Bigger Than A Hand (VERY Long, But I Hope You Read)

[ML4L]

Hello all.

This is my first post of its kind. I've never felt comfortable writing something like this, and to be honest, I still don't. But, I'm going to anyway.

First, let me tell everyone who I am. I am a 22 year old graduate student. I took up hold 'em three years ago when I was in college and made a couple thousand dollars. Since graduating in May, I've begun playing online and have used my winnings to pay my rent, with money to spare.

The reason that I am writing this post is because, this afternoon, I suffered my largest-ever loss at poker. $1,559.50. Playing 15/30 on Party. This is where I almost stopped writing, because I already know what people are going to say: that my bankroll must be too small and the stakes must be too high. Because, it's plain to see that I wouldn't be writing this post if that were just a drop in the bucket for me. But, like many other players, my bankroll cannot handle the stakes that I play. And I've known this for a long time. But, until now, it hadn't been an issue. Because I have never lost. I've had losing sessions, or losing vacations, or losing weeks, but the losses have always been small and infrequent. The only game that I've EVER played in and couldn't beat was a short-handed no-limit game back when I was first learning. But, I made enough in other games to finance my lessons back then...

Today was my first downswing of over 50 BB's. I've read, "Gambling Theory and Other Topics." I understand it; I got an A+ in statistics. I just always felt like it couldn't happen to me. That, for whatever reason, I was different. Because, I had played many hours, and it hadn't happened yet. I've already logged over 100 hours in casinos, mostly playing the 10-20 at the Taj and the 15-30 at the Bellagio. And I've logged even more hours online, and as I said, have been winning steadily.

Since I've gotten good at limit poker, I've felt like I was different. One big bet per hour has never been good enough for me. It has always been about where I've ended up, no matter how many times I've stopped and restarted my playing records (I would do that because I had "improved" and my records from three months ago "didn't accurately reflect my true ability"). I always feel like I should be winning more than that, because I always feel like someone MUST be. I feel like, somewhere, there's a player making TWO big bets an hour. And can he be that much better than me? Hell no. I graduated with honors from a top 10 university. And I've read twelve books on poker, dammit.

It's that part of me that can't handle the swings. The pompous, hypercompetitive part of me. The part of me who feels like he has failed when he hits Enter, and the BB/hr box on the Excel Spreadsheet drops from 1.8 to 1.2 (or, today, since I haven't been playing the 15/30 on Party long enough to absorb today's hit, from positive to negative...). I've been so fortunate to be very successful in most other arenas in life that it makes playing poker very tough for me sometimes.

So now, the favor that I ask of y'all. Tell me whatever you think I need to hear. Maybe you were like me once. Maybe you still are. If this post hasn't struck a nerve, I understand. But, if it has, I'm listening.

The one thing that I hope to hear is someone, whom I KNOW is better than I am, saying, "Yes, I've been there." A Tommy Angelo talking about the month that it ran bad for him. A Clarkmeister retelling his worst swing. Because, I know the math, and that what happened to me is "normal." And I know that these types of posts are a dime-a-dozen. But, searching the forum to find what people said to others wasn't going to do anything for me here. This isn't about proper preflop strategy for an aggressive game. For this, I need something said to ME.

Writing this post has been very humbling for me, and posting it will be even more so. Anyone who has read this far now knows things about me that some of my closest friends do not. And I know some of y'all personally, as friends and opponents, and I'm a little embarrassed to let you read this. But, my biggest fear is that this will taint the advice that I give. Do I want advice from a mediocre player, or even a good one? No. I want advice from a great one. From the best. And this is going to make it tough for me to put on the facade of being the best. So why would (or why should) people listen to what I have to say about a hand?

But, I'm hoping that by posting this, someday, I won't need to act like a great player. I'll actually be one.

Thank you for making it through. Now it's your turn to talk.

ML4L

[astroglide]

i've been in worse shape than you in terms of bb downswings, multiple times, a lot of it due to frenetic and dumbly swashbuckling online play.

i don't feel that 'it happened to me too' stories will help that much. maybe it will if it's well-written or emotional, i don't know. i don't want to produce such a text for you at this point in time.

what i can tell you definitively is that anything you do that lowers what you perceived as bottom is a good thing in the long run as long as you keep studying and keep playing as close to the way you know is correct.

i started playing a different level of game, a lower level actually, but many more tables simultaneously. the swings were very surprising, to the point where i became very frustrated/upset. i would get further away from one, and it would happen again. the second or third time it happens, it's actually refreshing if you can take a deep breath and look at the fact that you still have a solid hourly rate. after a while, you get used to the downswings, and having records of it as proof makes it a lot easier.

the cool thing about the particularly stinging losses is that it makes normal ones even easier to deal with. in this respect, i believe heavy downswings are very valuable psych-wise.

p.s. i think it's foolish to use excel when statking is available at conjelco.com for like $30. it's an invaluable piece of software, and includes poker-specifics like std deviation, bankroll requirements, etc. the graphs alone should be worth it for you specifically.

