here's my own crazy brutal honesty

[MicroBob]

i have mentioned in other threads (here i think, and ML forum) that i have undergone some wild swings lately.
yes, it's supposed to happen...especially when one takes up playing full-time (as i did a couple months ago) but almost everyone would agree i think that my swings are not 'normal'.

i play a fairly aggressive game at 2/4 and 3/6 and i've been working on dialing it back a couple notches by asking some questions in the ML forum and looking over HH's and further studying the game.


how this relates to the psych-forum is interesting i think.

it is 'possible' that i was playing a lousy game all the while and was just running extremely lucky.

but what i really believe happened is that i got so used to pushing my opponents off of hands in situations where it was proper to do so that i started to overplay hands far too aggressively and chase down with not nearly enough of the board to warrant it.

in other words....my super win-streak led to a transformation of my game and i have been tilting away without even realizing it.

here are the raw figures....please bear in mind that i am playing 3-4 tables at a time so i am getting in roughly 10k hands per week.
for an online player, i believe these numbers are pretty extreme....but for a B&M player they will look insane and impossible.
but at 10k hands per week i am probably playing about 8x-9x the number of hands a B&M player can realistically play in a week.

4-5 week hot stretch (45k hands):
about +1000 BB's
capped by a +$1100 win a couple Friday ago (200 BB's)
this monster day was also the last day of my win-streak for the most part.

last 2 weeks (20k hands or so):
about -350 BB's


further details - on the day when i won over $1000 (by far my best single-day result ever) it was one of those 'can do no wrong' days.....virtually EVERY pocket-pair was hitting trips or boats.
there was one situation where i got pocket 2's on different tables about 15 minutes apart....and both of them turned into quads....and both of them were paid off decently by someone else's full-house.
i hit some other nice hands where i dragged huge pots.



my losing stretch,as expected, was not entirely bad play.

AA has actually been losing money during that streak.
earlier today i lost with KK to AA 3x.
i had AA busted on board of KJ84Q by a guy who stayed in with Q8. naturally i was pushing the hand hard all the way but he was there to call every raise.

you know the drill....just the worst of the worst beats over and over a lot of the time.


anyway, the bad-beats made it harder for me to consider the possibility that my game was not as good as it once was.

if you lose 100BB's in a day to some really awful beats you know that a 100BB set-back is supposed to happen every once in awhile and you also know that you caught some of the worst beats you had experienced in a long time so you're not really worried about it.

then, after another 100BB's over the next few days you start to wonder what's going on here.

and then you realize you don't have as much of an idea how to play over-cards anymore...when to push, chase or give-up...etc etc.


even with the crappy losing-streak, i posted a decent winning month for May. a little rake-back and a couple of bonus re-loads helped to boost that as well.

June is off to a losing start but it's only a couple of days in...i am 'starting over' in a way. re-dedicating myself to continual study of the game so i don't lose touch with correct playing style again.

if i have to fring away at the 1/2 and 2/4 then i'll do that...although it has not quite come to that yet.

anyway, that's my story up to this point.
thanks for listening.

[Kenshin]

Hey Bob,

I respect both your game and your overall approach; however, I question the purpose of this post? What brutal honesty does it reveal, save for your recognition of the inherent variability of poker?

Which do you consider more likely: that your ability has declined or that you overestimated your ability in the first place? I would certainly suspect the latter. Particularly I believe virtually every poker player overestimates his ability in the midst of a winning streak.

GL

Kenshin

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Which do you consider more likely: that your ability has declined or that you overestimated your ability in the first place?

[/ QUOTE ]


probably some of both actually.


[ QUOTE ]
What brutal honesty does it reveal, save for your recognition of the inherent variability of poker?

