Downswings and bad play

Over the last 6 months I've gone up and down.
I have been reading GSTH and SSHM more than once(GSTH once actually.

Now, after each time I start to read, I feel more confident and play better over all. I tend to win money. Over time I start to play worse, and lose money. I feel very "scared". I do like to think I play the same, but whenever I have a downswing for over a week, I go back to the books. Shortly after I am full of confidens, and start to win again.

Guess what I'm saying is, it's too easy to forget what I've learned and start to make up my own rules.

Just a reflection of mine [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I just started playing online this summer. I'll definitely agree with you that reading good books improves your game and your confidence. This forum and some of the posters(big kudos to sheridancat and student especially) are a huge help as well.

[TaoTe]

I tried to think of a response to the OP and all I could come up with was this.

[Pov]

Do you think you're really *understanding* the concepts in SSHE or are you just temporarily memorizing them?

If you really focus on understanding not just the what, but also the why of the various plays, it should help you to win even more by making up your own rules to fit the game you're in, but they'll be the winning rules instead of leading you astray.

I know quite a few players who may know the right play in a certain spot, but they can't tell me why it's the correct play. They'll make this same play in a similar spot even when the play is no longer correct because they don't know why they're doing it. You may be falling prey to this to some extent.

Also, variance is tough to really get used to. Some of the plays in SSHE will only work a small percentage of the time, but they're so beneficial it is still worth doing them. When normal variance leads to the play not working for an extended period of time, the human mind starts to associate a bad result with the play and you'll have more and more difficulty really doing it. The only way to overcome this is to *know* it is the correct play and why so you can overrule this instinct even months and years from now.

[TaoTe]

Great post. Results driven poker is often a short term loss, long term gain. I've only read SSHE twice and I fully agree that most players who read through it wouldn't understand the concepts (the whys) behind the actions. I rarely play LHE now because I've been focusing a lot of attention on NL and tourney play, doing what you suggest with SSHE with HOH.

One of the reasons I have to read SSHE more than once is because it's impossible (for me) to fully understand every aspect of the game just reading it one time. I belive this is normal if you're new to poker.

So I read, play better, forget some aspects and start to play worse, ending up making my own rules to compensate for the losses. Something like that anyway.

I can't say I understand everything. But I do understand more for every time I re-read SSHE. I guess I am making progress [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Hoss1193]

Excellent observation. My first time through SSHE was much as you describe...I picked up quite a bit, and my game improved, but I was making many plays which didn't quite fit.

To expand on the theme of associating bad results with a given play... One of the SSHE concepts that was quite new to me is the idea of limping small PPs in any position, including cold-calling pre-flop raises. I thought that was rather odd, but I understood the reasoning, so I have been doing it consistently over last 20k hands online.

With several of the PP below 88, however, I'm losing with them after 20k hands. I felt like I was trapped for 2 bets pre-flop way too often by a raise behind me after limping in EP, or cold-calling (and sometimes getting sucked into a 3- or 4-bet pot), only to see a flop where I didn't hit my set. I really started to doubt the effectiveness of that SSHE recommendation, and considered going back to only limping in middle or late position, and not cold-calling with them at all.

20k hands is not totally insignificant, but not a huge sample either, so I also thought maybe I just wasn't hitting sets or better at the expected rate.

A closer look at PT DID reveal some things...first of all, I was hitting the set (or better) about as often as would be predicted. The second interesting thing: there were many hands where I didn't hit a set on the flop, but ALSO didn't fold until the turn or river. In cases where I flopped 2 pair (one in hand, one on board), or my PP happened to be second pair, I would bet out, or call, or otherwise find a reason to stay on past the flop. And of course finding myself repeatedly schwacked by top pair or better 2 pair. My realization was that while sometimes plays like these might be appropriate, I was making such plays indiscriminately (like, betting out against 4-5 players, including the pre-flop raiser yet to act behind me), and way too often.

So...a couple of lessons learned here are a) yes, negative results CAN get you doubting the effectiveness of a solid play, b) sometimes the leak you THINK you have doesn't exist, and your lousy results are in fact the result of an unrecognized but related leak, and c) PT is far more useful when you take the time to delve into the nitnoid data on how specific hands were played, rather than when just focusing on the "macro-stats" such as VP$IP, PFR%, etc.

For the OP, what you're describing is natural...read, study, apply, re-read, study, adjust, etc is the only way to do it. SSHE is far to complex not to require many indepth re-visits before internalizing the concepts and making them work for you. I've read SSHE at least 5 times over past 6 mo, and am only now really grounding my game in its precepts wholly effectively.

Sorry for long-winded post.

[Webster]

I have over 100,000 hands in online play and am about a 2.23BB/100 player in 1/2 to 3/6 and over that time I have had several 200Big Bet down swings.

During those swings I SWEAR my play is the same. However, once I step away from the game for a week and either learn a new game or take a vacation or whatever, I see that there is something that has changed.

Winning breeds losing, once you win a few hands by playing badly you start to think that it's correct. Dumb aggression, tricky plays and so forth all of a sudden are not working and you think it's the cards, not YOU!

I just get back to the basics, play ABC poker and it all comes back . . . .sooner or later

Grinderswarehouse - NOT just another BLOG

[Student]

It's perfectly natural for one to read a book and understand only those aspects of it that our experiences will permit! Keep doing what you're doing, and one day you'll be teaching us all how to play poker!

Dave

[Student]

Excellent post!

We must have been thinking alike, because I've just posted a new thread to our Beginner's Forum, that was written perhaps just as you were writing your post. We even used the same word "internalize," so we were in harmony totally!

Dave