Trust me fold Aces

[Bart(UK)]

After weeks of bad beats and suckouts in tournaments and satellites, switched to cash game for last few days for a change. Don't think I've even had a single up session. Todays extremely brief session sums up what is a complete joke, only 135 hands played with 5 badbeat/suckouts and not a single one won. Already given up, pointless. The only hands "won" were steals with complete crap. Think I'm done with poker full stop. Will in future play forum games only as they're worth the buyin in banter alone, everything else is a just a complete joke. [ATTACH]4992[/ATTACH]

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces No words of comfort please, don't need sympathy, just want the years of trying to improve my own game to have not been a complete waste of time.

[luckboxnemo]

Re: Trust me fold Aces The trouble is you cant inprove your game as i see it its more the bad players getting there and we need more of these bad players to keep playing this style imo i dont play cash unless i need to earn points to qualify for something as i see it pointless you can only win the amount your stack is x2 ie double up so stick to mtt bart and gl

[Danshot]

Re: Trust me fold Aces I know I sometimes feel like that too and I know my posts probably look like want sympathy but its just frustration that we (forum) players are players that have put in effort to play a winning formula of poker that doesn't always seem to pay dividends. I have noticed many players on the forum becoming frustrated and lost their enthusiasm to play , maybe we are on our collectively on a rocky patch. With cash games I have always struggled when switching over because I normally switch when looking to catch a break and then run worse I swear. I know didn't want sympathy but coming from someone who gets emotional and stressed fairly easily at the poker tables , I know that you will win out eventually though maybe not as quick as we each expect of our own expectations. So chin up and Bink it like Bart can:ok

[glceud]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Well that's about as ugly a 15 minutes as you get. Very hard for us small stakes grinders these days with the lack of added value about. Gone are the days when you would multitable and struggle to keep up with the chat box too. Pity I can't afford to lose money or I would only play PL games too:\

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Thx guys, knowing it's not just me is actually a reassurance although it's ofc sad that it's happening to us all. I think the only people to get upset and frustrated are the ones totally committed to learning & improving their game Dan, so don't ever worry about getting emotional or frustrated imo. ;) I'm just lost for what to do tbh. If it was just those 2 hands, just that session, just the 1 day, just the 1 month, just the 1 fecking year I'd actually understand. Coming from a Strategy based community before and a statistics background career-wise trust me I appreciate that you need many hundred of '000s of hands to make an informed acurate judgement. If you flip a coin enough times you will find a run of 20 or more heads in a row etc etc. But can I really be that gifted in always entering a game exactly at the moment those 20 heads in a row hit? It's not just the aces either, tried to find the other suckouts from the same short session but had closed down and can't be arsed to search loads of hh files tbh. Don't get me wrong I played some poorly (cash games is by my own admission my worse variant) I let some get there (similiar to one of the aces above) and I played some suited 1 gappers poorly, but what do you do? > Could raise bigger pre flop (to 40 or more) and you'll get no action when holding monsters & it will cost you a lot more when holding weak as you'll always be 3bet rather than flatted. > Raising to 30 seems to me to be optimal (which goes against what i was taught), good balance between getting action but thining out the field and cheap to get away from if meet resistence. > Raising less or limping has never really been an option for me tbh. Afterall what are you looking to achieve? It just asks for trouble and allows others to catch obscure hidden 2p+. Even if you hit the 1 in 7 set, often worthless due to set over set, straight or flush draws. Post Flop bluffing or preferably semi-bluffing represents an opportunity, but if you're holding a monster do you play out fast and get no value or give them some rope like I did with one of those aces only to get constantly caught by 1 & 2 outers? And tournaments can be 10x times worse due the hours put into them looking for the odd opening. Ahhh genuinely don't know anymore but hey ho it's good to rant for a change and get it out of my system. At this point I just want to clarify a couple of points that all the regs here in PL already know, but casual onlookers wont: * I don't play poker for money, but rather for the challenge of improving myself and the social side first & foremost. I'm not worried about the odd $5 here and there as long as I learn something and I genuinely don't know what I can learn from those hands or a session like that? * I fully appreciate that I have been far far more fortunate in recent years than most and so I'm not really in any position to moan. The guilt at winning big when friends much more deserving than myself haven't (yet, but they will!) will always continue to haunt me. * However winning one big tournament and suddenly being rolled for much bigger games overnight doesn't make them a better player (although it seemed to work for Cody, Lewis etc ;) ). I've happily stayed on micro stakes to better learn the game. Will throw a couple of questions out there? Is Omaha any less frustrating? I kind of get the impression that it's more of a drawing game so are suckouts expected and accepted more than in Holdem? Do people enjoy playing variants more often? Different concept, much the same result I suppose?

