Standard

*** WARNING *** Standard 80/20 flop hand history beat. Move along, nothing to see here. It nicely sums up my life for the past 7 weeks which is why I'm posting it as a semi-update.

Standard 1/2 pot cbet in 3bet pot for induceaments since I expect this 40/30 to ship all flush draws, Jx, KQ, AK, AQ if I haven't "committed" yet.


Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 811834
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $74.35
BTN: $50.00
Hero (SB): $52.00
BB: $50.00
UTG: $26.65
UTG+1: $51.55
MP1: $50.00
MP2: $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with Q Q
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $2.50, 4 folds, Hero raises to $6.75, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $4.25

Flop: ($14.00) 5 T J (2 players)
Hero bets $7, UTG+1 raises to $22.50, Hero raises to $45.25 all in, UTG+1 calls $22.30 all in

Turn: ($103.60) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($103.60) A (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $103.60
Hero shows Q Q (a pair of Queens)
UTG+1 shows A J (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
UTG+1 wins $100.60
(Rake: $3.00)

Re-listening to Tommy's 8 fold path which is helping me get through this shit.

Frustrated

I'm at a loss as to how to explain my last 50k hand stretch. I find it kind of funny that I'm positive $ in pots smaller than 50bb but making pots larger than that activates one sick doomswitch monkey. I'm actually being a ridiculously accurate psychic and calling out cards while sweating all in pots as a decent favorite lol.

To top things off lately a lot of the fresh batch of noobs on 2p2 seem to have monster egos which is always good for the game. Apparently I'm a troll (standard) and a demagog -- yes a demagog,  "gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes," (Wikipedia) you know, like Hitler, for pointing out obvious logical flaws in thought process.

Funny how I never seem to see this message in any threads within 2 weeks of adding someone to the list. I guess they either move on, create a new account once they realize good posters don't put up with douchebags, or go busto.

Graphs since beginning of June.

Pots smaller than 50bb:

Pots larger than 50bb:

Result:

I got some coaching yesterday which helped me find some spots where I was missing a lot of value and spewing a little too much and I'm feeling really confident again postflop. I'm just waiting for variance to turn around, all-in hands to start holding up, and the worst runner runner cards in the deck to stop slapping me in the face.

Still feeling like I'm playing some of the best poker of my life so amazingly my confidence is still high. Would be huge if that turned into actual dollars instead of having to spend them at the Sklansky Mall.

My plan right now is to pretend I have 20 buy ins for 25nl and run it up how I would if that was actually the case. I think this will force me back into the strict value bet frame of mind. Ran up 5 buyins there in a couple hours playing 6max this evening and will get back up to 50nl once I win 15 more in the next couple days. To the people asking wtf am I doing at 25nl in chat, I have been self-imposed chat banned for the last few months, it's too much of a distraction for me.

Whine ITP

** Warning: Beat Post ** Cliffnotes for those that don't like reading about beats

ugh. You can basically take my last post and invert it (graph and all) over the past 5 days.

There's something to be said about spiralling downswings. Beats + Tilt leads to Bad Play. Bad Play means not picking up enough value to outweigh the Beats. So the solution then, is to cut out the Tilt so that the equation can not be completed and perpetuated.

The first 2 days were pure monkey tilt. Sets and AA/KK/QQ (always running into 1 pair bigger -- for those that do not know: KK>QQ, AA>KK, 22>AA) were my biggest losers and I was sum-negative with all of these. Big Pots = Big Variance. The 3rd day was just plain slow-bleed frustration. The last 2 days have been no better variance-wise, but my thought process is right back on track and I'm theoretically crushing again in an alternate universe where Sklansky runs the FED. It is encouraging to know that my bad play game is EV neutral so that's a positive.

The bet/bet/check-fold trend continues vs everyone from 10/8 to 72/5 as the most innocuous boards continue to run out 4 flush/straight. I'm all for a rule change stating flushes must use both holecards aside from the fact that when fish call off their stack vs my flop shove with As4h on AhKs3h9hQh and think they've made a brilliant psychic play which is apparent by my "nh" followed by a simple "ty" -- they are typically still level 0 even after cards are flipped up.

Cliffnotes:
Standard runbad in big pots
Nominate Sklansky to chair the FED
4 flush is the bane of my existence
Brilliant psychic fish

Sorry for the whine, I hope it was at least entertaining. Here's to hoping the long run pops his head in here any minute now...

November is finally over

Haven't posted in a while. I seem to post a lot less when I'm not winning, which has been the case the past couple of weeks. I've been basically breakeven after a very swingy second half of November.

I think it's a combination of bad sleeping habits and trying out new stuff, then trying to find my way back to fundamentals when something doesn't work out. That can lead to some frustration and trying to force things. I've also taken a couple of failed shots at 200nl FR and 100nl 6max in the past week so that has a lot to do with it as well.

