope this has been of some help.


Mike

I tend to agree with what Ray posted in a different thread on the topic of "running bad". It always gets back to the player. There is indeed in a difference between how winners play and how losers play.


One of the experiences that I had years ago in a home game was the feeling of being mentally locked into a game, to become one with the table. I have not had that experience yet in a public pokerroom. I was in one game at Bellagio's that I could read the entire table and I was "on" with the correct pot odds for my draws as well as their's. I know that was the top of my game to date. I wish that I knew of a way for my mindset to be like that every time I played.


One of the biggest things that I've noticed when I'm "running bad" is that the quality of my hand selection slips and I tend to call too many raises with hands that don't measure up. I worry about a raise coming behind me. And when I'm "running good", I'll tend to muck made hands that I know just don't measure up, like mucking ignorant end of a straight with a three- or four-flush on the board. When I'm "running bad", I'll call in the same situation. One of my classic blunders is continuing to bet two pair on the river and the board is paired and I don't have the top pair. Doh! When I'm "running bad", I try to chase a hand from the flop trying to make a redraw. Chasing a hand is not usually successful.


The killer mistake that I make is not releasing a hand when bet into or check-raised when leading and calling the bet or check-raise without applying game theory.

I did this on Friday. I got busted up at a game with Sunglasses Mike. I knew I was playing badly the entire time. I figure I've been playing too many hours so I'm taking a few days off so I can regain my focus. It's hard, though, because anytime I doing other things, I feel like I should be playing and making money instead.

I havent read the previous thread as yet. I just got back from an eight day trip to Vegas and haven't been on the computer since.


I do however know when I'm not playing well. During this last "road trip", I found myself in 2 games where I made more then one mistake knowingly. I think the most common is playing a rag. Like calling A2suited from the cutoff when I'm pretty damn sure my only flop is to flush. When the ace landed on the flop I called all they way. Even before the river I knew I was beat. And yet I still didnt muck to a river bet. This is an area I usually make money not lose it. I always have a kicker. That was "not playing well". Or a couple other times when I knew I was coming in with a poor holding hoping to flop a unexpected monster.


I counted how many bets I lost as a result of these poor plays. I don't remember right now but I can say that it was more then 6 big bets in one game. Probably more in another game. If I said that I lost 15 BB total due to poor play that would be conservative. Now lets say it was 10-20 or 15-30....thats $300.-$450.00.


Oh and there was the hand where I saw the flop with K9s on the button cuz there was 6 people in the hand. I flopped a king with a backdoor. It was one bet to me, I knew the bettor had no such king, I didnt raise, and the SB got in cheap and 2 paired the turn. I lost the pot there....10 BB's approx. My king woulda been good. I knew how to play the hand. SB wouldnt call my 2 bets on the flop. There goes another $200 in a 10-20 game.


These things don't seem like alot untill you add them up. But there's over $600.00 in just 2 sessions. Now add those up thru the year and I suppose it's only about $30,000.00-$60,0000.00 worth of "not playing well".

I think you should definately reread some poker books and think about your play. I read "Inside the Poker Mind" and HPFAP21 tonight and I was astonished to find some serious flaws in my game. I knew I had been making some mistakes, but I now realized that I had made TONS of mistakes. I'm lucky that I only lost $1000 on Friday. I should have lost several grand this week. I'm hoping I can go in today and start playing winning poker again.

I just saw your response to "burnt out" below, were you serious? What did you mean by "five bluff raises in a row" AND THEN SHOW THESE HANDS??? Seems to me that you have quite a bit to learn, not the least of which is not to make fun of someone who's asking a sincere question when you don't know what you're talking about anyway. There's alot of good information available, books, magazines, this forum--good luck, if you're serious, if not, don't waste our time and don't give glib answers to people who are asking serious questions when you can't give a serious answer. I haven't looked at the entire thread below, so if by chance, you later set the record straight, then I apologize for my quick reaction, if not....good luck, you'll need it.

I would say if you you realize you made a bad call within 30 seconds of making it - or even at the time you are making it - then you "played" badly (not "are playing" badly).


BUT IF IT TAKES YOU A HALF AN HOUR TO REALIZE A CALL WAS INCORRECT, THEN THAT CALL WAS CORRECT.