[south_eastern_ram]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Think people need to accept that unless you work your b*llocks off and practically dediate your life to the game, you're not going to win any significant amount playing online. Play live, the fields are soo much softer, obviously there's down sides, but low stakes live cash etc is just p*ss poor. For a casual player Bart you've probably reached the very top, copped a score most of us will never reach in our life. This thread alone says to me that you cant handle the swings and beats, the mental side of the game might be something to work on. To be successful, generally, you just cant bemoan luck and b*tch about beats. You have to accept it, you're nothing special, every one of us out there has had bad sessions. The bottom line is, if you're good enough, you will win in the long run. If you're not winning, then you're not working hard enough on your game. The people at the top have dedicated their lives to poker. I'm saying this from someone who's been playing more seriously since about last September, grinding mtts online since about the start of this year. I feel like I've learnt f*ck loads, and put a lot of work in, what have I achieved? I've got 19k in prizes at about -1% roi after about 1500 games, which is f*ck all volume compared to a lot of people. I dedicate hours and hours a day to poker, and I know I'm not working hard enough, that's how hard it is. If you're serious about improving, volume and hard work away from the tables. The information is out there, it's too difficult for 99% of poker players, but it's your choice.

[glceud]

Re: Trust me fold Aces

Is Omaha any less frustrating

:lol:lol:lol

[Rivrd]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Poker can be very frustrating at the best of times Bart, and when you are on a down streak it seems that every fkr is hitting there 1 / 2 outer, when i was grinding my mtts it was just a daily occurrence for me so became a little oblivious to the suck outs and i am sure that ooblio will agree with me you just take it as it comes. In the long run and larger volume of games you will come out the right end of it. By the way Omaha you will be pulling your hair out :lol:lol

[SteveO]

Omaha cash will destroy your soul. Not unusual for regs to lose 50 buyins in a day without putting a foot wrong. As for omaha being a drawing game, it's all about pre and post flop aggression.

[hebert10]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Mate, the same's been happening with me my BR has just taken a beating over the last couple of months, Gets hard to see how things are going to even themselves out. Every single tourney people catching with absolute sh*t. Hopeful I can turn it around though, as they say 'Bink it like Bart' :\

[Bart(UK)]

Thx guys appreciate all your input. I've been working hard and studying the game since 2004 ram not just since last year. You've seen the way I chip build with no hands and very few showdowns in the gukpt sats, measured all the way (well most of the way) ;) Apart from that I agree completely with everything you said. Mentally I'm struggling at the moment both inside poker and out. I think my point is why bother learning the odds, learning players ranges, learning to identify good spots and learning to exploit the fish with optimal bet sizing? At the end of the day poker is decided by 2 things, the unpredictability of the other player and the turn of a random card. The best driver in the world might not crash his car because he remains in control the whole time he's driving, but he can still have his car written off by someone not in control of theirs! I would much rather play far better players than fish because (a) you can predict their moves more easily, (b) easier to narrow their ranges & © you know they're good enough to fold in certain situations which is exploitable. Sadly the standard of play doesn't seem to change whatever level you play at. Day 2 of last years GPS grand final (a £1,600 buyin) I was short stacked and open shoving a very tight range, showing most of them to emphasis the point with a view to exploiting table image later on if I could find a break. Kiddie minraise opens from ep, I shove and everyone on that table including the villan knew I was strong because of previous play but he still tank calls with 33 despite knowing he's drawing very thin. Mathematically was he right, of course not. What was he beating? Do I shove 22 there with 4 players still to act? Course not (Edit: Memory is also a leak of mine lol, I was big blind on this particular hand, no-one left to act). He was having to put in circa 40/45% of the pot with at best 25% equity. As a poker player was he right, no. Terrible spot against the tightest image on the table, he'd already put me on AK/QQ+ and even winning the hand he'd only be about chip average. But still he called! Think that's my point, maybe we try too hard to play poker as all the theory and maths suggest. Maybe we should all play like gambling tw#ts more often and rely on the quirk of luck like others do. (Edit: If that's the case then it's probably not for me) My tournament play is still in profit 3 out of 5 months so far this year and ytd with healthy stats partly assisted by seeking out added value but largely by playing less volume and focusing more on those played. It's the theory and unpredictability of the game and other players I'm struggling with most. Anyhoo like I said at the start I'm fine, just a discussion and thought provoker. Other thoughts and theories warmly welcomed. Criticism also warmly welcomed, you'll never be more critical of my play than I am on myself ;)