[Ulysses]

A 50BB session loss sucks, but the word that comes to mind is unremarkable.

[ML4L]

Hey Ulysses,

Once again, I know that. I assume that nearly every player here has been through worse. I wasn't looking for pity or a math lesson.

You would be one of the elite players whom I was hoping would share one of your worst experiences and/or words of wisdom (and maybe that's what I got...).

ML4L

[Ulysses]

OK. I've had numerous 50BB losing sessions. Many more 50-75BB downswings where I lose 20-30BB two or three sessions in a row. It happens.

Live, I've been lucky enough to avoid any major downswings and had only one 100+BB downswing at 6-12 and one 100+BB downswing at 15-30/20-40. That's over the course of about 1600 hours of play. I know much better players than me who have not been as lucky live and have suffered through much worse runs.

Online, I've had no such luck, and though my overall hourly earn is higher than my live rate, I've had to deal with two 300+BB downswings.

I attribute this to three things:

1) I've had some terrible luck lately online
2) The online games I've played in are often ridiculously overaggressive
3) I'm pretty tilt-free live, not so much online (yet)

I think I finally became an OK poker player when I stopped caring about how much I won or lost in a given session. That took quite a while.

I do think many of us go through the "man, that would never happen to me" phase when it comes to many aspects of poker. I always thought it was ridiculous that someone could lose $1500 in a 15/30 game until the first time I did it while playing reasonably well and not tilting.

[Ulysses]

Oh yeah, one more piece of wisdom. When I look back on my biggest session losses later that evening or the next day, I often realize that a large part of the loss was due to the fact that I was playing like crap. When that happens, I try to shift back into super-tight mode for a while. While there's no way to win every time, I've definitely never had a big loss playing super-tight limit poker and usually I end up with nice wins.

[DrSavage]

I've been there. I've been worse than there. I've been down 4.5 K playing 3 tables of Party 15/30 in 6 hours.
I've been playing Party 15/30 for several months and I hit a brick wall in November. I couldn't win. I would have several winning sessions and then a huge losing session setting me back. Rinse, repeat. This was going on for weeks.
So I set a limit for myself: if my bankroll at Party goes down below a certain amount I'm done with 15/30 for time being and go back to playing lower stakes. Unfortunately, it didn't even take me very long to do it. So I kept true to my word and haven't played 15/30 since then.
Now I'm not really sure if this post will encourage or discourage you in any way, but here are several points:
1) You absolutely need the proper bankroll to play Party 15/30. My estimation of the amount I would be comfortable with is around 12K.
2) Don't gamble with the money you can't afford to lose
3) Don't be afraid to move down if bankroll considerations tell you to do so. Don't try to get it back while not being funded properly. Don't assume that anybody will think that you have a small penis because you've moved down. It's your money, do what needs to be done to manage it properly. Don't try to prove to anybody (including yourself) that you are good enough to play these limits. I know for a fact that I'm good enough to play 15/30, yet here I am playing 3/6. Why ? Because it's not stressful, very low-variance and highly profitable game. I've made back a few grand since I've moved down and I will keep playing 3/6 until I know that I'm ready both psychologically and "bankrollably" to get back to higher stakes again.
That's what I did anyway. Do what do you think is right. Don't let anybody tell you what stakes you should be playing and how much BB/hour you should be making.

[Clarkmeister]

2 years ago I had 3 100BB losing streaks in one year, and one of those got up to 150BBs. I bounced back from every one of them. Its just part of the nature of the game.

I started a thread called "running bad or playing badly" in the psych forum a long time ago. You may want to look at that. IIRC there's some interesting discussion in there.

[nykenny]

i have had 6000+ loss in 20-40 stud (live) once last year, 4000+ in 10-20 hold'em (live) once, 5500 in 15-30 hold'em once (online) they all happened last year, yet i still won 40K last year from poker... oh, i played badly in all of these monster loss sessions...

oh, i didn't even mention all the 1000+ losses in 10-20 hold'em..

my word of wisdom: it happens. advice: when it happens, don't play as bad as i did.

nykenny

ps. i play tons better now, so i am looking at a VERY profitable year /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Duke]

I'm there every few weeks. I play a ton of hours, likely more than most on these forums even, and they just happen. The swings, I mean. There's nothing you can do about them sometimes, especially when you're playing in overaggressive online games.

Your 77 will lose to A4 on a K75 flop capped on the flop and turn. It will happen. And sometimes they'll happen in sequence. And you'll flop the nuts and lose 3 times in an hour. And you'll lose to 3 one-outers in half an hour. And you'll cap the first 3 streets with the best hand and correctly fold for one bet on the river when there are still 4 opponents in and the board reads 4567sX. And your hand will have been good until the river. And the 14 of purple horseshoes (thanks josh) will oddly match up with both cards in your opponents hand, every hand for 5 hours.

