What to do, What to do?

I need help. I need advice. I need guidance. I am stuck at the breakeven point. People tell me I am a great player. People tell me I have just had some incredible runs of bad luck. Yes, luck comes and goes but if I were a winning player I wouldn't be oscillating around the break even point. I would be going in a predominantly upwards direction. Don't get me wrong, I have had the big upswings to be sure. I have proclaimed myself the King of Poker on a few occasions. I have had month long winning streaks that would make anyone jealous. I tend to think that there is something major that I am missing. I don't know what it would be. I feel like the football player who is good in all aspects of the game but his 40 time is 2/10's of a second too slow. I have studied all I can. I have read at least ten poker books at least ten times each. I understand the situationally dependent nature of the game. I adjust to game conditions. I am selective. I am aggressive. I have the courage to be aggressive even though I don't have the mortal nuts. I can lay down a big hand when warranted. I read hands better than most (judging from the poor plays I see). I only play good draws with a good understanding of pot odds, implied odds, and effective odds. John Feeney would be proud of my ability to not tilt even in it's subtlest forms. I have acccumulated an amazing database of hand histories on PokerStat and have analyzed my play and that of my opponents incessantly. I utilize Turbo Texas Hold'em to run simulations of tricky situations to determine how best to proceed. I have read every post on this forum for the last six months. I have absorbed all information available on the internet (abdul, badger, etc).


Does anyone know the missing ingredient? Has anyone ever been where I am at and gotten over the hump. I am not talking about some newbie who has had one 50 bb downswing and come out of it. I am talking about someone who has lived and breathed poker for a year or more and been up thousands and always gets smacked back down eventually. Someone who has seen cold runs of cards that seem to never end. Someone who knows what it is like to cash out on a weekly basis for a period of time and then have to redeposit eventually. Someone who has had multiple 200+ bb losing streaks and survived them to come out on top again. Someone who has been there and done that and almost quit and eventually put it all together...not just another big upswing but a lifetime of winning poker.


Is there anybody out there?

It depends.

This is so discouraging to me.... if you'r trying this hard... and you've studied twice as long and twice as hard as I have ... what chance to I have to be a winning player?


index


P.S. hey... no joke... maybe you ARE the standard deviation of expected value....

Back in the old days of poker rake was small, players were bad, and you had the best of it all too often.


Corperate America has changed poker into a money making giant. You dont see Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, or Doyle Brunson grinding it out on a jackpot game with a 5% rake fixed limit.


You want to beat limit poker......find the weakest players, or pass the game until you do. Your gonna pass alot of time away.

The longer you sit in a raked game with good to average players or even GREAT players the more time/money you lock up.


And unless you have ESP, internet poker wont be very rewarding until you realize this.


Good luck.

Hard to know what to say to that, certainly sounds like you know your stuff. Lets see some hands. One at a time, with at lest a day or so between posts, results removed. Every few hundred hands, find a hand you have doubts about. Write up what you were thinking, and why you're not sure about what you did. Post it here or in teh small stakes forum.


If you can't find a hand where you think you made a mistake, we've found a good place to start right there. ;-)


zooey

Ive been playing poker for years and still make mistakes when I look over a hand after its over. We are all human and sometimes in the heat of battle you trip. Thinking over hands away from the game is a neverending task.


Plug the leaks.......so to speak

If you are talking about internet poker, take it from me- sometimes it doesn't matter what you do- you are going to lose. I wrote in about a month ago about my retirement from Paradise Poker. Well, I just came out of retirement but little has changed. You still can't get people out. (Or maybe just I can't).

I think Mason wrote: "Limit Hold-em (I assume that is what you play) is a great equalizer of talent". When I started on Paradise, I was even for months. Up and down, up and down. Then I changed my game a little, (basically to a style that gives me a larger variance), increased my bankroll to the point where a loss wasn't a big deal, and started winning. For me, bankroll was a big issue in the early days. Sadly, after winning a nice chunk in low-limit games, I started that slide you are speaking about. It is still going on. The problem now seems to be that the limits where you can actually earn decent money have just gotten harder. Even 3-6 is usually pretty agressive, and the players are pretty sophisticated. You really just have to work and find the weak games- but these days, it just isn't so easy. If you are talking about live poker, a big part of that is knowing how to gage your opponents, finding the weakies, and following them around!

I feel like I may have just read my own internet autobiography. At least when I first started. I came to a conclusion. I went through some monster swings like everyone else too. I turned $60 into $2300 only to have it turn into $1400 two days later. My mistake was; when I started to go through a bad run, I tried to play through it instead of quitting or dropping limits. Some days are just gonna be bad days. It often appears as though we are making the right plays in the right situations, but I think more often, in the middle of a bad run, judgement can become clouded and maybe better plays are available. I now support taking a short break to readjust attitude. IME, I have found that I have made a number of very minor mistakes that end up adding up while going through a bad run. Many online games are simply not forgiving enough for a few minor errors. Add that to the rake and breaking even seems like the best thing when compared to the alternative. Long story short. Try to discipline yourself to accept small losses rather than trying to "tuff it out".


Cheers


Larry

I fully agree.


Focus, Focus, Focus, Discipline, Discipline, Discipline.


Regards