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Oh and thanks for your thoughts on Omaha everyone, enough said, just wondered :rollin

[slapdash]

Re: Trust me fold Aces

Sadly the standard of play doesn't seem to change whatever level you play at. Day 2 of last years GPS grand final (a £1,600 buyin) I was short stacked and open shoving a very tight range, showing most of them to emphasis the point with a view to exploiting table image later on if I could find a break. Kiddie minraise opens from ep, I shove and everyone on that table including the villan knew I was strong because of previous play but he still tank calls with 33 despite knowing he's drawing very thin. Mathematically was he right, of course not. What was he beating? Do I shove 22 there with 4 players still to act? Course not (Edit: Memory is also a leak of mine lol, I was big blind on this particular hand, no-one left to act). He was having to put in circa 40/45% of the pot with at best 25% equity. As a poker player was he right, no. Terrible spot against the tightest image on the table, he'd already put me on AK/QQ+ and even winning the hand he'd only be about chip average. But still he called!

If he had to put in 40/45% of the pot, he needed to have about a 30% chance of winning to break even by calling. Against AK/QQ+, 33 has nearly a 35% chance of winning. I don't think he played too badly, to be fair!

[Danshot]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Agree with Slapdash , I used to play more live and never bust quickly but never seemed to be able to close because I didn't want to take these sorts of spots with low pocket pairs think sometimes you need to bite the bullet and just take the opportunity especially as like you said he was pretty short stacked as well I assume if he was still only about chip average after holding. So ICM wise I thinking he wasn't fair out as he increased his chance to progress

[Rivrd]

Re: Trust me fold Aces

but largely by playing less volume and focusing more on those played.

This is why these hands are sticking in your mind at the moment. Volume and these hands will even themselves out. :ok

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces just removed the latest ones i posted as unfair to show other players names obviously, especially when they 5bet with KTo and call my 6bet shove. AKs vs KTo on JsTc8d 2s 9c is almost irrevelent, if they're not good enough to fold or if they just want to gamble, you're relying on the turn of a card. Thx Riv, totally agree. Playing less tournaments, but thread was meant to refer to cash games where I'm currently getting through a lot of volume on speed poker and yet not had a single session in profit. My fault, i sidetracked the thread a little ;) [ATTACH]5007[/ATTACH]

[Quasar]

Re: Trust me fold Aces I know you've been feeling frustrated lately Bart, from our chats. This is a very interesting thread, thanks for bringing it up. You're a good player and far better than I will ever be, but everyone talks about variance when this sort of topic crops up. I genuinely think you are just having a bad run. Hang in there!

