Do any other winning players...
 

...feel like very mediocre players? After 35K hands at Party .5/1 and 1/2 (and probably 10K at other sites, before i had PT, with similar results) i'm up 2.5bb/100. I credit this to table selection and maximizing my winners. The rest of my game, however, feels just awful. I give up too early on marginal situations and hang around too long when i'm behind. I just feel like my game is far from solid. I have no real point, i guess, i was just wondering if anyone else is/was in the same situation and what you're doing/did to strenghten your play.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

yes.
something like 60 k hands.
i credit my success to pocket aces (30% of my winnings) and the button (40% of my winnings) and most importantly, this forum.

personally, i'm taking a break from playing a ton of daily hands and am combing the archives and re-reading some books. i'm also not going to shoot for 2/4 for a little while until i feel more confident. see my recent post "me first pot of gold" and the link to "How did you become a better player".

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I don't know about other players, but without AA,KK, and QQ I'd be a break-even player. Just because AA is 30% of your winnings doesn't mean you're a poor player. Marginal situations are exactly that. Marginal. If you play them well, they will pay off infrequently. The fact that they don't come in often or they don't show huge profits over the long run doesn't necessarily mean you're playing them incorrectly.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

One, who are you comparing yourself to? You're probably not going to win a WSOP bracelet any time soon (although I'd say that your success at PP .5/1 or 1/2 isn't a very good indicator of that), but maintaining 2.5BB/100 over 35K+ hands, I'd say you're doing well. Could you be doing better? Maybe, but not by any measure that we use around these parts

Two, I think we all feel this way from time to time, especially after a series of "bad" beats. I usually go back and look over the hands that I just lost/let go of, and check to see if I _really_ played them that badly. The usual outcome of this is that I find that my play on the hand was loose (in an absolute sense), but it was fine because of the table conditions, i.e. taking pocket 10s to the river on a board of J9733 at a LP table and getting beaten by the SB with T8o who didn't raise me once, but called my flop raise of his bet-out.

So, my advice to you is to make as OBJECTIVE an assessment as you can of some of your questionable hands. For me, for instance, something I've discovered is that I usually overplay overcards, and that my high pairs soemtimes get beat by crazy-ass hands, but that I feel that I'm only playing "badly" in the first case.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

2.5 is more than fine.. you'll eventually go 10K hands nearly break even or possibly worse.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I don't feel like a mediocre player, but the more I learn about poker the more I realise that I know nothing about poker.

I am sure that all the regulars will agree too.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
2.5 is more than fine.. you'll eventually go 10K hands nearly break even or possibly worse.

[/ QUOTE ]

yes. i think this type of sustained breakeven run is causing me doubts.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't feel like a mediocre player, but the more I learn about poker the more I realise that I know nothing about poker.

I am sure that all the regulars will agree too.


[/ QUOTE ]

and yes.
for sure.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I feel like a marginal player all the time. I think it's part of the humbling nature of the game. I usually feel good, but I know that there are a lot of decisions I make that are really marginal, and I'm not sure how far from bad they are. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

For a good example of this, read my thread called "How Bad?" in the shorthanded forum right now.

Rob

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I mostly feel marginal, which I think is a good thing. Though I go through phases ranging from "What the hell am I doing wasting my time and money like this?" to "I'm the bee's knees when it comes to poker players.". I'm in the latter now, but I'm currently coming back down to marginal.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I often feel like a mediocre player, especially by 2+2 standards. I'm also quite happy with the fact that I'm a winning player over a significant number of hands. I may not be as good as I'd like, but I'm getting paid to improve.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
One, who are you comparing yourself to?

[/ QUOTE ]
Probably some of the posts along the lines of "I started two months ago with $200 and now I only have $2000 because I'm in the middle of a 50BB downswing here's my 5k-hand stats whats wrong?"

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I have been playing poker for 7 months and I feel like a below average player. I just recently made it to 0.7/100 BB so I am now a winning player of some sort. The ups and downs can really beat on your self esteem and confidence. I think what you are feeling is very common... my personal opinion is this feeling seperates you from the LPP's and LAP's. Knowing you don't know puts you way ahead of most people.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I'm pretty comfortable when I sit down to play. I don't like every decision I make, and I catch a lot of errors two seconds too late, but I'm also a 16 VPIP preflop which means I'm in fewer marginal places. (My mentality has changed towards playing more loosely in the last few months, but it takes a while for my stats to catch up.)

[ QUOTE ]
i was just wondering if anyone else is/was in the same situation and what you're doing/did to strenghten your play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would guess that the biggest problem is that players don't know how to adjust to changing game situations. And they can't make adjustments because they haven't been paying enough attention to what's going on with the other players. The need for constant action by multi-tabling means that players miss many cues which tell them they need to adjust and how.

