Help! Running Bad for 9 weeks

270 hours of play over the past 9 weeks on PP. 220 BBs down (70 alone today). Hand after hand outdrawn. I put in about 6 hours average a day.


I have suffered through bad streaks before but this is bordering on ridiculous. It amazes me how I have been able to contain the damage through steals and bluffs. Only 2% of my premium hand holdings have held up at showdown (this over the past week and a half). I managed to stay within 100 BBs for 3 weeks, dipping down to almost 200 in the fourth week, a small rally back to nearly even, and then the mother wave hit. Despite nearly every flop missing my hand, I fought - looking for every hole, any opportunity to make a buck or steal one. I'm finishing the 9th week since this all began. 270 hours of it.


I play mostly 5-10 and 8-16. In 2000 I scored a decent gain for the year. In 2001, I scored the biggest gain of my entirepoker career (all of 5 years) averaging 1.7 BBs an hour. There were several bad periods in 2001 but nothing ever this long.


Can anyone provide some encouraging words of wisdom. Comments from semi or full professional players with experience in dealing with these bad runs would be most appreciated. Players with over 1500 hours on online poker also welcome. Please save the suggestions about tightening up. I'm there already. Anything to do with mental fortitude is really needed.


thanks in advance

The biggest obstacle to dealing with bad streaks is the danger of becoming fixated on them.The absolute last thing you want to have happen is to get to the point where you feel it is normal for you to get beat up,avoid becoming nihlistic at all costs.

Some things to do may be to:

Get away from the game for some amount of time.Enough time for you to get your thoughts off of how crappy your luck has been recently.

Pick up on some relaxational techniques such as meditation or self-hypnosis.These can be used at any time to help bring some peace of mind when things get rocky.

Re-examine your play.Try not to be overcritical but at the same time try to conduct an honest self-appraisal with an eye to identifying and eliminating any leaks/bad habits which you may have developed.

Consider dropping to a lower limit.A few winning sessions go along way towards restoring one's peace of mind.

Go somewhere else to play.A change of scenery can do wonders.

These are the main elements in my disaster recovery plan.I feel your pain and

I hope they help you out some.

The first thing I would do is take a break, a vacation from poker. Whatever you want to call it, stay away from anything and everything that has to do with poker. Set a time frame, say 2 weeks. If that won't work, say a week. If you don't think that will work, ask yourself this. Why aren't I willing to give myself a break?


Every professional or semi-pro that I know (myself included) has gone through what you're going through now at some point in their career. Most have gone through it many times, we're only human.


Get rid of blaming bad runs on bad luck or the other guy. You have no control over anyone but yourself.


If you play well and make less mistakes than your opponents, no matter what the short term brings, you will come out ahead in the long run.


Hit the books then the felt.


I don't know you or your game, so I can't talk specifics. If you would like to include your email address we can do so.


Hope this helps.


KC50

I'm 175 BB down in the last ten days. So, maybe I'm not the best person to give advice on this subject. It sucks. It will pass.


Have you tried other sites. PP seems to be very tough compared to red chip games at other sites.


Other than that, keep some hand histories of problem hands and spend some time looking at them.


Good Luck.


MS Sunshine

Nine weeks is nothing. What are you going to do at week 15 when there is still no light at the end of the tunnel? What about a year later and you get to break even but your bankroll has gone to living expenses?


Pro poker is full of pitfalls. Good luck.

I have I think about 1,200 hours on online poker, and had a similar swing of about 225 big bets a few months ago, so maybe I qualify.


Everyone has their own strategies to cope with these kind of disasters. For me it was to become a "fatalist". I would start the session knowing and accepting that it would be a losing one. My goal therefore wasn't to profit but to be able to point to every hand after I played it and say "That hand was played properly".


It might also help you to take a break from the game and get a fresh perspective on it. In the middle of a giant losing streak your play can get affected, not by tilt exactly, but by loss of intuition about what is going on in the hand, caused by the long abnomrality in the cards.


As you no doubt realise, there is no solution to the problem. The only thing to do is to wait the streak out. Eventually your theories on poker will be proven correct and your opponents' proven wrong. Take comfort in that.


Good luck


Chris

Ideally you don't even want to have winning a session as your goal. You don't want to care about your short term results... but that's impossible to do, for me at least. /images/wink.gif


- Tony

hours logged online: 4000+ hours


longest losing streak: 400+ hours


Pretty much the pattern I think.

Thank all of you. Although I don't subscribe to this behavior as productive, misery definitely loves company - at least to the effect that other winning players experience these events. It is the ugly side of the profession that all must endure at some point.


On a positive note, I came out of the slump this morning with a positive run of 60BB in the course of 1 hour. that's a pretty stiff upper swing and a definite boost to my morale. Thanks again.

Yeah, that's cool.


I also like to get smaller when losing. Lower limits, one game at a time and playing games that are less volatile.


MS Sunshine

Your premium holdings will be outrun far more than they shold on PP in SPITE of the higher caliber of players there, than you will evre see in a typical similar limit B&M game.


This is due to software algorythyms skewed to favor mediocre draw hand players and redistribution of chips to keep more players playing.


Let the insults begin.


Just sign me,


Yet another disgruntled online loser with conspiracy theory excuses who,, OOPS!


I am a net winner at PP, and a much bigger winner at Party and Planet with over 26,000 hands played. Oh well, scratch that disgruntled loser thingie.