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces I think genuinely I'm just not cut out for cash games. Back in the old FullTilt1 days I was also a losing player and only broke even with rakeback, despite netting decent profits on both sngs & mtts. I agree that my mindset is all to pot at the moment and some of my closest friends already have an idea why and yet I'm still netting a profit in tournaments this year and can't win feck all at cash games. I agree that until 100,000 cash game hands are made you'll never see anything even approaching an accurate assessment, but the trend is always the same? Do I really need to lose over the next 80k hands to realise that I'm just never going to win at cash games because you can't beat someone that wants to gamble? Maybe I just don't get the dynamics of cash games and can't or don't allow myself to adapt, hell maybe I'm not even sure how I should adapt, if you're getting the money in good more times than bad and pricing it right surely you should over a long period end in the +ve just the same as in tournaments? Maybe it's as Dan said, you'll only double up at best except in strange 3 or 4way situations. Maybe, just maybe, it's the whole concept of trying to take other peoples money away from them that I just don't like and subconsciously object to? For me poker is a sport not a income generator, I enter a tournament along with others who've all paid the same "entrance fee" in the same place at the same time and I have fun for a few hours whilst trying to outplay them to finish higher up than them, preferably taking the whole tournament down ofc or finishing high up a leaderboard. Money never enters my mind except as tokens to pay for my next entry and the one beyond that with perhaps a few spare for the understandable downswings (perhaps it should feature more?). But even that cosy world of tournament play is fast being consumed by those that like to constantly introduce or push unfair advantages to lure out and out gamblers in with promises of this guarantee or that and then move onto the next guy when he is bled dry? In my cosy old fashioned world I turn up for a good structured freezeout, everyone starting on a level playing field, no live tournament bonus chips for paying an extra £10 because it's tax efficient for the casino to do it, no unlimited rebuys so the players with the deepest pockets or the most gamble in them has an unfair advantage. No re-entering the same tournament until you eventually bust out the recreational guy who satellited in and isn't rolled for a 2nd bullet. No guaranteeing a massive prizepool and then having to adjust the payout structure to try to meet or justify it. No tournaments spread over multiple locations or part-live, part-online where your whole tournament can depend on the luck of how many players turn up on your particular day. In my world you'd see multiple EPT champions or the same player always running up at the top because they're one of the best. But instead you get a different winner every time, maybe thats it? everything is already predetermined and whatever you do, whatever you try you can't change it, not really. If it's your night it's your night. Perhaps Ram's 1% edge is as good as it gets in which case is it worth trying at all? You get more return from a building society or premium bonds and get the same chance of a big win with the latter as you do in poker. The only difference is that with poker we're gearing up that 1% by reinvesting it multiple times, but then we're gearing the downswings to the same extent. Maybe I'm just too old fashioned or stubborn to adapt to the way modern poker is going, maybe it should draw in every gambler that it can, suck them dry then move onto the next in the vain hope of that one time you win big. Maybe poker, 23 years after I first played 5-card single draw in the 6th form rec room with my college friends for "schrapnel" (1 & 2 pence coins) but really played solely for the laughs it generated, has changed so much that it isn't for me. Just a thought. Thanks for listening & sorry for all the whaffle, I don't know the answers, I don't even know all the questions, but I know that the people here are awesome to be around and I'm extremely fortunate to count such people as friends. See you in the league on Monday, I'll bring the beers if you bring the crisps!

[The Quiet Man]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Were you Mr V (VALIANT) in an earlier poker life? (you're so similar it's spooky) If you're unhappy being ahead when the money's in then have a break! TQM

[Samba_SamPa]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Perspective :) I'm sure there's a million things you could think of that would be worse to endure than losing a hand of poker. I don't even need to think of global news - earthquakes, tornadoes, shootings, war etc - I mainly think of my 2 healthy, happy, kids, and think of my friend who has an 8yr old daughter who has had Dravet Syndrome her whole life and how hard it has been for her for 8yrs. Losing to that 2-outer pales into insignificance next to how incredibly blessed I am to have healthy, happy, kids :cheers

[Bart(UK)]

Of course, always. Never lose sight of that mate. If I hadn't lost my childhood sweetheart at the age of 8 to a brain tumour and my girlfriend at 18 to cancer, maybe I'd have kids now too, but those are the hands we're dealt. At least neither suffered too long which is a blessing.

[Haichan]

Re: Trust me fold Aces

Thx Riv, totally agree. Playing less tournaments, but thread was meant to refer to cash games where I'm currently getting through a lot of volume on speed poker and yet not had a single session in profit. My fault, i sidetracked the thread a little ;) Bart, The variance is the most difficult thing to deal with mentally. I had my first 4 years of poker all in profit and since the live battle of malta last nov I have been running into every cooler possible. Couldn't win a tournament or even make the money. My stats are terrible and of course I start remembering all the bad beats. In the last week I have lost KK's 5 times late in tournaments to rags and yesterday lost on the bubble twice with QQ's to KQ and AJ. When that starts to happen then you question your game and whether you can deal with the mental frustrations of poker. In my case I have looked at my game, tried to see what I am doing wrong against previous years. In most cases my game is the same. My solution is to reduce the number of games I am playing. Now I only play 2 tables. I don't play turbos as players push with a greater range early on. Slowly my results are coming back. The thing you have to ask yourself is how did you win the Genting tour. You are unlikely to be a bad player if you managed that achievement. And you want all the maniacs to be shoving with 22 and worse. Of course you will suffer bad beats. Thats the nature of the maths. In most cases they will be at least 30% to win the hand. If you are in profit 3 out of 5 months then you are still doing well. The way I look at it, every time someone sucks out on me, its another opportunity for variance to owe me a suckout

