Comments: The Newbie Circle of Death

{Comments on http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9214 }

Great post!

I've been down this path.

You're missing the, "AGHHH! I QUIT!" Phase, though, for a month or so because of your neglect of the rest of your life and frustration with cards.

I shit Poker Chips too.

But I don't recall eating them...

-'rilla

So your saying don't get over confident and if your winning at a certain limit, stick to it until you are ready to move up?

Good advice Very Happy

Phase VII: Do I really suck?
JJ under the gun. Ya know, i would usually raise here, but with my luck, I'm probably up against kings or aces, so I'm just limping. Another lost pot. Another hand, hit trips on the flop, yes! I'm getting paid! A third diamond appears on the turn... aw crap, ya know Party Poker gives out flushes like there's no tomorrow, and shit, he just re-raised me! Is he bluffing? All my instincts are completely gone out of the window. No more confidence. The slide continues.

Phase VII: I was good, I promise!
How did I turn that $50 bucks into $700 in the first place? I can't believe I'm back where I started. Panic is starting to creep in. I guess poker just wasn't meant for me, but it sure did play with my emotions. I didn't think I needed a break, I mean, how does a break affect how you play the next hand anyway?

---
I'm right here....******* AAAAAGH! Where did all of my poker skills go????

wow...outstanding post. From my mind to u'r keyboard?....

phase I: check
phase II: check
phase III: check
phase IV: check
phase V: check
phase VI: check
phase VII: check
phase VIII: check
phase IX: check
phase X: check

It comes and it goes. One week every time you sit down you expect to leave $100 richer, the next week you can't hit shit and when you do you get sucked out on.

Thanks for the good feedback guys... (sticky worthy?) I just noticed I have two Phase VII's, probably because by the time you're in this phase you probably cant count anymore anyway...

Just to clarify, here are some of the mistakes I was making:

-Overvaluing good hands when I finally catch one. Was on a bad run for so long, that when I finally caught something, I played it too strongly and ended up running into a bigger hand pretty often.

-OVER Confidence - You think you know everything, so you start slowplaying more to suck more money out of pots. You try to start bending and twisting the basic concepts that built your bankroll to begin with. (Loosening up, calling down, bluffing, etc.) You start messing around with other things, seeing how many tables you can run at a time.

-Lack of focus, goes hand-in-hand with over confidence. You feel like the game is almost "automatic" to you, and you can sit with a laptop and watch TV in between good hands. Or you just sit in at a table for a few minutes to see some cards, and hope to get lucky. If you're ever "hoping to get lucky", then you're playing for the wrong reason.

-No patience (stupidest of them all) I remember playing one morning before work, and I really had to leave. After seeing people take down $4-7 dollar pots by betting without seeing a showdown for a while, I decided it was my turn to take a pot just so I could leave in the green, and I was betting/raising no matter what. Dumbest decision ever, someone flopped a boat.

-No more fishing. Table selection is one of the most important factors in being profitable. But once you get to a certain level, you expect to sit down at any table and turn a profit. And a lot of the time you know a table isn't good, but you just want to get back your original buy in and get out.

Sounds exactly like the last 3 weeks for me. Down to my last $25 2 days ago, got down to $8 and had to step back, take a look at what I was doing. I have come to the conclusion that this is a game that I will continue to be learning for as long as I play, whether I'm learning about the game or learning about myself. Been a pretty frustrating couple of weeks though. Question

Man, I always knew the internet wasn't secure but how the hell have you been watching me play poker the past 6 months?!?!

Great post. (I am somewhere between 9 and 10 at this point...)

Gah! That's me this week, down, down, down in the beating beaten sucks hell.

*Last edited by Les_Worm on Fri, 03 Jun 2005, 1:29pm; edited 2 times in total*

This alone is sticky worthy.

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Comments: The Newbie Circle of Death