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The most difficult thing to do during an upswing is to keep playing at an optimal level.

When one is in a downswing is it very easy to evaluate your game, closely analyze hands, and play much better. During an upswing it is much easier to get cocky, start playing more hands, and this causes an unnoticed loss in big bets that will really haunt one's long term winrate.

For example, a buddy of mine had a recent upswing in which it seemed he would always hit a set with pocket fives. So of course at the height of this upswing he cold called THREE bets with pocket fives because he "was on fire" and KNEW he would win. He won the hand, and laughed about his good luck. Well, I feel that this is a major leak that most people have and, for most, it goes completely unnoticed. My buddy may have one that one particular hand, but what he did was a -EV play and those bets he put in will cost him in the long run.

I am sure there are many hands where he was cold calling hands he shouldn't have which he didn't tell me about, but he also never really noticed he was losing these bets because he was winning so much over the streak. Now, he is in a downswing, and I'm sure he misses all those bets he threw into -EV plays because he got cocky.

I know he is not alone. I know this because I find myself wanting to do the same things, and I know myself of six months ago would have done the same things. When you are down 100 BB's at 3/6 in an hour you aren't going to raise JTo UTG, but when you are up 100BB's at 3/6 and flying high it's easy to think "I'm going to raise this and if I hit NO ONE is going to put me on this hand!" Little mistakes add up to big time loss

This entire post assumes when you are running bad you do not tilt, which, for some, can be the biggest leak of all.

Jonny

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I'm going to be a major nit here (I'm allowed, I guess).

If you sat down and convinced your buddy not to do that thing where he called three bets with 5's when they were "on fire", and he never did it again, then it didn't cost him anything in the long run.

I.E. If you fumbled a chip at a casino, and the dealer called it a bet, and it stayed, and you hit your gutshot with ridiculously low odds, that mistake didn't really cost you the price of a gutshot at poor odds in the long-run.

If anything, in the longrun it cost you the price of the an average call (without regard to EV), since it happened randomly.

Anyways...

Yeah, I'm a nit.

I think my leak, when I'm running hot, is to defend my small blind much more liberally than normal. This certainly isn't all, but it's what I notice most.

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Yeah, tilting due to running bad is pretty horrible too. I notice it most at NLHE. It's absolutely deadly there if I have a big stack.

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That was pretty nitty. I hope you realize that my buddy "knows" he shouldn't do this, but he did, and surely he will do it again no matter how much I tell him not to.

Maybe not this exact situation, but next time he is running hot he will remember the one time he won by calling with the fives, and not the many more bets he had lost by playing poorly during the upswing.