[/ QUOTE ]


i don't think it has as much to do with my recognition of variability as it does with recognition of the decline of my game.

during my win-streak i stated several times that i really did not consider myself to be a very good player.
i wasn't trying to humble...i truly believed that i wasn't THAT awesome a player.

however, the results were telling me a little bit differently for awhile and i think it is difficult during such winning rushes to stay tight and disciplined etc etc.


i guess the intention of the post had more to do with my interest in what i consider to be a gradual deterioration of my game.
perhaps it is coincidence that i won fairly big money one day and just couldn't catch cards the next.
maybe i have been playing an inferior game all along and my 50k stretch was just not long enough to make any accurate judgements.

but i believe i had discipline and judgement swings exaserbated by a good hot streak followed by a lousy cold streak.


your observation has crossed my mind more than once and i am trying to look at the situation as objectively as possible.
regardless of whether i was playing badly when i was winning is kind of a moot point now....even though i KNEW i had much to work on with my game before i wasn't quite as excited about 'getting around to it' when i was winning.

i am using my recent losses to serve as motivation to study more and get my game on track.

i did believe that my situation had enough relevance and was maybe interesting enough to be worth posting in this forum. sorry you feel otherwise.

[Kenshin]

[ QUOTE ]


[ QUOTE ]
What brutal honesty does it reveal, save for your recognition of the inherent variability of poker?

[/ QUOTE ]


i don't think it has as much to do with my recognition of variability as it does with recognition of the decline of my game.

during my win-streak i stated several times that i really did not consider myself to be a very good player.
i wasn't trying to humble...i truly believed that i wasn't THAT awesome a player.

however, the results were telling me a little bit differently for awhile and i think it is difficult during such winning rushes to stay tight and disciplined etc etc.


i guess the intention of the post had more to do with my interest in what i consider to be a gradual deterioration of my game.
perhaps it is coincidence that i won fairly big money one day and just couldn't catch cards the next.
maybe i have been playing an inferior game all along and my 50k stretch was just not long enough to make any accurate judgements.

but i believe i had discipline and judgement swings exaserbated by a good hot streak followed by a lousy cold streak.


your observation has crossed my mind more than once and i am trying to look at the situation as objectively as possible.
regardless of whether i was playing badly when i was winning is kind of a moot point now....even though i KNEW i had much to work on with my game before i wasn't quite as excited about 'getting around to it' when i was winning.

i am using my recent losses to serve as motivation to study more and get my game on track.

i did believe that my situation had enough relevance and was maybe interesting enough to be worth posting in this forum. sorry you feel otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

I apologize if my comment seemed hypercritical. I intended it to be helpful rather than disdainful.

You noted an interesting phenomena which I also have encountered. After prolonged winning streaks, I tend to become too loose and too agressive. I wonder if my swings in part result from correcting an error and thereby winning, until I develop another bad habit which sends me into a downward spiral... ad infinitum.

Kenshin

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
You noted an interesting phenomena which I also have encountered. After prolonged winning streaks, I tend to become too loose and too agressive.

[/ QUOTE ]


yes...this was the general idea of the post (put far more succinctly by you however)....but i had to consider all kinds of possibilities in addition to this.
they included just running really really bad (i just had another AA get clobbered Q5o that cold-called my raise??)
as well as probably not being quite as good as i might have thought during my 50k hand hot-streak.

so it gets a bit more complicated in my situation....but the idea of getting looser and more aggressive after winning is what i was getting at primarily....
and this may have become even more extreme by some really awful beats (although i thought i was handling them decently...just shrugging it off and playing the next hand).


i have given far harsher responses to similar 'why aren't i winning anymore??' whining-posts in the past.
i didn't consider your response disdainful...but rather just your honest inquiry into the point of my post and an appropriate theory of what is actually happening in my game (that i might be losing because i wasn't really such a freaking 'hot-shot' to begin with).

[StellarWind]

MicroBob, the following remarks are general rather than directed at you because I don't know if they apply to you.

The connection between good play and good results is unusually weak in most forms of poker, including hold'em. This is the magic of the luck factor.