[Bart(UK)]

Thx Kev, all good points and loving your last thought there, will have to set myself up a mental variance iou tab, maybe with the mental image of a jam doughnut being owed to me each time! I guess my worse mental trait at the moment is thinking i can control the suckouts by playing better, or less worse, which would ofc help but as you guys are so timely reminding me you just cant control everything. A snooker player can't win every frame because half of the time they're sitting on their bum, but as long as they reach 17 frames before their opponent it matters not. All your thoughts are helping to refocus guys, very much appreciated.

[slapdash]

Re: Trust me fold Aces Bart, I've delayed making any comments on your frustration, just because any comments I make are more likely to be listened to after you've had a chance to calm down a bit. If you rank poker players on "tiltability" then I'm probably in the bottom 1%. You probably know about the division of personalities into Type A (highly strung, stressed, but, on the positive side, motivated) and Type B (relaxed, laid back, often more so than is good for them)? Well, I'm a Type C. And I've always put you down as at least a Type B. If a Type A had posted what you did, then I would probably just have ignored them. I can usually take bad beats without any external reaction. In the Slapdash household, a not uncommon occurrence is that I've been playing a tournament on my laptop, and Mrs. Slapdash is reading a book. She says "How are you doing?" and I say "Oh, I've been out for nearly an hour; my aces lost to a gutshot who rivered his straight. I'm just reading my email now." (I'm not sure why I go into that much detail: she doesn't play poker and probably doesn't know what "gutshot" or "rivered" mean.) I don't think I've ever abused a player, except friends who would know I was joking, for their play. Well, not intentionally: I once typed "sob" (meaning "boo-hoo") into the chatbox after a bad beat, and a few minutes later thought "Hang on, that's probably not what he thought I meant!" But even I'm not immune to frustration. Whatever anybody tells you, I am human. Well, almost. I do get frustrated after a long spell of bad luck. And because I don't play as much as many, these spells probably last longer for me, measured in days. And one thing that really frustrates me is when I feel I've been playing well, especially in an "important" tournament, and then it's all wiped out by one stroke of bad luck. The most recent such case was when I was playing the WSOP Mega-Sat a week and a half ago. For the first two hours, I got very few cards, dropped to about half the starting stack, but pulled back to just over the starting stack by concentrating and (I think) picking good spots to steal and resteal a few chips here and there. I wasn't doing great, but felt good about how I was playing. Then I picked up aces in the big blind. (Mrs. S. heard an "Ooh!") Raise from a big stack in early position, shove from a late position player with slightly fewer chips than me. I shoved and the big stack called. I was up against AQs and pocket tens. I'm about 70% to win, and if I do then I'm well over average stack and back in this game. I came third to a flush and three tens. (Mrs. S. heard a strange, subhuman guttural groan. Well, maybe she didn't hear it: she still asked "How are you doing?" half an hour later.) I really didn't feel like playing poker for several days after that. Anyway, I'm rambling (and shamelessly hijacking your thread to tell my bad beat story). And it wasn't even a particularly egregious bad beat: I was only 70% to win, after all. I guess my point is that, however equanimious you want to be, or think you are, poker is inevitably going to serve up plenty of frustration, and if you want to play without going mad, you just have to deal with that. Some things that I find helpful: When I unluckily lose to a player who "obviously" is playing like an idiot, then rather than internally ranting, I often try to analyse just how badly he did play. Of course, often he really did play dreadfully. But sometimes I decide he didn't play as badly as I thought, and I learn something. I actually find this easier to do than analysing my own possible mistakes, since that often involves making judgements about other peoples' ranges, which can be hard to do, especially when you have emotion invested. But I have a better idea about my own range. A case in point is your story about the player who called your shove with 33. As I pointed out in a previous post in this thread, that wasn't as bad a play as you might think, and might even have been correct. Another thing that I think had unexpected psychological dividends for me was many years ago. There had been one of those recurrent "Jokerstars! The worst hand always wins!" posts on PL. Of course, I didn't take it seriously, and could have posted a standard rebuttal along the lines of "The worse hand is going to win sometimes. You tend to notice those occasions more than when the better hand wins. I'm sure that it doesn't actually happen more than expected." But then I thought ... well, I don't actually have any direct evidence that that's true. So I spent a day writing programs to extract all the hands where two players were all-in preflop fom my Pokerstars hand history, feed them through a hand analyser, and work out how often the worse hand did win compared to what you'd expect. Of course, as expected, they won about as often as you'd expect. Nothing that surprised me, but I do think that just having gone through that exercise has made it psychologically easier for me to accept that, however it may feel sometimes, I don't get bad beats significantly more often than I should expect. Sorry for the ultra-long post.