If somebody is better than me, I am not playing badly because, by definition, I cannot understand what I am doing wrong and he is doing right.


I also have another saying that goes "The only real mistake is assuming you won't make any."


Of course I make mistakes when I am playing. But to say they are somehow statistically correlated or auto-correlated - beyond my simply not being a good player being constant from one hand to the next - is silly.


I never sit there and say "Darn, look at how I keep calling 72o today." Rather, I say "Man, I'm doing everything right - calling 72o, raising 68s - I can't imagine why my stack is going down."


Maybe it comes down to what you call a "mistake." When I make the best decision possible, given the time alotted and my own skill, and my error is created by the closeness of the call and the number of factors to consider - by a unique circumstance - I don't call it an error, I call it the best I can expect of myself. If I make a variety or series of bad plays, rather than a recurring, reconizable bad tendency in similar situations, then I am not playing badly, I am a bad player.


El-Roi

In life, you will often be drunk or tired or, both, or something else.


If your expectation goes negative every time one of these happens, you are finished.


Given that you are human, you can't lean on razor-thin margins. The pressure to stay above water will itself be enough to break you. You just can't count on perfection from yourself, because you won't get it!


You have to have a generous margin for error to start with, to give yourself room to be human.


Nobody can walk a tightrope for a living.


El-Roi

I was 100% serious that he should not be a sissy about it, and should go find some suckers, and hammer them with bets he knows they will call when he has the best of it.


The math is simple. Human nature is simple. The behavior and recurrence of suckers is constant. It is SO EASY to find the conditions which create a positive expectation.


Frankly, assuming you guys are good players, I would be happy if you sat home watching sitcoms in the dark - introspecting - while I fleece them.


How I feel is irrelevant. The sucker doesn't know whether I am "burnt out" when he calls my re-raise with ace high three times in a row after I have showed him one bluff-reraise.


I gave genuine advice and, frankly, I can't think of why I even should have. I guess my own inclinations and dispositions got the better of me.


Because how I feel is irrelevant, it will have no bearing on how I play or how the sucker plays.


I guess, in summary, I never had confidence in my own goodness to start with, just the other guy's badness falling my way.


I don't even like poker. I despise it. I just know that whenever I am willing to subject myself to it, some idiot will surely give me his money.


El Roi

By the way, Sunglasses-At-Night, I will make sure to lay down my top pair to you next time you re-raise after 4 bluff re-raises shown in a row:)


The more strictly you follow your silly rules, the easier a read you will make yourself.


Good luck in the higher-limit games.


You will need it.


El-Roi

One problem is that many players, myself included, do not even know they made a mistake until after lots of thought about their game. Just this weekend a friend of mine played stud and had a winning session, after which I asked him about his mistakes. He said that in a four hour session he only made "2-3 mistakes." AFter talking with him about it he learned that he made many more than that. Sometimes the best you can expect from yourself is still an error. Making better decisions in the alotted time is what it is all about.


Pat

To hell with you and everyone else onthis stupid planet.


I'll drive my car where i goddamsn please, for one!!!!!!!!!


WHy do bars close at 1:30 AM, and why does teh manager kick me out if he is not an asshole, i pay good fucking money,


i'm not wating for teh damdn bus to hell with all of you


ARE WE IN BUSINESS AR WHAT? DO WE HAVE SOME BUSINESS TO DO< U AND ME?


CUz I'm a busness man and I don;t habe time fo rthis crap.


WHateverr

Hi,


Without mentioning any specific errors average to good players can still make:


I think it is very important for any good player to re-evaluate him/herself periodically.


It is very easy to slip into trends that have a destructive effect on your winrate ... these are the most dangerous errors ... because you don't realize you are making them.


I remember when I first began playing poker ... approx. 150 hours into my career I began calling down shitty players too much.

A hand came along where I had top pair and called a raise on the turn and called a river bet. It came to me suddenly ... what the hell am I doing. This weak player raised on the turn obviously had top pair beaten and I became a calling station.


I immediately fixed the leak. It may have been that I was early in my career and inexperienced .. just a phase.


Or it could have been my ego ... as if I am too good for these calling stations and must call.


Importantly, examining your own motives for falling into bad habits is crucial.


Later,

JM