This is basically saying that micro players don't think enough.

Level 1 thinking: I have... so I should...
Level 2 thinking: I have... this player tends to... so I should...
Level 3 thinking: I have... this player tends to... so he probably has (a specific range of hands)... so I should...

These levels are arbitrarily named, and maybe aren't in the correct order, but this is how I see it. I'm at 2 moving towards 3, which means I'm trying to improve hand-reading skills.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
My mentality has changed towards playing more loosely in the last few months, but it takes a while for my stats to catch up.

[/ QUOTE ]

This means you're trying to loosen up, right? Because you should be.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

hey tilt, i'm begining to see what your saying about the party 2/4 game. awful players, should be a gold mine, but its not workin out so far. after a huge sample size (4K) i'm beating the game for an astonishing .22bb's/100. thats including some pretty large swings. thursday, up 75b's, friday down 80bb's, today up 50bb's so far [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]. so far its been alot of risk and little reward. i know there are some adjustments i need to make, i just havent figured them all out yet. so far i think all of my significant profit has come from maniacs, because the fish keep rivering me. i'll keep ya posted if i figure anything significant out.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

i agree whole heartidly with both your posts.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

AA is almost 50% of my total profits, is THAT bad? I would be BARELY in the red if it were not for AA down to TT.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

Sometimes I feel bad as well, and i just moved up to 1/2 after a really good run at .5/1 (6bb/100 over 12k despite a 160 BB downswing).

One thought- you might want to stop with the table selection, at least if you are still playing .5/1. I found that single tabling without table selection may me learn to read players and improved my game a great deal.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My mentality has changed towards playing more loosely in the last few months, but it takes a while for my stats to catch up.

[/ QUOTE ]

This means you're trying to loosen up, right? Because you should be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely. I was shocked to discover the following stat:

BB/hand = .02 for all hands
BB/hand = .43 for VPIP hands

Blinds account for roughly .75 BB/9 hands = .08 BB/hand, which accounts for some of the discrepancy (money I lose from all hands, but not VPIP hands), but not nearly enough. Basically, I think this means I'm playing the highly profitable hands well, but I'm also passing up on far too many (less) profitable situations. Losing BB/hand for VPIP is fine if it brings up BB/hand for all hands.

The ASF of games I play in is 38%, with # players = 9.2, so I usually see games with 3.5 people in the pot. It's a bit tighter than lots of the other micros games, which means I should be coming in for a raise more often (PFR = 7.9), and really be watching postflop tendencies to take advantage of tight-passive players (give up sooner), weak or loose river players (push harder), etc.

I should really spend more time reading the small stakes forum, but time is limited right now. Maybe when summer rolls around I can make the time to step up a little.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

Most days I might take mediocre to be a compliment.

Of all the poker books I have read this line keeps ringing in my head...

"Perfect play on the first two cards will enable you to only break even at best if you are not adept at later rounds." -S&M.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I think everyone here could use a good, healthy dose of feeling like they're terrible at poker. I too often forget to take my "I suck" medicine before I play. If you go in with a feeling of immortality, you'll be too inclined to chase weak draws and round up your pot odds. Fortunately for me, I'm in the middle of a downswing in spite of playing at looser tables at Paradise relative to Stars. Nothing induces humility like getting beaten with a large stick.

When I'm convinced of my terrible play, I do more to focus on it and correct it than when my badass self can do no wrong.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't feel like a mediocre player, but the more I learn about poker the more I realise that I know nothing about poker.

I am sure that all the regulars will agree too.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah the game seems so simple on the surface, preflop isn't really complicated though I still need some work on button/co situations .. its postflop that is so tricky

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

I don't really consider myself a winning player yet, and I don't think any number of hands will convince me of it. The only thing that will convince me I'm a truly winning player is a when I'm consistently beating 3/6 and above. While I don't think I'm a horrible player, I'm no where near where I want to be. In reality, I'm probably not doing too badly considering I've only been playing a few months, but I'm a perfectionist and I absolutely despise losing. I just don't have the confidence to shrug off losing sessions, because I don't know how much is bad play and how much is just getting sucked out on.

I also think reading the "bragging" posts is detrimental. When I read of players who have upswings lasting thousands of hands, or tens of thousands of hands I get irritated because I've never had something like that. I'll hit a nice upswing that lasts a day or two, then it's back to really having to grind out my gains. Even when I'm running well, I'm not really running well. Then, seeing people taking the .50/1.00 tables for 4, 5, 6+ BB/100 delivers another blow. I only took the stars .25/.50 for about 2.50-2.75BB/100 and I start to wonder whether I'm just kidding myself.