[Bart(UK)]

Re: Trust me fold Aces

Sorry for the ultra-long post.

Don't apologise, extremely useful post, thanks mate :ok Need to reread it a couple of times to digest fully & also worth referring back to it before I post an all too common "gl with that" in the poker chatbox, my current but still totally inappropriate method of letting off steam. I think I used to be Type B and hopefully I still am in PL games where winning is always a distant second to the banter & spending some time amongst friends. Elsewhere I am worried that external real life-forces are slowly turning me to the dark side of quick to tilt spoilt brat category. Going to re-read the Mental Game of Poker cover to cover as a refresher, distance myself wherever possible from some of the real life stuff currently dragging me down and stick to tournaments until mentally strong enough to give cash another go.

[slapdash]

Re: Trust me fold Aces A couple more points that I hesitated to mention, because I'm absolutely sure you really know these, and it seemed a bit patronizing to point them out. "You have to play like an idiot to win". OK, I'm paraphrasing, but you do know that's nonsense, don't you? Tip: When you get frustrated by an idiot getting lucky, look them up on Sharkscope or similar. Not so that you can be an arsehole and taunt them with their stats, but usually you'll find that they don't win in the long run by being an idiot. And if you find that they are a winning player, maybe you should think a bit more deeply about whether they actually were such an idiot. You don't need to play poker to make a living, so if things external to poker mean that you'll be particularly prone to frustration, then do something else. I don't know what the external factors are in your case, but hopefully they'll be temporary, and when you're in a better frame of mind, you'll be in a much better state to play if you've had a break than if you associate poker with the frustration of grinding through the bad times. I enjoy playing bigger events than I could justify buying into directly on a regular basis, so I play a lot of satellites to them. That has the disadvantage that sometimes I sat into a "big" tournament and find that when it comes around, I really don't feel like playing. This year, trying to sat into the WSOP, I've got into three $500 final rounds. For one of those, I was stressed for non-poker reasons. I played like an idiot. I knew I was playing like an idiot. I knew why I was playing like an idiot. And I got the just desserts of an idiot. Of course, I was annoyed with myself at the time, but looking back at it I just feel that I was a bit unlucky that I had to play that tournament at that particular time. If it hadn't meant jettisoning $500, I wouldn't have played. It might even have been sensible to forget about the $500 and not play, although the "what if"s would have been hard to deal with. Given my state of mind, my equity in that tournament was closer to $5 than $500. On Pokerstars, where you can do it, I've several times satted in to a big tournament that I fully intended to play and then unregged for tournament dollars because I didn't feel capable of playing anywhere near my best by the time the tournament came round. I'm rambling again, but my basic point is that one of the major plusses of online poker is that you can usually decide when to play and when not to. And if it's one of the times that you shouldn't, then just don't. One reason I'm responding at such length is that on the spectrum of poker players from Constant Frustration to General Equanimity, I've always thought you were towards the GE end, and I get the feeling that you don't like yourself for (temporarily, I hope) moving towards the CF end, and thought it might be of some comfort to know that even GE extremists like me are not completely immune to the dark charms of CF.