My losing streak wins!!

[dankhank]

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Ag-total - 2.5

I'm raising much less these days trying to passivefy my play and keep myself tied to fewer pots:


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just wanted to point out one key error in your thinking (imo), which is that the point of passive play in limit is to get yourself tied to more pots rather than less. for example, if you're considering either raising or calling on the turn in position: if you raise you give your opponent a chance to 3-bet and force you to fold before the showdown, where if you just call, the two bets that could've been used to raise him, will get you all the way to the end.

i can see where in a low limit full ring game 'passify my play' can mean getting tied to fewer pots in the sense of, "well i could either raise my top pair bad kicker on the flop in this five-way hand and commit majorly to it, or i could play passively so i can get away from the pot easy on the turn if i don't improve." however you said you are playing 6-max games where there is a lot of heads-up action, in which case i think passive play is equated with being in more pots rather than less, postflop.

you may be using the term 'passify' differently than this scenario, but when i run into what i consider large flaws in logical deduction re: limit holdem, in conjunction with a 1000bb downswing post, i wonder if some of the poster's fundamental theories are perhaps flawed. i don't play much shorthanded, but 2.5 aggresion seems a bit high given you haven't been holding many winners.

i think it would help to post hands and respond to hands on the forums, but sometimes particular lines aren't the problem. maybe you should be rethinking your overall gameplan while in the midst of playing, too. as your psychological state seems to be one of your strengths, it seems like your mind should be clear for this type of cerebral investigation.

[MicroBob]

very nice post.

thanks.

change your name.

Edit: err... your poker room name =P

[wowacedude]

i might we be way out here, but i someone one pointing out that you should play more hands, don't.
and in the 2/4 -> 5/10 i dont think those agg numbers are that bad, it's a kinda passive game and i think you should be a lot of value betting.

my 2 dollars.

i also agree that a break sounds like a good idea.

good luck.

Wow. That is frightening. And commendable also that you have managed to stick with it. I know that whenever I hit a big slide I find it progressively difficult, emotionally, to haul myself back to the computer and tell myself it is all going to be okay in the end if i just plug on through.

Regarding the stats you posted, the only thing that stands out is the big blind. At (.30) you are getting absolutely murdered, and although I haven't done the math, I would say that a big proportion of these losses could be attributed to just this fact. If blind play is not your strong point (and these steal/ defence situations are often difficult when you are running low on confidence as they tend to require the negotiation of marginal situations) you should also not play short for a while either, where they obviously come up with greater frequency.

Really hope it works out for you and you manage to pull out the other side.

[climber]

I realize this likely isn't what you are looking for in this thread and I'm not sure if strategy is allowed in BBV or not but here goes.

OK you recognize your BB is horrible--thats important.
Read some Peter_rus stuff (Nov 04- Mar 05 if I had to guess)to correct that and ditch the phrase "blind battle" from your vocab. If anything I think you are slightly too aggro postflop and the combination of not playing enough hands from the BB and thinking of each one as a "battle" is gonna just lead to major spewage as you have experienced.

"sometimes its tight/aggressive to check call"
--quote from the archives (Tommy Angelo maybe?)

However I think the big problem with your game lies in your position stats. I'm not gonna spell it out for you too much but here is a link with some stats of some very good players and if you look at the differences betwen your position stats (VP$IP and PFR) I think a lot of what you are doing wrong should be pretty apparent.

Best of luck.

Play 1c-2c with me on UB.

Sit in on the 5c-10c no max table with $500.

[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.

[Escape]

Posts: 13314 and still losing... damn sucks to be you.

[bobbyi]

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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 not be to hope to win the lottery in a MTT and make everything right.
...If you are playing on a site that does not automatically differentiate 6-max sessions in PT, each day after you are done playing, you should tag the session by hand

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FMP.