50,000 hands later and apparently I'm a loser.

[XChamp]

I've been using Poker tracker for a while now, but I just made an Eempire account and decided to start a database from scratch for Empire 6max NL $100 tables. 3 months have gone by and I now have every single hand that I have played on empire's 6max tables in my database. I am down $1,450.

I find this very interesting (and disturbing, obviously). This year I have netted $15,000 playing poker. All that is from No-Limit cash games and tournaments. Every time I have played stud or limit I have had HEAVY losses (I estimate about 3-4k). Most of the cash games were Party Poker NL $100 6max. I made about $8,000 playing tournaments this year (liberal estimate).

What are the odds that a significant winner goes on a streak like this? I have thought about this a long time and the only conclusion that I can make is that this is, in fact, a bad streak. I do not believe I am playing worse than in the past and I don't believe I was riding incredible cards earlier this year. Heck, at a few points in the past month I asked my friend who plays professionally to watch some of my tables when I'm online and tell me how he thought I was playing. A few times he didn't even tell me he was watching. He said he couldn't see anything significantly wrong, other than taking too many beats.


So what's the consenus? Am I truly a losing player in denial? Should I cut my losses and be happy with the 15k lady luck provided me with? I'd really appreciate some comments. If you want stats from my play I would be happy to post them.

[meow_meow]

FWIW, I've played a fair amount (about 40k hands) of the game in question, and I over a longish period I believe that my play actually degraded to the point where I was a losing player.
My problem was that I started feeling like I owned the game and started pushing too hard, combined with a focus on getting my opponent all-in, rather than extracting the maximum.
PT isn't as well suited to NL as it is to limit, because there is no was to take bet sizes into account except in a hand by hand analysis, so looking at your stats is probably not going to provide the answer.

Don't give up hope though. The game is pretty soft - you are beating it when the rake is taken into account (you'd be in the black with rakeback).

You probably need to find and plug some leaks. Do you tilt? Tilt can be an absolute killer at NL. Try tightening up preflop, especially in early position. Stop overcalling medium sized bets on the river. Stop limping early and calling late position preflop raises.

Maybe none of these are a problem for you, but after 50k hands, a player with a true winrate of 4BB (big bets)/100 and SD of 30BB/100 has just a 0.02% chance of having results as bad as yours, so it is pretty safe to assume there is (or has been) something wrong with your game.

[XChamp]

For a while I thought the same thing. I figured I was playing worse. Perhaps that was true for a chunk of those 50k hands, but I don't think so now.

I think, right now at least, I am going to just assume that I'm one of those poor 1/5,000 bastards that got smacked upside the head with a losing streak. I suppose this mentality is how people go broke?

[bandfan]

[ QUOTE ]
You probably need to find and plug some leaks. Stop overcalling medium sized bets on the river. Stop limping early and calling late position preflop raises.


[/ QUOTE ]

lately ive been on a bad run of cards but instead of playing my same game it got me in a weird state of mind and caused two leaks in my game(the two quoted). i pinned them down last night though, and am ready to get back at it.