welcome to my world 

Welcome to my world, minus the upswing.

I find that when I (personally) am running bad it isn't just the opponents getting cards on me.  When you start losing especially when you feel like "I'm at the low stakes, I'm so terrible" you lose your confidence, when you lose confidence you play worse.  Playing worse can be anything from too aggressive to too tight/weak; obviously depending on your opponent.  Sometimes I'll shoot that second barrel knowing, even in my notes, this villian is a calling station, he's not folding, yes he will...oh wait, my notes are right and called with his bottom pair and it was good against my A-high. Here's a good example I just thought of, if you have ever watched baseball you'd know that a batting average of higher than .300 is consider pretty good.  Think about that, they got on base roughly 3 out of 10 times at bat!  The player only bats 3-5 times a game, so if they got up to bat 5 times after 2 whole boring baseball games, they only got on base an average of 3 times...in 18 innings.  In relation to HUSNGs, a good winrate is said to be 60-65%.  That means even against those terrible micro stakes fish, you can only expect to win roughly 6/10 matches (Turbo Stars Match = 6.25 * 10 = $62.50 buyins, 12 * 6 = $72 (wins) - 62.50 so after 10 matches your net profit would be around $9.50 for probably 2 hours on PStars).  I realize that you are losing obviously but losing leaves room for improvement and if you are winning you won't adjust your game and sometimes you're literally running so good that you can valuetown every hand and it's a good hand but it's when you aren't getting great hands and you have to really make some decisions, like, villian limped from IP, I checked, A-K-3 flop, he fires a pot sized bet, is he the type of rare opponent to limp a K or A or can I raise him off the hand even though I would be representing a checked ace or king.  That's an elementary setting of course but most of the time you will be playing with rags and so will your opponent.  If your opponent is only getting involved in 3/10 hands then take him very seriously when he is aggressive, if he is getting involved with 9/10 hands you can call him down lighter but keep in mind sometimes they will have a real hand.Keep taking notes and changing them, when the notes show up next time you sit the villian in a couple of weeks, take them with a grain of salt, cause just like notes on you, (as you improve from this site) players change and you still have to test them. Last thing, (I ramble when I'm tired haha) I don't know what site you're on but if you are getting to the stages where the effective stacks are 20bb or less consistently, it is said that your variance will be higher, however, don't try to avoid this stage and finish the villian off prematurely if the game doesn't call for it.Good Luck You said you watched Primo's Beginner vids, did you also watch the Intermediate and Reinforcing Fundamentals?  His PowerPoints are worth more than their weight in gold, you know, since they are digital and have 0 weight.                                                                                                    

What do you mean when you say you sharkscoped them? I take it you can't game-select at these stakes because the games fill up to fast? 

I feel your pain.I tend to break even for ages, then go on a little run then just lose a ton in a row.  I am considering using software to check how I am running but I think I don't want to know - I cannot believe how bad the people are that I am losing to.  I am so often getting them down to 200-300 chips and they're just doubling up over and over to take the game when it hits high blinds.Currently I am trying to get up to the $10s - ive played a few already and have run pretty good, but i want to be solidly beating the 5's until i move there for permanent, and right now i am doing horribly.  

Import you HHs into pokerluckmeter.com

I pokerluck....better than HEM's redline?

pokerluckmeter is pretty lame though because it only uses bb (big blinds) instead of BI (buy-ins).  kinda worthless imo.

But better than buying HEM if your only going to use it to measure luck.

I'm not sure about that.  HEM has a lot of other benefits (although I'm very new to it) and PLM just tells you how bad/good you are doing in terms of luck with bb - which is pretty worthless.  Especially as blinds fluctuate it doesn't do much to help for an accurate read of it.  There were some folks discussing this on the 2p2 HU thread as well.

If your struggling to beat lower stakes over a good sample here are some things to consider...... Min raise or limp every button. The key is to keep pots small so if you do make a mistake it wont take half your chips. Cut down on your prefop r. % in position and play more premium hands oop. If you get rr'd big in a limped pot in an uncertain pot...fold! Dont be married to your hand. So basically nut peddle...so to speak. You can donk bet bluff alot in small pots as this tends to create a bluffy image for cheap, and for your bigger main pots and takes down most smaller ones which also pisses players off. Its important to understand concepts in the videos but dont let certains hands played be "the solution", so when you encounter it in your play you tend to think..." well so and so did this here and this is correct so i should do it this way".... do your best to simply listen to how your oppenent is playing and counteract. Lastly ...only play regular speed as this will obv. give you more time with a bigger winrate which will build back up your confidence.Hope this helps. 

I agree with most of what Slatey said - especially the being carefull when you get raised part - one of the leaks i've had to plug in my game at the micro's is that I'm calling raises (and shoves) to easily: this is probably because I know my opponents suck and therefore I feal that I deserve to win which makes me call too loose...I'm not sure I agree about the playing reg-speeds though: these can be extremely frustrating at the micro's because villain's ranges are so wide and their play so erratic in general - if you're playing somebody you just can't get a grip on than the longer a match lasts the more frustrating this becomes which can be murder on your focus and willingness to think about what you need to be doing. Also, at the micro-stakes people tend to play terrible when the blinds go up/they become short-stacked - they either shove way to wide or too tight which means at the turbo's you have a bigger edge in that department.I'm pretty sure my roi is about the same at the reg as the turbo's 

What do you mean by i felt like I have been playing flawlessly?? You mean u have been playing your A game all the time and you think this should be good enough not to swing this bad? or do you have the feeling you are playing perfect poker??  In the first case just let somebody look at some of your games, your A game can still consist some big leaks and ur sample size is actually too small to really know whether ur A game is positive or negative!In the second case, go and play high stakes poker!!!! I think Barry greenstein once mentioned that he makes approximatly 10-15% bad calls or bets/session, so if you ever have to feeling u beat these numbers, go for the big money. So just start using the forums, review ur games and start fixing those leaks, the more leaks u fix the smaller ur variance will be the less frequently a downswing will occur cheers!