Do you ever lose confidence?

[ThaHero]

I just recently moved to Party .50/1, and was on somewhat of a bad run. It took me 500 hands before I got AA or KK, lost a couple set over sets...the usual. I'm not whining. Last night I finally got some hands and was on a heater before PS crashed.

My question is, does anyone else start to doubt their abilities as a player when the cards aren't coming like they should? Overcards don't hit top pair? Etc? Just wondering if this feeling of total vulnerability is normal.

[emitch]

I think we all feel that way at one time or another, but suck it up. As you saw, you will eventually come out of it and it does you the service of making you re evaluate your game. We all have leaks and this forces you to look hard to find them. I just came off of a 2500 hand downswing at .5/1 and as you said, am on a heater. In the last one thousand, I have made up for my losses and made enough on top of that to be at over 4BB/100 for my last 5000. Bad sample, but the point is that the swings can go both ways. While the cards are against you, really concentrate on table selection. In my book, that has saved me from losing alot more than I did. Find more passive opponents that wont raise up your missed flops as much.

good luck

My two cents

mitch

[Online247]

[ QUOTE ]
I just recently moved to Party .50/1, and was on somewhat of a bad run. It took me 500 hands before I got AA or KK, lost a couple set over sets...the usual. I'm not whining. Last night I finally got some hands and was on a heater before PS crashed.

My question is, does anyone else start to doubt their abilities as a player when the cards aren't coming like they should? Overcards don't hit top pair? Etc? Just wondering if this feeling of total vulnerability is normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

If anything I'm a little overconfident. /images/graemlins/wink.gif I never think about how much I'm up or down. Take each hand for what it is. Say you just had your set of aces cracked by a runner runner straight. Forget about it. You have another hand coming up it's time to focus on that hand. So lets say you just got dealt KK, say to yourself, outloud if you need to, I'll play this KK hand to the best to my abilities.

This is what I do, and it really helps me focus on what is important, which is increasing my expected value.

You should also give yourself credit yourself for making folds. I think too many players get caught up in the fact that by folding we just lost the hand (money), but you have to remember that by folding you may have just saved yourselves a bet or two.

I'm not advocating a weak-tight style but rather just trying to get the point across we sometimes don't give ourselves credit for the little things that we do in our game, that makes us a little better than the next guy. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[bozlax]

I doubt your ability as a player if you think it's tied to some incredibly-complex random number generator at Party Poker Central.

At least you're not whining. (By the way, by painting yourself as an experienced player ["the usual"?] the "I'm not whining" stuff loses some of it's power.

5 minutes before this gets locked. Anybody, for a buck?

[@bsolute_luck]

i go through cycles

win - post "know-it-all" posts - overconfidence - downswing - tilt - "i hate poker" - a day or so - quietly read posts - sit for a quick winning session - repeat.

once i did go through a MAJOR downswing over 7k hands and really was wondering what was going on. but once i came out of that, it put other minor "blips" in perspective.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
So lets say you just got dealt KK, say to yourself, outloud if you need to, I'll play this KK hand to the best to my abilities.

[/ QUOTE ]

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh-darn it, I CAN play poker!" How sweet.

[ThaHero]

Thanks for the kind words lol. Did your goldfish die today?

BTW, looks like my post made it past the 5 minute mark.

[ThaHero]

lol yeah I usually go through those cycles too except I usually dont post it on the boards, I just tell my brother about it.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the kind words lol. Did your goldfish die today?

BTW, looks like my post made it past the 5 minute mark.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dude, you've been regged for 6 months and you have over 400 posts. Did you REALLY expect all of us to start weeping and telling you that everything's ok, and maybe bring you some virtual cocoa?

And, I can only assume that Wook is napping or beating the cat (not a euphamism).

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the kind words lol. Did your goldfish die today?

BTW, looks like my post made it past the 5 minute mark.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, just went back and re-read the OP, to make sure I'm not completely out of line, and all I can say is...WTF?! Do I begin doubting my playing ability because I haven't gotten AA or KK in 500 hands? Because my AK doesn't pair up on the flop for a couple of days? How does that have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with my (or your) ability?

[MrWookie47]

Here are my thoughts on the subject. (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=3369361&page=2&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)

[Sightless]

Happened to me past 2 weeks, I was on a good run before that catching cards here and there... and I started to expect cards to come when they shoudlnt... and that made me lose confidece... i stopped value betting and started calling, checking and folding more...

[Harv72b]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is, does anyone else start to doubt their abilities as a player when the cards aren't coming like they should? Overcards don't hit top pair? Etc? Just wondering if this feeling of total vulnerability is normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. I recently had my first losing month ever and all of a sudden started to doubt my own abilities as a poker player. I've seen a lot of players on the SS forum with plenty more experience than I have go through similar times, to the point of talking about quitting the game. Poker can be a very emotionally draining passtime (or career), and the swings can be very brutal. I don't think you could find a single player out there, up to & including hall of famers, who haven't at one point or another considered quitting the game, or at least questioned their own abilities in it.

For what it's worth, you need these downswings to happen from time to time. If they don't, it's too easy to get to the other extreme of this game, where you've been winning & winning and feel like you're unbeatable. That's when you can do some real damage to yourself (and of course your bankroll).

[milesdyson]

i am incredibly overconfident when it comes to my game.

we're talking it's to the point where when i make a misclick, i will audibly say, "good job miles, great play," and i'm completely serious.

[ThaHero]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the kind words lol. Did your goldfish die today?

BTW, looks like my post made it past the 5 minute mark.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, just went back and re-read the OP, to make sure I'm not completely out of line, and all I can say is...WTF?! Do I begin doubting my playing ability because I haven't gotten AA or KK in 500 hands? Because my AK doesn't pair up on the flop for a couple of days? How does that have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with my (or your) ability?

[/ QUOTE ]

OK I think you totally misunderstood what my post was about. I don't want virtual cocoa and this wasn't some bad beat post complete with a converted hand and everything. I just wanted to start a discussion on how downswings affect the psyche of a player. Maybe I shoulda put this in psychology.

[ThaHero]

great link

Just have to keep playing enough hands to give you confidence that you're a winning player. That being said, I still like crap even after relatively small downswings (lost 30BB playing tonight). I think the ideal is where you don't think about the results, just about how well you played, and I'm not there yet.

Yes, and I'm smack dab in the middle of my worst losing streak in over a year. For the past 12 months since I started using poker tracker I've moved up the ranks from .5-1 to 2-4/3-6. In the past year I've only had one month where I was a loser, but basically it was a break-even month, I only lost 10BB. However, since 8/19 I've been on a wicked losing streak posting losses on 13/17 days. I'm down over 200BB this month. I no longer have the bankroll to play 2-4 and I'm back at 1-2. So in short, yes, I've lost every bit of confidence I had :-(

[deception5]

I used to feel this way all the time. The more hands I play the more reassurance I get that I'm a winning player. But there's nothing worse than those runs where everytime you raise preflop you miss...

[jrz1972]

After you've been through a few big downswings and clawed your way out of them, you stop fretting over every little bump in the road.

[Cosimo]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is, does anyone else start to doubt their abilities as a player when the cards aren't coming like they should? Overcards don't hit top pair? Etc? Just wondering if this feeling of total vulnerability is normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not over 500 hands. I don't even blink for 500 hands.

I start to lose confidence when I run bad for 10,000 hands or more. For good reason, recently, cuz I think I was playing poorly. But any small stretch of hands should be meaningless to you.

I guess that comes with more play. After 50,000 or 100,000 hands, little 500-hand swings just don't carry any weight.