I don't post here very often, I started playing the $5 husng earlier this year with a $50 roll, moved up to playing the $20s on stars and grinded my roll up to $3000. I cashed out, went on vacation, got back and deposited $200 on cake poker, playing the $10s.
3 weeks ago I went on the biggest downswing I've had so far in my short career, I was down 20 BI at the $25 BI and was down $500+ in a matter of hours 2 tabling. I really don't believe I was tilting...I might've been on a slight passive tilt, maybe missing bets and slowplayed a couple of big hands only to have my opponent make runner straights...I decided to cash out $1000, left about $800 in my account and asked the cake poker admin to lock my account for 1 week.
I took the week off, reading the poker mindset again, watching husng.com videos...I admit everytime I watch a video I pick up a little something from the instructors here and it definitely help my game, it's nice to see their thought processes and I have to credit myself not tilting as much to watching videos. I came back from the break, single tabled $25s and played about 300 games the past 2 weeks. w/ rakeback I'm up $500 for the past 2 weeks over 300 games but it really feel like I'm soooo much below EV, like at least 15-20 buy-ins.
My overall ROI dropped from 10-12% to 6%...I don't even have to go back and look at my hand histories, 90% of the opponents I played were very easy to exploit w/ very bad stats, the occassional regs there are laughable playing a very straight forward TAG style, and it also help that I have very good notes on these regs. I won about 5 of the last 20 coin flips, had AA<AK, AJ<AT, had my opponent flat 3bet and flop set when I had over pairs, I even played a dude who literally didn't know the rules of poker, and did not know hand strength at all, He would call every street with J high, I get him down to 300 chips and he doubles up, eventually beat me with the A high flush >Q high flush....
I have played about 1k+ games at the $20-30 lvl now and I really think that the players here are worser than the ones at 5/10s. I keep telling myself it's ok, just keep playing as long as i have an edge I shouldn't stop but I'm really starting to doubt poker being a game of skill, these fishes know how much luck there is and that's why they make these retarded plays and get there....I've rematched a guy 5 times and droppped 5 BI today, all towards the same guy and he was really bad....I just can never finish him off in the end, I follow nash, and it works really well cuz he would limp fold w/ 4-5 BBs, then he makes a call w/ j3o and doubles up, and then beat me....
whoaa this is really long, i wasn't planning on typing this much, any suggestions? stories? or just anything to make me feel better lol? everytime after a horrendous session i go read the TILT FVCK YOU poker thread on 2+2 but today I just feel really really bad even after reading it...
Something Primo will say is that you gotta feel comfortable and confident at where you are playing. If you let your previous losses affect your mental state, I doubt you will be on your A game,
May I ask why you feel that you are 15-20 BIs in terms of EV? Try to review your stats and history to find out if this is the case and not an example of selective memory.
Having bad opponents does not mean that you can win every game :) (at least this is my understanding) but over a series, its likely that you have an edge. If I walk into a match expecting myself to walk over a fish every hand every game, I think I'll be in for it.
By the way are you playing Turbos or Regulars, do your matches always end when you hit the end-game only?
you're right I probably wasn't playing my A game, i'm playing turbos and no they don't always end whne they hit end gmae.
Considering great players like The Camel have had 2k game breakeven stretches, I would acknowledge that there is a lot of variance in this game, lots of good and bad luck. You really need to put in the hours and effort and not look at short term results. A year of playing full time is a much better sample size and you will be up quite a bit if you are a winner that plays well.
well said thrift :), very level headed post
primordial, i just read your blog, feeling pretty motivated, and thanx thrift and rypac...i guess i really can't say complain about anything after reading bout the 2k+ break even stretch rypac mentioned lol...I'm gonna look at my hand history for november with a friend of mine and continue grinding.
Yes, it is highly likely that you ran incredibly bad, but you have to think of it this way:
You run really bad for 1500 games, say you usually expect to make $5,000 during this stretch, but bad variance changes your expectation to $2,000. If you tilt during this bad luck, it's going to really hurt you and you could earn $1,000 or even lose money.
Now, another 1500 games you could run well and expect to make $7,500 with good luck, if you play well. Most people can handle running pretty well and will keep playing pretty confident and good when they experience good luck, but when they experience bad luck it's a lot tougher to deal with.
Just remember, in the end, for every bad run that can be attributed to poor luck, you'll run good during another stretch. It won't be so cut and dry, run good for 200, run bad for 200, you might run good for 1k games, then run bad for 200, then run average for 500, then run good for another 100, etc. etc. That's why it is best to just keep playing as well as you can, continue to learn and progress and try to analyze your stats objectively. You don't even need to know how to properly analyze your stats, as long as you're playing with a comfortable bankroll, just play your buyin level and work on playing as well as you can. If your br gets low or you go on a really bad streak, maybe move down a level until things change, but always use all of your focus on playing as well as you can.
There are many things that are out of your control in this game, but as long as you can manage the things that are in your control (tilt, emotions, focus, quality decision making, bankroll management, ego, confidence) then you will eventually end up being one of the better players around.
From the volume of variance/tilt/bad runs related posts, it may be a good time to have an article on dealing with variance and management of emotions for HUSNGs.
Swings can be brutal, especially for HUSNG. A 10 game streak can see 1/3 of someone's roll gone. I felt bad for winning against someone on a 15 game losing streak last night, because I know how that feels. Inevitably members of the community will face the same situation and such.
Instead of getting all the posts, perhaps its good to have a collection of articles, thoughts on what to expect from swings and how to deal with it.
We've pretty much accepted that the variance is a huge part of HUSNGs.
I agree completely. Luck has way more determination of your results in the short term than skill. But, why do you think you'll be unlucky over the next short-term? Aren't you just as likely to be lucky? I know one day I'll run really good and have a 40% roi for a month :)
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Now this is a quality tread about anti tilt :)
Great work guys thx.