It's a long road to success, but I've come far enough to know the fruits will be worth the effort, so I continue to grind it out, think hands through, and hope that everyday I play, I become a little better.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

My main problem is thinking quickly...

During every session, I write down the hands I want to look over when I'm done. A lot of times, the ones I want to review end up 5 minutes from becoming a new thread here. The reason they don't make it to thread-dom is because once it's all laid out in front of me and I get to see what happened every street, the hand becomes much clearer. For instance, I'll see that I'm calling a bet with the proper immediate pot odds but the preflop raiser is behind me. Or, I'll forget that the guy to the left 3-bet me preflop and I'll bet into him with a good draw when I should check raise.

A lot of it has to do with not closely observing my tables (like right now, I'm writing this post and scratching my balls). As others have said in this thread, having a +BB/100 is incentive enough to keep playing, knowing that I can be mediocre and still earn some, as Uncle Rico would say, "Moolah."

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One, who are you comparing yourself to?

[/ QUOTE ]
Probably some of the posts along the lines of "I started two months ago with $200 and now I only have $2000 because I'm in the middle of a 50BB downswing here's my 5k-hand stats whats wrong?"

[/ QUOTE ]

precisely. everyone talks about "crushing" these limits, and the only thing i'm crushing is my mouse when when some knob calls 3 cold and cracks my rockets with his 72o. but i'm not bitter, since i just got home from a friendly tourney in which i got bounced on the bubble when my OE straight draw/flush draw/two overcards missed. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] it's nice to know that others think their incompetance can compete with mine. thanks guys! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

try not to think about your level of play. This assumes that your winrate, or bankroll, or anything else determine how good of a player you are. The simple fact is that these things are effects, not causes, and not particularly deterministic causes since they are all also affected by random chance accruing over several thousand incidences. The cause that you should focus on is your ability to recognize the correct play, and implement it. The ability to do that consistently is something that literally takes YEARS to develop. Even the guys who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing poker make mistakes, so the newer player who is playing in a much less defined environment is allowed to do so as well. Especially since those mistakes, and the ensuing lessons, will help pay your way to either higher limits, or cooler stuff.

I know, its not that easy. Ive found that strong drink and fast women are helpfull. Well, not so much the fast women. Just the strong drink.

peace

john nickle

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

Personally, I still have trouble with the swings. Part of me knows that I'm winning player, but another part of my brain wonders...why am I down 30 BB over the last 1,500 hands? It's silly, but it's hard to shake. I think much of this may come from the fact that I'm moving into my own apartment in a few weeks, and I plan on playing a lot of .5/1 to help with some expenses (help being the key word here - this is not a "going pro" post by any means [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ). I think any doubt I might have is getting magnified in my brain.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

Constant improvement is important to all of us, but we also want to make a lot of money. I am wondering if I will improve faster if I single or double table instead of four tabling. Any thoughts on this?

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
Constant improvement is important to all of us, but we also want to make a lot of money. I am wondering if I will improve faster if I single or double table instead of four tabling. Any thoughts on this?

[/ QUOTE ]

You're easily missing many opportunities to learn. I exclusively single-table, and I think it shows. (And I mean this constructively, and not in a bragging sort of way.)

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

Years ago some guy wrote a tongue-in-cheek management book called (I think) The Peter Principle. All about how organisations work. His basic thesis was that people get promoted to the level at which they can demonstrate their incompetence. (Below that level, they perform well, so they get a chance at one of the tougher jobs further up the organisation. This carries on until they find, shall we say, their level.)

I guess something similar happens in Poker. As soon as a player feels they're winning at one level, they move up and find things are a little harder.

I suck big-time, and I'm only playing at $0.25/$0.50. Then again, I only started playing a few months ago, and I know that I'm better now than when I started (mind you, that ain't saying an awful lot.)

I try to play a lot, and read a lot. Read a lot, play a lot.

I'd settle for 2.5BB/100.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Constant improvement is important to all of us, but we also want to make a lot of money. I am wondering if I will improve faster if I single or double table instead of four tabling. Any thoughts on this?

[/ QUOTE ]

You're easily missing many opportunities to learn. I exclusively single-table, and I think it shows. (And I mean this constructively, and not in a bragging sort of way.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I do the same and I've noticed that my game is reaching new levels of thinking. I've been making some great marginal plays based on my opponents. I think that if you want the quick bucks now, then multitable. But if your goal is to sit down at the 200/400 table then you have to play one table at a time.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

How often do you think your actions at the table affect the result of the hand?

Good and bad players think they can change the result of the hand much more often than I believe is possible. What am I saying?

