Advice please!!!!

[Saul Hudson]

Just been playing some sit and go's at betfair, and i must admit i was shite, not been playing poker for a few weeks/months and i feel i am right out of form, i mainly play torny's, 10 man, small buy in's and i used to feel in charge of alot of tornys and used to expect to finish in the money, now im lucky if i finish in the top 5 :wall Just really want some advce on how to make poker appealing to me again and how to get back to my old form, i know you will all say PRACTISE!!!, but there must be something else that will help rekindle the poker flame for me, because i used to really enjoy it and was ok considering i have been into it for about a year tops. Any advice welcome. Thanks Saul

[Jezza]

Re: Advice please!!!! Hi Saul, You must remember even the best players in the world go through horrible losing streaks every so often.....it's one of the facets of the game thats unavoidable. What you have to do when you are having one (like you are now) is analyze it. Why are you being knocked out early? Are you having a lot of bad beats? If this is the case then there is nothing you can do about it and it happens to everyone - you must be honest with yourself here tho and not blame bad play as a "bad beat" - look at where all the chips went in the pot and if you were favourite to win at that point in time and you lost then you suffered a bad beat - If you raised 15 chips with AA and then called all in for a 1000 on a flop of 992 to be beaten by 910 this is not a bad beat!! You could also be suffering a lot of cold decks against you? This is where you end up in a situation that is unavoidable in the sense you are going to lose your entire stack no matter what happens. Like for example if you held 99 and your opponent 1010 and the flop was 1092 - there is noone that wouldnt commit all in on that flop. If this is the case then you just must accept the fact you have been unlucky and that cold decks will happen just as many times in your favour as they will against you and wait for your luck to change. If you look at your past losses and decide that you have not been the victim of bad beats or cold decks you have to analayze your play and see where you went wrong. Are you calling too much with weaker hands when you should be folding and not paying your opponents off? Are you not playing your good hands aggressively enough to get paid well on them? Are you not making your opponents pay for draws? Are you yourself chasing draws when you dont have the pot/implied odds to do so? Are you bluffing too much - or being bluffed too much? If you work out where you are going wrong you can fix it and then hopefully your results will change ;) Jez