You'll see worse than 50BB. You'll see much worse. But keep track of your results, and you'll be OK seeing that you're still winning, and that after a few thousand hands you're almost always ahead.

And at first you'll blame it on playing badly or being on tilt, and thinking that the downswing didn't have to be that bad. And you'll think that you learned something and are a better player now that you're winning again. And you'll wonder how it could ever happen again. And a few weeks later it'll be the same thing. Again and again. And it'll seem like a cycle, or like magic. You'll wonder if you should just take a few days off every few weeks, and that might seem like it's working, until you notice that you just have the swings a bit less frequently, but are playing fewer sessions.

And you'll doubt yourself every time you start losing. Every time. You'll think that you forgot how to play cards. You'll think that you're the fish all of a sudden. You'll feel like everyone is taking shots at you. You'll see your hourly deteriorate, and think that you can't possibly be a great poker player.

But eventually you'll just sit back and say: wow. And you'll know that it's that day again, and you'll just play your game. Because that's what you do. You're a card player. And you'll be even happier the next day when things start turning around.

I lost 90 bets last night. First losing day in 2 weeks. 1400 hands, 18% flop seen. I looked at the hands again, and I played them well. I know I played them well. There's not even a reason to post the hands, since they're so obviously bad beats that they're unremarkable. No I did not give excess action when behind. I know this because when I have 3 horrible days out of 60, and the rest are either big wins, or little wins, or very slight losses... I'm doing OK.

Play well, and you did your job. Don't worry about BB/hr or bad beats or downswings or that one guy who always has your number.

You won before, and you'll do it again.

~D

[rharless]

A lot of respected posters listed this type of info in this thread awhile back: Please respond with your worst losing streak (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=smallholdem&Number=426921& Forum=smallholdem&Words=streak&Match=Entire%20Phra se&Searchpage=0&Limit=250&Old=6months&Main=426921& Search=true#Post426921)

Then, Clark's thread which he has already mentioned is very good. I think it was in February of last year, actually.

[SoBeDude]

Don't let anybody tell you what stakes you should be playing and how much BB/hour you should be making.

There is so much hubris in men. I, for example, am a better-than-average intelligence college grad. I'm well spoken. I'm a quick study. I was a expert chess player.

I've spent many many hours reading, studying, simulating, analyzing, dissecting, and playing poker.

Hence I am entitled to a better win rate at poker.

If lessor mortals can expect 1.5 BB/hr, then I deserve 2. Plain and simple.

Well, I had to wake up and smell the bullshit. First, 1.5 BB/hour is the top tier of players. But isn't so easy to convince ourselves that *I* can do better than that, because I'm *ME*?

So the reality is, I'm not entitled to anything. I'm certainly not entitled to a specific win-rate. I'm not even entitled to win if I don't play great. And I'm not entitled to skip the big losses that everyone else has suffered.

Yesterday on party I was at a GREAT table. I sat there for 200 played hands. I didn't win a single pot. I'll say that again. In 200 dealts hands, I won ZERO hands. zip. zilch. down 35 BBs in about 3 hours.

I was quite litterally foaming at the mouth. I'm better now. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Slowly, I'm learning what I'm really entitled to. I'm entitled to the same trials and ups and downs as everyone else.

So don't do what I did and set unrealistic expectations. Don't think the wins will be big and the losses small. Don't expect a given win-rate. Expect the other way around, and then be pleasantly suprised when things turn out better than you expected.

Good luck to you,

-Scott

[brick]

Good thread guys. Thanks. I've been running bad and needed to read this.

[Tommy Angelo]

When I was 22 I was working at a grocery store and playing bridge tournaments most every weekend and playing bridge at the club all week long for three years until I became a life master and then I pretty much quit playing bridge. If I had been playing poker in the modern poker world back then, full of "the hypercompetitive part of me" as you called it, I'd have crashed and burned so fast there'd have been hardly a splash.

It was in 1987 that I first started looking at losing streaks at poker as an opportunity to practice holding it together for losing streaks of the future. I still feel that way about losing streaks and it really really helps me play my A game or close to it during long hours of stuckdom. You might want to give it a try. You're not really playing stuck. You're practicing being strong while stuck. And also see if you can age faster. :-)


Tommy

[Roy Hobbs]

Let me reiterate the plug for Statking.

[SA125]

You wanted a response directed at you the man, rather than the player. Here's mine. I'm in my forties and have a son your age. I've been married longer than you've been alive. My teenage daughter has a chronic intestinal disease. I've been a fireman for a long time in the biggest city in the USA.

