Beginner on a downswing

OK - clearly I am not an expert, but I definitely feel that my downswing is more a product of bad cards than it is bad play. It is currently around 75BB or so - I would ascribe perhaps 25BB to beginner play, but the rest is pure variance.

This is a real challenge - has anyone else experienced anything like this right when they started out?

I am finding myself getting A LOT of marginal pre-flop hands, hitting a reasonably favorable flop and then crashing and burning on the turn and river - or I will get something like JJ and raise then reraise, only to find an A and a K on the flop.

I understand if you are already well established that you can handle the downswing by focusing on your plays and by remembering that you are a good player - but what if you can't fall back on those? What do you suggest?

[Marlow]

I don't know the exact number, but I think the flop brings an overcard to your pair like 60% of the time. In any case, it's a LOT of the time.

Poker's brutal to learn because you can't really learn from your results. So it's difficult to know whether it's bad play or bad cards. Chances are, it's both. As you cards get bad, so does your play. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, 75BB isn't all that bad. It's routine for good limit players (I assume limit... because in NL we usually express it in buyins) to lose 100BB+ in a normal downswing. Don't get panicy.

The other thing if you are new: DON'T play a lot of marginal pre-flop hands. At the small and micro-limits, the best thing you can do is play a straightforward ABC tight/aggressive game. I would play no more than 20% of your starting hands. Then as you get better, you can loosen up.

Don't go to war with a squirt gun.

Marlow

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know the exact number, but I think the flop brings an overcard to your pair like 60% of the time. In any case, it's a LOT of the time.

Poker's brutal to learn because you can't really learn from your results. So it's difficult to know whether it's bad play or bad cards. Chances are, it's both. As you cards get bad, so does your play. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, 75BB isn't all that bad. It's routine for good limit players (I assume limit... because in NL we usually express it in buyins) to lose 100BB+ in a normal downswing. Don't get panicy.

The other thing if you are new: DON'T play a lot of marginal pre-flop hands. At the small and micro-limits, the best thing you can do is play a straightforward ABC tight/aggressive game. I would play no more than 20% of your starting hands. Then as you get better, you can loosen up.

Don't go to war with a squirt gun.

Marlow

[/ QUOTE ]

Good advice - I have been using the starting hand charts from SSHE - I was using the tight hand selection, but then I switched to the loose one - now I have gone back to the tight one.

Thanks for the advice.

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
Good advice - I have been using the starting hand charts from SSHE - I was using the tight hand selection, but then I switched to the loose one - now I have gone back to the tight one.


[/ QUOTE ]

Why not just learn to play even tighter than the 'tight' hand selection until you really know for sure you can play those hands well? Then expand your hands as you get better and more comfortable in knowing how to analyze your own play during a session.

b

[bernie]

Yes. Many have. I think it's better to go through something like this early on.

[ QUOTE ]
I understand if you are already well established that you can handle the downswing by focusing on your plays and by remembering that you are a good player - but what if you can't fall back on those? What do you suggest?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most focus on their plays to make sure they are playing good. Not to remember they are good players since they are also doing this when they are on an upswing.

If you can't fall back on focusing on your play, I'd say keep responding to hand posts until you're conditioned enough to analyze your own hand quickly soon after it happens to find out if you're playing well during a session.

b

I think The Big Plummet™ is an important part of any beginner's poker journey. It takes you from the unconscious-incompetence phase to the conscious-incompetence phase, which is very important.

As a recent beginner, I certainly had mine: first real-money poker I ever played was a $5+1 buy-in tourney on UB, which to my utter shock, I won to the tune of $300. At that moment I pledged to use that as a bankroll, and never to play poker with my own money. Started playing $.50-$1 limit, and quickly won another $100 before plunging down to...$32.

Suddenly reading a couple of books seemed much more important. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Got SSHE and WLLHE, and read each twice, then started playing $.05-$.10. Doubled my BR by winning $35 in a freeroll PP tourney, cashed in a bunch of $5 SNGs, and within a month got back up to $350.

As of today I'm sitting at almost $500 ($600 soon after I clear my Empire bonus) and have dabbled in $1-2, ready to move up completely in a month or so. I'm also re-reading SSHE for the third time. The coolest part is that the downswing took ego almost completely out of the equation for me - when I'm doing poorly I never blame it on LAG suckouts or evil sharks anymore. I still make mistakes, and will continue to learn from them.

So in answer to the question, I handle a downswing by using it as an opportunity to fix my leaks. If you just sit back and wait for a turnaround, your ego may be getting in the way of a valuable learning experience. Find your errors and fix them.

I also think a lot of people aren't nearly as good as they think (or say) they are, and quite frankly, I hope it stays that way, because when I finally get good, their hubris will be my profit. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ewashingtons]

I'd say the best thing to do when in the midst of a big downswing is to take a break from playing to take some time to read (or reread) a book on poker. It serves me as a sort of "reset" so that I erase any sort of mini-tilt I may be on from losing. Once I've read the book then I allow myself to go back to playing. Then, as long as things are going well, I just continue to read a little each day. This system has kept me out of falling into a rut and allows me to move up levels as I think I'm ready.

Thanks again for the advice. This is exactly what I did and it has worked.

Yes, I managed to stop the bleeding and over my last 100 hands or so, I won 10BB - but that is not the real victory.

What is more significant is that I am avoiding marginal situations. Sometimes it hurts to fold that QJo or A9s in early position - or the A9x and T8s in late position - but I know that unless I hit a miracle flop, those hands are likely going to cause some difficult situations post-flop.

Instead, now that I am sticking to playing premium holdings, I find that post-flop, my decisions are MUCH easier. I tend to either make my hand, make a strong draw or face an easy fold. Occasionally I still face some difficult decisions, but because they are more rare, I am able to focus my attention on them more easily.

I am sticking right now with the SSHE preflop selection for tight games - and sometimes actually tightening up a little from that - and focusing my energies on improving my postflop play.

[Pocket Trips]

Just take the time to honestly analyze your own play... one thing i try to do is look over my hand histories of my orevious session before I start playing the next day... I find that if I try to analyze a session as soon as I finish I am too caught in "the heat of battle" to be objective

If you do this and are completely honest about your play, you will notice a lot more mistakes than you are now.. the tough part is correcting them but you can't do that till you notice them...

Another big mistake beginnners make is playing too long without a break...mental fatigue sets in quicker than most people realize..

You start making small mistakes here for a SB here and a BB there but they quickly add up and can often be the difference between a winning and losing session.

Take a break every 4 hours or so for about a 1/2 hour and completely get your mind off poker.. it has done wonders for my game since I started doing it.

I actually usually only play an hour at a time - the price of marriage and gainful employment.

I had another good session today - +20BB in about an hour - aided by some good cards, but if I had played this session 2 days ago, it probably would have been +10BB.

It truly is a transformative experience to watch your play improve - to move from being the sort of player who REALLY WANTS to play QJo to the sort of player who sees that for what it is and gladly throws it away in early position.