Do any other winning players...

[BigDonkey]

...feel like very mediocre players? After 35K hands at Party .5/1 and 1/2 (and probably 10K at other sites, before i had PT, with similar results) i'm up 2.5bb/100. I credit this to table selection and maximizing my winners. The rest of my game, however, feels just awful. I give up too early on marginal situations and hang around too long when i'm behind. I just feel like my game is far from solid. I have no real point, i guess, i was just wondering if anyone else is/was in the same situation and what you're doing/did to strenghten your play.

[tiltaholic]

yes.
something like 60 k hands.
i credit my success to pocket aces (30% of my winnings) and the button (40% of my winnings) and most importantly, this forum.

personally, i'm taking a break from playing a ton of daily hands and am combing the archives and re-reading some books. i'm also not going to shoot for 2/4 for a little while until i feel more confident. see my recent post "me first pot of gold" and the link to "How did you become a better player".

[hate]

I don't know about other players, but without AA,KK, and QQ I'd be a break-even player. Just because AA is 30% of your winnings doesn't mean you're a poor player. Marginal situations are exactly that. Marginal. If you play them well, they will pay off infrequently. The fact that they don't come in often or they don't show huge profits over the long run doesn't necessarily mean you're playing them incorrectly.

[bozlax]

One, who are you comparing yourself to? You're probably not going to win a WSOP bracelet any time soon (although I'd say that your success at PP .5/1 or 1/2 isn't a very good indicator of that), but maintaining 2.5BB/100 over 35K+ hands, I'd say you're doing well. Could you be doing better? Maybe, but not by any measure that we use around these parts

Two, I think we all feel this way from time to time, especially after a series of "bad" beats. I usually go back and look over the hands that I just lost/let go of, and check to see if I _really_ played them that badly. The usual outcome of this is that I find that my play on the hand was loose (in an absolute sense), but it was fine because of the table conditions, i.e. taking pocket 10s to the river on a board of J9733 at a LP table and getting beaten by the SB with T8o who didn't raise me once, but called my flop raise of his bet-out.

So, my advice to you is to make as OBJECTIVE an assessment as you can of some of your questionable hands. For me, for instance, something I've discovered is that I usually overplay overcards, and that my high pairs soemtimes get beat by crazy-ass hands, but that I feel that I'm only playing "badly" in the first case.

[btspider]

2.5 is more than fine.. you'll eventually go 10K hands nearly break even or possibly worse.

[shadow29]

I don't feel like a mediocre player, but the more I learn about poker the more I realise that I know nothing about poker.

I am sure that all the regulars will agree too.

[tiltaholic]

[ QUOTE ]
2.5 is more than fine.. you'll eventually go 10K hands nearly break even or possibly worse.

[/ QUOTE ]

yes. i think this type of sustained breakeven run is causing me doubts.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't feel like a mediocre player, but the more I learn about poker the more I realise that I know nothing about poker.

I am sure that all the regulars will agree too.


[/ QUOTE ]

and yes.
for sure.

[Entity]

I feel like a marginal player all the time. I think it's part of the humbling nature of the game. I usually feel good, but I know that there are a lot of decisions I make that are really marginal, and I'm not sure how far from bad they are. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

For a good example of this, read my thread called "How Bad?" in the shorthanded forum right now.

Rob

[afk]

I mostly feel marginal, which I think is a good thing. Though I go through phases ranging from "What the hell am I doing wasting my time and money like this?" to "I'm the bee's knees when it comes to poker players.". I'm in the latter now, but I'm currently coming back down to marginal.

[detruncate]

I often feel like a mediocre player, especially by 2+2 standards. I'm also quite happy with the fact that I'm a winning player over a significant number of hands. I may not be as good as I'd like, but I'm getting paid to improve.