As a poker player I don't fit into the category of 15-30, but I sit down in the casino with $1000. It's ironic how poker is like golf in that guys tend to define themselves by their numbers. Like handicaps or limits they play in. Who hasn't seen the poor guy who feels like less of a man playing alongside the 12 because he can't break 100? Or the guy almost feeling like a failure in life for only playing 2/4?

I've won alot playing less than stellar hands and lost alot playing the nuts on the turn. I've beaten and lost to strong players, as well as clueless amatuers and drunks.

Poker is somewhat like life. In the short term, luck can have a tremendous role in how it effects you or your play. In the long term, how you live and how you play has more of an effect on who you are and your standing.

I believe that for every man, whether they're young, old, husbands, fathers, single, whatever, the answer to every important question you'll have about yourself in life, and there will be many, the answer is easily found.

It's in the mirror. In the end, he gets all the credit and all the blame. He's the one who knows you best and, no matter where you are in life, or who you're with, he's the one you'll always answer to.

Good luck.

[ML4L]

Hey all,

Well, I had second thoughts about my post the instant that I posted it, but I'm glad that I went through with it. Again, deep down, I wasn't having serious doubts about my ability. I knew that there was nothing overly remarkable or catastrophic about my downswing.

The reason that I wrote the post was because I didn't like who I had become as a player. In the recent past, I've been so preoccupied with my reputation and my win rate that it has made losing sessions tougher and tougher. I tell many people that if you have to win every time, poker (particularly limit poker) is not for you. But, that hadn't stopped me from placing unrealistic expectations on myself. Back in college, I played for fun. Yeah, I usually won, but if I lost, it wasn't the end of the world. Now, I play for victory. I play for money. I have come to identify myself so heavily with the game that the thought of being seen as a mediocre player (either by myself or by others), after all of the hours that I've invested, is more than I can handle.

I would like to thank every person who read my post and especially thank those who responded. The perspective that your words have helped me regain is going to be invaluable to me, both as a player and as a person.

For now, I think that I will begin to play smaller stakes online than I have been and try to find some other way to pay my rent. Because I'm sick of playing for money. I'm going to start playing for fun again. I'm still going to be a competitor and still going to play my best. But poker is going to be a game, not a yardstick by which to measure myself or a means by which to boost my ego. And that's how it should be.

Thank you again.

ML4L

[Lawrence Ng]

Damn fine post. Well said.

[mike l.]

"I still feel that way about losing streaks and it really really helps me play my A game or close to it during long hours of stuckdom."

this was a good time for me to read this. i was thinking the other day about how much im stuck for this year so far. boy am i stuck.

and then i realised that choosing Jan 1, 2004 was arbitrary and random, that if i chose a different date i would see that im not at all stuck. for instance what if i choose instead Jan 1 or last year, or two years ago or three. well there now, im not stuck at all, im way way ahead.

BUT, ive started to play BETTER when im stuck, this used to not be the case, i used to play desperately. im more careful, more thoughtful, tougher, tighter, better.

so ill just go on pretending to be stuck.

[Lawrence Ng]

Hi ML4L,

You don't know me. I don't play at the Taj or Vegas. I am not a well known pro and I don't have the credibility built up like some the better and well known poker players here on two-plus-two. I am about 5 years older than you, we come from similar education background (I have a degree in Finance and did a lot of study on Game Theory in university), but that's where it ends for us.

You got great math crunching skills. You probably know your poker books in your sleep. But the one thing I have failed to realize in your post is how you handle people and how you handle yourself pyschologically and emotionally.

You see this game from such a technical point, but it goes so much beyond that. In fact, this post should be in the Pyschology section, but instead you opted to put it in the mid-high limit section.

You need to start realizing and accepting this game is not just about absolute numbers, how many big bets an hour, and statistics.

You can talk to all the better players in the world and how they can tell their own bad beat stories and make you feel better, but it won't make an overall better poker player. You can get the best advice from them, but it won't make you a better player.

Yes, bitching like this about your first big loss is actually therapeutic. Everyone needs to rant and let it out, but if you don't find someway to learn from this and make yourself a better poker player then I suggest you give this game up.

You are going to have more losses. You are going to have more swings. You are going to see that 1.8 BB/hr drop to .5 BB hour.

My martial's instructor always said that failure and humiliation are life's two best teacher. Now you know why?

I will tell you one final thing. When things run bad for me, I don't just listen to the best players and heare what they have to say. I listen to people who have lots of experience and are wise.

Poker is ultimate game of life, and life you don't always win. Get that in your head.

[j.k.]

I dont think I can add anything that hasn't been said already, but I will anyway.
I've had more down swings than I can count...actually I stopped counting cause it was making me ill. All I can say is you WILL have losses like this and bigger again. Its how you deal with them and use them to improve your game that sets you apart from the rest of us fish.

good luck to you
j.k.