Example 1

You flop quads and you check someone has a high PP they bet you raise and win a big pot.

You flop quads and you bet someone has a high pp they raise you reraise and win a big pot.

Your response to the situation made little difference the conditions you had no control over determined the result.

But if you flop quads and bet only to see everyone fold you feel YOU played poorly. When in truth what happened was noone had a hand THEY liked.

So we don't have much control over the result of the hand. What should we do? Learn to reconize the few times our actions will result in either a large profit or a large loss. And be sure to ALWAYS act acordingly. All winning players know how to do this so it becomes boring fast.

So you are not challenged and start to over think every situation. When in truth you are playing very well. The conditions you can not see or control are changing and dictating your experience.

I however have no idea what I am talking about as I don't consider myself a winning player I am just running good. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] And no I don't flop bet the quads it was an example!

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Constant improvement is important to all of us, but we also want to make a lot of money. I am wondering if I will improve faster if I single or double table instead of four tabling. Any thoughts on this?

[/ QUOTE ]

You're easily missing many opportunities to learn. I exclusively single-table, and I think it shows. (And I mean this constructively, and not in a bragging sort of way.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I do the same and I've noticed that my game is reaching new levels of thinking. I've been making some great marginal plays based on my opponents. I think that if you want the quick bucks now, then multitable. But if your goal is to sit down at the 200/400 table then you have to play one table at a time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you guys think this will cause any problems when you want to go back to multi-tabling or will the lessons translate well? I used to 3-table and I did pretty well winrate wise but I just felt I wasn't improving and I was making robotic plays that cost me money when it was obvious that I was doing something wrong. I'm down to two tables and I've noticed that I'm picking up more stuff but I still don't feel like I'm nailing reads or plays like i should.

My goal is to make a grip while learning so I can move up because of knowledge and bankroll, but I'm guessing its probably best to 1table until my learning catches up eh?

Thanks
 

...for this post. I don't check out the ML forum all that much, but came across this post and looked back at my stats and realized that in the last 3 months I've had 2 seperate runs where over 10K or more hands I've broke even, or won a marginal (way under my avg BB/100 rate) amount.

Just remember that it does happen to everyone, it's part of the game. Always keep your eyes on the big picture and remember that this is a long term game, and even 10k hands, which feels like a lot of hands, is not indicative of you as a player .

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

1 table is too slow for most people. I find I learn the most when 2-tabling. I find with GT+ I can focus on taking good postflop notes on my opponents, instead of having to worry about things like preflop looseness that is taken care of by GT+. I find taking notes on 20 players not much harder than tracking 10 players.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't really consider myself a winning player yet, and I don't think any number of hands will convince me of it. The only thing that will convince me I'm a truly winning player is a when I'm consistently beating 3/6 and above. While I don't think I'm a horrible player, I'm no where near where I want to be. In reality, I'm probably not doing too badly considering I've only been playing a few months, but I'm a perfectionist and I absolutely despise losing. I just don't have the confidence to shrug off losing sessions, because I don't know how much is bad play and how much is just getting sucked out on.

I also think reading the "bragging" posts is detrimental. When I read of players who have upswings lasting thousands of hands, or tens of thousands of hands I get irritated because I've never had something like that. I'll hit a nice upswing that lasts a day or two, then it's back to really having to grind out my gains. Even when I'm running well, I'm not really running well. Then, seeing people taking the .50/1.00 tables for 4, 5, 6+ BB/100 delivers another blow. I only took the stars .25/.50 for about 2.50-2.75BB/100 and I start to wonder whether I'm just kidding myself.

It's a long road to success, but I've come far enough to know the fruits will be worth the effort, so I continue to grind it out, think hands through, and hope that everyday I play, I become a little better.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is well put, and a great thread over-all. For me it comes at an ideal point in my development where I feel that I've corrected several big holes in my game, but feel like it's just exposed a bunch more.

No strategic content here, but I would consider adding it to the FAQ just as a reassurance to n00bs who are hitting a downswing and want to know if it's normal.

BUMP

-Salty

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

After 37,000 hands my BB/100 is 4.12. I play NL $25-$100 and I thought that I was not doing very well. I do not play limit.

I guess that beauty in poker is in the eye of the beholder.

cat923

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

hey-
just saw this today.
i laugh at your supposed streak. i am now down 10bb over 8500 hands. (-0.10 bb/100). i'm confident things will improve, however, when i actually have time to review my large sample of hands and think more about my game.

Re: Do any other winning players...
 

i'm now down about 50bb's total after 5.5K hands. i'm actually in the red with KK! the anytwo will do crew and the aceholes are killing me.