[bobbyi]

Sorry to hear about this, Bob. Here are a couple comments in response to your post and the others in the thread:

Playing more hands: I would not go nuts trying to play more hands. If you are not showing a profit playing the number of hands that you are, adding more marginal hands is almost never the answer. However, there probably are some spots where you are giving up a little bit too much right now by folding. In particular, your folded BB to steal % is quite high and in addition, you are getting killed in the BB with a -.3 BB/100. Your sample size isn't large enough here to be that confident in win rates from specific position, so this could just be poor luck, but combined with your high fBBts, it is very likely that you are leaving money on the table by giving up your blind so easily. There are a lot of hands that are proftiable getting better than 3:1 to look at a flop plus implieds against an opponent who could have almost anything. Accepting a .5 BB loss is often a substantial mistake.

Aggression Factor: I've always had a high AF (at least as high as yours), so I'm not going to join the bandwagon here saying you are too aggressive. If you had both a high AF and a low WtSD, I'd be worried that you give up too often, but that isn't the case, so you're probably okay here.

Switching games: I find this helpful when I need to reexamine by thinking and my game. It helps to shake things up and think about poker in a new setting and it provides a sort of mental reset that can help with the downswing mindset. Playing small stakes NL or SnG's is a nice idea. I wouldn't go with the short stack NL strategy unless you are very inexperienced at NL. If you have some experience with it, I would fire up a couple tables of $50NL and buy in for the max. (Note: bobbyi is a lifetime loser at online $50 NL [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]).

I would focus on games where you can make a consistent profit like NL and single-table SnGs. Playing MTTs with huge player pools is fun and there's nothing wrong with doing some of that on the side, but your plan for rebuilding should be to hope to win the lottery in a MTT and make everything right.

Playing less tables: Yes! Play less tables. You are making at least some bad decisions at the table, so you need to work on your poker thinking and reasoning. Playing a new game (above) can be helpful since it puts you in new situations that force you to really think rather than playing by habit (this is why I say not to remove most of the thinking from NL by doing the shorstack thing). Playing less tables at limit and focusing on each decision can do the same thing. That is hugely helpful both for improving your game and regaining your confidence. I think this is a much better idea that playing like a robot in smaller games. Dropping down in limits some may be good, but not so much that you are wasting your time and doing nothing to rebuild your confidence about playing in real games. Exactly where to pay is dependent on you and how you feel about various limits, but sticking to 2/4 for a while might be good.

If it's available to you, I would strongly recommend playing a few sessions live (maybe once a week for a while). That is the ultimate setting for being able to think about every decision and really get to know your oppponents and try to adjust to them. This can be really helpful for rebuilding your thinking about confidence. Find a soft lower limit game where the opponents are terrible and you find it fun to play.

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play full tables and just play weak-tight fit-or-fold poker to lessen the swings (which I've been doing...but the losing continues on and on and on)
-- don't get crazy over blind battles


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This quote worries me a bit. The reason that people run into downswings worse than they should statistically is that once they run a little bit bad, they freak out and start chaging everything about their game that was right and completely forget how to play. Becoming "weak-tight" is not the answer. Critically analyzing every decision and trying to find what you are doing wrong is the only way. Play less tables and really focus. Don't give up your blinds more easily or start folding decent hands. Throwing away money isn't the way to deal with a downswing.

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It's difficult to seperate out the 6-max stats from the full-table stats at UB

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Use "database maintenance and options" in PT and pick 6-max sessions. You can label any session as being 6max. If you are playing on a site that automatically differentiate 6-max sessions in PT, each day after you are done playing, you should tag the session by hand so that you can accurate stats. Without having done this, you can get the stats you are looking for by filtering by # of players (of course, this will include shorthanded hands at 10-max tables, which you may or may not want).

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Post in strategy forums more:

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I've never been crazy about the phrase "strategy forums" since the majority of dicussion on most of them is tactics, but regardless, you definitely need to post more analysis and hands. It's a shame that this is only happening in reaction to a downswing. I have always wondered my one of the most level-headed and articulate posters spends so much time chatting in the zoo and so little making posts to try to improve his game. I think some of your current troubles could have been avoided if you focussed more time on being a strategy poster. I hope that whenever you start running good again, you don't take that to mean that you no longer need to worry about posting and responding to hands.