hitting a downswing when taking a shot at moving up

[mhlandry]

Oh man.

Back story: been playing poker for about 8 months. Started at .5/1, made it on up through to 2/4. Made a couple of grand.

Started losing discipline--trying to play other poker variants I didn't know how to play. Bankroll started dwindling, so I decided to rededicate myself.

Still had enough for 2/4 6max, so I went to absolute and was beating that over a few thousand hands. Hit a nasty downswing, realized I might not be good enough for absolute's 2/4 6max. Went down to party's 1/2 6max. Players were much worse than at absolute, but I still couldn't win.

At this point I'm 100% sure it's variance. But my mind is so messed up I try a few things. I move to full ring and limit my sessions to a fixed number of hands. This works well. I'm still running a little bad at the beginning but it doesn't matter any more bc of the fixed sessions. Moreover I start judging my sessions on whether I made good decisions as opposed to whether I won money.

Eventually the variance evens out and over 10k hands I'm beating this game at 2.4bb/100 (4-5 tabling no less) and starting to wonder why I'm wasting my time at 1/2. (Look, I know 10k isn't even remotely enough to gauge a winrate, but they say you know if you're beating a game after 10k...)

So I try to take a stab at 2/4 tonight and the wheels just fall off. The players are terrible. You could win money at this game just by playing the right hands preflop. But I've never had so many things go wrong at once and I don't know how to handle it. I need suggestions. I guess I have to move back down to 1/2, but is there anything else I can do?

I also realize that this is a ridiculously small sample size. But my mind is so messed up right now. I need some suggestions for getting it back on straight. Take a break? Is it that simple?

Ah well, here's the evidence:



Okay, so I don't know how to post an image. But basically I sorted pokertracker by biggest losing hands and the results are: KQo, KK, KQs, T9s, AQs, 99, AKs, A9s, TT, A9o, AKo, KJo, AJo, ATo. [censored], it's only 75bb. But in 600 hands! That's what it is. It's all this crap in that few hands. How do I deal with that?

[Weatherhead03]

Had the samething happen to me tonight. Moved up to 1/2 and got killed, not outplayed but I lost big. At one time one three of my four tables I had AA, KK and JJ that all lost big pots.

I guess it goes to say varience sucks ass.

[adsman]

I try to play without hope. I pretend that it's another person playing and I'm just watching the cards fall wondering what I would do.
I don't set stop limits on my sessions. You might not have a big loss but you probably won't have a big win either. I have noticed in the last few months that my losing sessions have rarely been over 20BB but my winning sessions have often been over that mark. If I start off bad I don't try to get even or finish the session a winner, I just try and limit the damage. 56% of my sessions are winning ones. I think that's pretty good. 44% of the time when I sit down to play I lose. I don't care. When I'm finished I'm done. If I lose ten sessions in a row I don't start tinkering with my game. It happens. I don't start jumping around levels hoping to hit on a winning formula. I'm playing at a level because I'm bankrolled for that level and I consider myself a winning player at that level.
Unclutter your mind. Work out where you are and where you need to be. Go there. Play calm poker. Be detached from results. Make good decisions.

[JackThree]

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I pretend that it's another person playing and I'm just watching the cards fall wondering what I would do.

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i love you [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[mhlandry]

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I don't set stop limits on my sessions

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Neither do I. I set a fixed number of hands to play and then play them.

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I don't start jumping around levels hoping to hit on a winning formula.

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Neither do I. I was a winner at every level before I moved up. The only questionable move I made was to absolute's 2/4 6max. The reason I'm moving around levels recently is to try to gain my confidence back. Not to try to hit some 'formula'.

Just wanted to clarify that. I may have problems but those two aren't among them.

[adsman]

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I don't set stop limits on my sessions

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Neither do I. I set a fixed number of hands to play and then play them.

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That's a stop limit. Lets say for arguments sake that your stop limit is 200 hands. You reach that number and you're up 15BB, two major fish are now sitting directly to your right and you've got two major tight-wads on your left. By your reasoning, you now have to stand up and leave.

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I don't start jumping around levels hoping to hit on a winning formula.

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Neither do I. I was a winner at every level before I moved up. The only questionable move I made was to absolute's 2/4 6max. The reason I'm moving around levels recently is to try to gain my confidence back. Not to try to hit some 'formula'.

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Okay, I'll rephrase it. I don't jump around levels trying to get my confidence back. How is that going to work? Are you hoping to land blindly down at a table at some level and have a winning session? You want to get your confidence back? Drop down and grind out 5000 hands and see how you're going. Hell, drop down two levels. The money isn't the problem, right? It's getting your confidence back to play good poker.

[silvershade]

This happened to me in reverse recently, started at .5/1 and worked my way up to 2/4, then I dipped into the roll for a new monitor as I was getting headaches with old one. This forced me to drop to 1/2 where i immediately started to get killed bad beat after bad beat, I lost half of my remaining roll. I took a couple weeks off as i was pretty sure my play was shot from fear at this point. I took a long look at my play before coming back and starting with .5/1 with a slightly different game, a little tighter pre-flop ( 15%vpip as opposed to my old 20% ) and became a lot more aggressive. First day i got killed for the first couple of hours, didnt matter what I had the other guy would hit his miracle river, but I managed to hold it together and after another 4 hours or so I finished well up on the day.

Now I'm playing .5/1 again and looking at a good bit of work to get back where I was..... but I'm certain that I'm a tougher player now following the long look I took over those 2 weeks without play. I actually find myself grateful that it happened when it did rather than when I'd progressed further up the levels.

[mhlandry]

First of all, there's always plenty of good Party 2/4 tables. Using your line of reasoning I would never be able to leave a table until some random set of cosmic events occurred and there was a less than stellar 2/4 table on party. In addition, I've only borrowed this 'stop-loss' technique from posters in different forums on this site (Psychology, HUSH).

Secondly, perhaps I didn't make this clear in the OP, but I did drop down two levels. Went back to .5/1, realized how much of a joke that was. Then went to 1/2, realized how much of a joke that was, and still 'grinded out' 10k hands.

[Guruman]

[ QUOTE ]
So I try to take a stab at 2/4 tonight and the wheels just fall off. The players are terrible. You could win money at this game just by playing the right hands preflop. But I've never had so many things go wrong at once and I don't know how to handle it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's a fun way to take a shot:
go to a crypto site and get to clearing thier monthly $90 bonus at the 1/2 £ tables. This translates to somewhere between 1/2 and 2/4, but the numbers look the same. Also, there tend to be bad european players there. Good times. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[POKhER]

If it makes you feel better, i took a shot at 1/2last night. Dropped 70$ (35BB).

if you think you can chrush it, stick to it and adjust slightly providing you have the BR.