If it weren't for bad luck........

[Dr_Jeckyl_00]

Don't know if you were playing cash or tournament. Also, you did not indicate if you bet pre flop, so I assume you did not. My observation:
-sometimes you can do everything right and still lose, that's poker... but I think
-you should have bet aggressively pre flop w/ AA, maybe he would have never even have been in the hand to begin with
-you need to know your opponent, how does he play, what are his starting hand requirements, will he chase, tight, loose, agressive, passive, etc
-you know how to read the board, but were you reading it? He was on a straight draw and a back door flush draw
-if you were playing a tourney, you need to finish in the money, might not be worth the call with the draw possibilities
-what was his position? you said you were BB, right? Did you check, and then he went all-in. It is usually better to act aggressively first.

I understand your frustration, this happens to the best of us. It is often difficult to evaluate the board when you have such a good hand. You need to be more aggressive all the way, less deceptive. Deception only really works on quality players. Your opponent was not a quality player (i.e. all-in w/ nothing but a draw, unless he was short stacked.) Play your hands for value. Go back to the basics and see if you luck changes. Good luck!

[Sasnak]

[ QUOTE ]
As far as I'm concerned, luck is not really a part of poker. If you think luck has anything to do with your long term results in poker, the game will be very frustrating to you. I get great pleasure during each session from trying to play as correctly as I can. My win/loss results for any particular session are, strangely perhaps, not that relevent.

Sparks

[/ QUOTE ]

Very nice. People confuse luck one way or another with variance and bad play. I used to believe I was unlucky when I took beat after beat. I used to think my aces & sets never held up too.

A few weeks ago I took a 200BB slide in stride as I was playing well and replaying big losers in PT proved I was doing the right things.

Yesterday I played strong and won close to 50BB's in a couple of hours. Last night I played strongly and lost 30BB's in a couple of hours.

I only have < 15k hands at 1/2 but play as correctly as I can and I'm not perfect. LP's will catch cards. TAG's will push me off a pot. It pisses me off, but I've made the correct plays according to the odds and my reads, ie. GT+.

RckyMtn it isn't luck. It's variance and playing correctly. There are no guarantees. I'm currently happy with my 'overall' stats except for my winrate! LOL

But playing correctly will adjust itself over the longterm.

[CORed]

Some thoughts: Playing tight preflop is necessary but not sufficient for playing winning poker. This is especially true in no limit. You can play flawless preflop, but if your postflop play is bad, you will lose moeny.

You are not losing because of bad beats. The big hands you lose when you had a huge edge are memorable, and they cost you a big chuck at once, but it's the leaks in other areas that are causing you to be a net loser.

Consider starting with limit. The decisions are less complex, and the opposition is uaually softer. There are also a lot more good books available than there are for no limit. It is true that skilled players (which you probably are not, at this point) have a bigger edge at no limit, but for this reason, the really bad players bust out or give up a lot faster than at limit. At limit, the bad players will get enough winning sessions to keep them coming back, even though they are overall losers.

It is not impossible that you are losing solely because of bad luck, but it is most likely that it is actually bad play.

[Bad Lobster]

Since you say you've been losing consistently since you started, the obvious conclusion is that you just aren't good enough and you never were. Book knowledge and a good head for math don't teach you the game; they only prepare you to start learning.

Have you considered playing for micro stakes until you've established a winning record? You can play for as low as 2 cents/4 cents on Paradise Poker. It's clear that you need to gain more experience, so why not keep those educational, losing sessions cheap?

There's another benefit to playing for chump change, especially when you're first starting out and learning to cultivate a professional mindset. That is that you'll learn to think about the game and not the money. It's a lot easier to smile and accept the lesson learned when your opponent's miracle card only beats you out of 30 cents. Forcing yourself to earn the money back at the same stakes level will teach you patience and cure you of the impulse to throw more money at your losses.

[schroedy]

I think he recommended starting with the biggest losers.

I have Pokertracker and it pretty much stopped me from thinking that, for example, AJo is a good hand.

I am now losing the most money with double broadway suited type hands . . . especially when facing a raise.

After that, there will be further leaks to fix.

Another nice area for investigation is the BIG WIN column because I would venture to guess that most of our biggest pots, in virtually every case, come from the most horrible suckouts (by us) that you could ever imagine.

But I think it is damn good advice to subject his play to the most intense scrutiny. And to do that he has to start somewhere.

[cpk]

Being a bad tight-aggressive player is a very expensive proposition.

I've graduated from bad TA to "OK" TA, so I can speak from experience. Bad TAs don't lose money unless they are playing only against other TAs--their TA-ness keeps them from getting hurt too badly.

But they don't win much, either. Even in a ring full of better TAs, what usually happens is a slow, grinding away of the bankroll.

[Dov]

If you are looking for specific mistakes, I would start with checking how often you cold call a raise PF. I would bet that you are absolutely hemmoraging money from this single mistake.

The only way to go, though, is to post hands in the appropriate forums and try to understand the responses you get.

I'm glad my earlier post helped someone. Please understand that I'm not trying to be callous, but to present the situation as frankly as possible.

The negative consequences of gambling denial are serious and can snowball quickly.

BTW, to the OP, if you don't already do so, you may want to check out the psych forum. There is a lot of interesting discussion about how people cope with the swings in this game.

Best of luck to everyone.

Dov

[jimymat]

The first 6 months iI started out I look back and truely believe I was on a losimg streak.{ along with a lil newbie } Stick it out and study the game.