That makes judging how well you are playing from your short-term results even more hazardous than in other games/sports. Most of us sort of understand this when the subject is overall win rate. We grasp it a lot less when it comes to specific aspects of our play. Witness all the "I play blah-blah UTG all the time and it works great so it must be right" posts. Highly subjective recollection of statistically insignificant data.

It's easy to think aggressive play is genius when you are winning. It's easy to feel like a chowderheaded maniac when you lose with the same plays. Neither has any valid connection to the actual merits of your play.

Moral: the learn-by-doing approach is very bad for poker players. Unless you analyze hands, do research, read books, and get lots of objective feedback from other players, playing experience is not very helpful in improving as a player. It's too easy to go off on tangents where some random results cause you to learn a wrong play and then practice it over-and-over without ever realizing your error.

[Al Schoonmaker]

You wrote: "I believe virtually every poker player overestimates his ability in the midst of a winning streak."

I'd go one step further. Most players overestimate their abilities, period.

That's the major reason for bad beat stories and other complaints about luck. It's the reason that so many players don't really work on their game. They believe they play well, even if they are losing players. They essential say, "I'm a good player, but I'm so unlucky."

I'm fascinated by the fact that lots of people take golf and tennis lessons even though they don't play for money, but only a few take poker lessons. Why? Because you can't kid yourself about how well you play golf or tennis, but it's easy to kid yourself about your poker skill.

Regards,

Al

[Al Schoonmaker]

As I noted in another part of this thread, MOST people overestimate their abities most of the time.

The most encouraging aspect of your remarks is that you're critical of yourself. As long as you look critically at what you're doing and don't focus on the cards or whine about other players or your luck, you can develop your game.

The people who whine and focus on cards and luck never go anywhere.

Regards,

Al

[PokerBabe(aka)]

Hi Microbob.

My suggestion is to take a few days off and then when you start back, just play ONE table and play tighter. If you lose 100bb in a day, get a job. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

LGPG,

Babe [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

right now i have put the limit game on hold for a little while/ how long remains to be seen.

i had few lousy beats again....and i'm still not entirely convinced that i'm playing a winning game in the first place.

i've been consistently dropping 20BB-40BB on most days of late and while it sure FEELS like more and more bad-beats ganging up on me i'm just too self-critical and realistic to think that that is the ENTIRE reason.


i'm fooling around on the $25-NL games for a bit...just for a change of pace.
additionally, i believe that fairly-tight borderline nut-pedalling can be a fairly low-variance way to make a little bit in these games.

it went pretty well last night...we'll see if it continues.
the wswings are certainly less dramatic as you always have the option to lay-down to bigger bets unless you are holding the nuts (or near nuts).

i'm not much of an NL palyer....but it's kind of a fresh-start and i like the lesser variance a ton.


perhaps i'll go back to limit in a few days...or maybe i'll just gradually check out a table while i'm nut-pedalling on the NL-tables.
or perhaps i'll end up liking the NL game so much that i'll stick around there.

as poker-babe alluded to...indeed, i might have to get a job again which would me mildly disappointing compared with what i believe i can accomplish with poker...but it certainly wouldn't be the worst tragedy in the world and i wouldn't hesitate to do it if/when i thought it was necessary or the best option.


but, for now, i do have some bills to pay and my somewhat damaged bank-roll may stand a better chance doing some pseudo-nut pedalling on the NL games for a spell.

again, this may or may not be a temporary fix....but i think it's also good for me just to get away from the limit games for a little while (which may only be a few days).



[ QUOTE ]
It's easy to think aggressive play is genius when you are winning. It's easy to feel like a chowderheaded maniac when you lose with the same plays.

[/ QUOTE ]


Wow!!! I didn't know i had someone rail-birding my games!!



thanks for the ideas everyone.
i do hope i am not coming off as a 'OMG!! this losing is too much to handle' type of whining posts.

i've been losing lately and am simply analyzing different aspects of the situation in an effort to get back on the winning track and thought that my current situation and approach might be of interest to others.

update:
well...i'm up 13 whole dollars so far today. sure beats being down $100 or more.
one teensy little step at a time.