Part 2 of my 25nl series is out now and Part 3 is on the way. If only I could keep running as hot as I do in my videos... lol... maybe I should just start recording all my sessions and talking through my thought process out loud.

A case of runbad: false alarms imo

Swongs are fun. First you can not win a hand if your life depended on it. Then someone flips a switch and you can't lose a hand.

Last night my life was pretty miserable at 50NL 6max with people consistently drawing to 2 pair vs my top pair, sets on wet boards seeing the grossest all-draw-completing turn and river cards. My line seemed to be b/f, b/f, c/f every time I attempted to valuebet. And every single coinflip was lost after getting my money in first on every single one of them. Ship the 5.5 BI below equity in 2k hands.

I am now able to keep this in perspective though and I can confidently say I did not tilt at all during that stretch. I actually made notes on those hands and created counter-strategies to pwn these donks. I felt really good about my play of that session after reviewing.

3 hours later this morning, I fire up some tables again. Every session, every hand = a fresh start. 20 minutes later (and after starting off down another buyin) I make it all back. Didn't change my strat. Didn't think I must be doing something wrong. There's an enormous amount of luck in the short term, but absolutely none in the long term and I'm confident that my game is a long term winner. I think people are too quick to change what they're doing when they're downswinging and can do some permanent damage, or at least some damage that is very hard to undo and will probably cause them to take longer to recover.

Some inspiration for the people that are downswonging right now, it can change just like that if you stick to your winning strat:

Troughing

I haven't posted in a week. I had a massive cooler/beat induced downswing and ended about $800 below equity. $300 of this was at 100NL and the rest was at 50NL. I've never run this bad in my life, but eventually you run worse than you ever thought possible. I'll probably run worse at some point in the future, but it's amazing how terrible it feels. And don't think it's impossible for it to happen to you. I am totally convinced after reviewing my database for the week that I was playing my A+ game (A+ since it's the best I've ever played, ever) approximately 90% of the time and during 100% of those beats. There is just nothing you can do.

I should have been running pretty decent except that spewing made my equity flatline - which is good to know that I can run breakeven when I feel spewy. Granted I wouldn't feel spewy if it were not for the beats =)

Anyways, I think I hit the bottom of the trough. I'm playing a bit tighter to lower variance and it's working out so far and I've recovered a little.

I almost gave up on Supernova. I'm going to have my work cut out for me after "giving up" and playing 25NL for 2 days on the weekend. I just have to keep reminding myself that if I can get the points in, it's $3k in my pocket, so I can actually stand to lose quite a bit and end up ahead. I'm still up something like $450 for the month. I need to get over losing money that I've won. It makes me feel like every 5+ downswing is a tragedy. But I really shouldn't complain because my entire poker career has been a freeroll.

I'm going to keep at the 100NL and 50NL to hit Supernova. I'll have to pound away some 6 hour sessions when I'm on holidays next week.

AAAAHhhhhhh

Thank you. Just needed to vent.

23% WtSD. 35% W$SD. 5k hands.

I have been doomswitched.

This might be an interesting spot to talk about doomswitches. I'm at a loss to figure out what to do when you run completely card dead breakeven for 20k hands and get coolered when you finally do catch something every once in a while and get called down by trash the rest of the time because you never have it. It just makes me feel physically ill. Totally helpless.

I mean, there is absolutely not a single thing you can do when you have massive equity preflop/flop and consistently see the worst card in the deck on the turn that makes you take a puke/fold line - or spew.

Sometimes it's the rivered 3rd flush card against a loose-passive. Sometimes it's an A on a ragged board and you know they floated you with A high. It's just so sick.

My instincts/reads have been absolutely killer this month, but all they are doing right now is telling me I'm beat hand after hand. Sometimes I call down anyways out of frustration. But my reads are correct more than 80% of the time.

So the only conclusion then is that there are periods of time where you have no choice at all but to lose money. That's the way the game goes. Just try to lose it as slowly as possible. Don't become a nit, but just try to not spew.

I don't believe taking a break works because future hands are completely independant from past hands and your doomswitch can end at any time. I mean, if you're flipping coins, there's a chance you get heads 40 times in a row, however unlikely. Quitting for the day is not going to change whether or not that coin is going to flip heads another 40 times in a row when you start up again.

There could be something wrong in your game that has doomswitched you, but if you analyze it and find nothing different than when you were winning, then it's just pure variance. I'm a bankroll nit and I hate variance. A site where I get paid my share of equity on every hand that is all-in before the river would be interesting, but it would last about a day before the fish realized just how brutally terrible they are.

I only started playing last year. People say the games are tougher than they used to be. I have no idea. I can't even imagine how rediculously soft the games must have been before. But the doomswitches would have been that much more rediculous, too.

I really need some motivation to keep at the Supernova thing. Doomswitches make me feel like not playing. However much you try to suppress the superstition, you still feel like you are getting ready to donate stacks when you sit down.