Psychological Counelling Needed

Heya people, I'm in need of the aforementioned.

Something has gone wrong with my game ever since my premature attempt at moving up in limits.

Now that I'm back down to where I'm bankrolled properly (the lowly $2 tables) I'm playing like a moron.

I know -- after the fact -- what I've done wrong, but I can't seem to help myself from making bad calls. I'm calling all ins with top pair, with two pair, then the next 100 hands I'm limping in with AK 'cause I'm chicken.

I win a few cents here and there, but I'm losing my stack once or twice every session of late.

I even go to bed saying to myself, "You can't fall in love with top pair of even two pair! You need to think about why the other moron is raising so much." Alas, nothing seems to be sinking in by the next time I sit down.

It's very weird. I was confident and playing a winning game a few weeks ago, but now, it's all gone south.

What's going on?

Jigs

i used to do this. sometimes youre so fucked up you dont know if you even know how to play poker anymore. you do. but after blowing back so much cash, everything can seem a little meaningless. booking a 20% ROI win is no longer good after you have lost 50% of your BR. take a break. read some sklansky. fingerpaint. suntan. masturbate. come back, and youll be fine. the key is to get away from the game for a while to distance yourself from your own bad play.

you might try a sit with some predefined, hard-n-fast rules. Not as your new "normal game" but just as a way to get over this in-love-with-fairly-good-hands hump.

Consider:
don't go past the turn unless you're pat or drawing pat.
don't call a bet > 20BB w/o nut1, 2, or 3.

Whatever rules you want to fiddle with, jot 'em down on a sticky and keep to them. At little stakes you should win, but even if you don't it's not much.

It's just a discipline exercise.

If you acknowledge the problem you are 1/2 way there.

Taking a break will help

Deciding to think for 10 seconds before making any move wll help as well.

I too am on a skid right now due to moving up pre-maturely, and am suffering like you. I figure I am being too easy too read, so I took a 3x5 card and amde notes about myself like i would another player. Like "Sax gets too fancy when he hits a flop, and lets others get a card for free that beats him". Sometimes i get in a zone and play great, but when i'm on a skid it seems like i am being way too easy too read.

Watch out for what you are experiencing affecting your playing behavior. Seems like an obvious thing, but if u can seperate the two you won't have that sick feeling in your stomach when your not winning. If you know how to play solid then just do it. Oh and let go of top pair now and them, lol.

I used to do the same thing. Experience helps. Keep playing. AI are fun because if you win you win big. As a beginner you want to call all ins because of this. But it’s a bad way to play poker. In fact, you might make a rule for yourself that you won’t call AIs without the nuts. That should save you some $ right there. After you get more experience you will be better able to determine when you are good.

A thread that may help you.
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23698&highlight=crutch+poker

I reckon that what might have happened is: psychologically you felt ready for the next level up; it didn't work out; so now not only are you disheartened about that, but you feel disillusioned about the lower level, the challenge is gone, and you're depressed to be back there. As a result, you're playing without enthusaism or patience, you're subconsciously thinking "I am a better player than these donks, so I can bet whenever I like and I'm bound to win".

I may be wrong, but I have certainly done this - in fact, I still do, when I play $20NL or $25NL (I usually play £25 or $50). It's an ugly habit, but you're halfway to conquering it.

Wow, some great advice guys. Thanks. I didn't expect such a response.

I think that there is a combination of several things, of which Biondino's last reply sums up the psychological part very accurately.

There are other things, too, like time to play is pinched, and when I can, it's usually with my little son on my lap, and he is often distracting me. Poor, I know. I have less time, now that my wife is working less. Strange.

I don't really consider myself a beginner, though as some of you may know, I'm fairly new to playing sober ALL the time, so if that counts, then, yeah, I'm a beginner. No, I think that I've been calling a lot more obviously losing propositions out of lack of respect for my opponents.

I've seen morons at the various tables winning with their 85 off (to my AA) and some other, less insane holdings, like TQ, which gets me frustrated since I've been seeing only 15% of the flops and when my chance finally comes, I just don't want to give up. That's, indeed, the lack of discipline that I had, say 3 weeks ago.

It's important to hear that I'm not alone with getting stupid, and I think that this little post and this feedback are going to help me get back on track.

I have another question, though, and I know that it flies in the face of AOK's "bankroll is sacred" mantra, but would it be like "cheating" if I could somehow find another 150 bucks in my account and moved up to the 10 buck tables? Or should I do my penance and get my confidence back at my micro-micro limits? I will surely stay down for a few thousand more hands since my win rate has sunk down to 8/100BB.

Many thanks.

Jigs

If you have the money and have proved your ability at a higher level, stick it in and play that level.

OK, I'm sorted once again. Not financially, but game-wise. Got my discipline back through use of counterplay.

I actually reckon that the number of morons and gamblers at Paradise has risen during the holiday season, thereby making counterplay my best strategic option. I'm back up to a solid 12 BB/100 and I'm feeling confident again.

"Look for reasons to fold," says AOK in one of his Performance Poker posts and that's what I'm doing again.

As for moving up, I'm afraid that I'll have to wait until later, 'cause I've got too many big expenses coming up in the next few months, not the least of which entails moving house from Holland to the UK. Yikes!

Thanks for your advice and support, as always.

Jigs

Welcome to Britain, Jiggus!

Yea Welcome Very Happy

Where are you moving? Congrats for curing your losing Smile

Hey Jigs, whats your SN on Paradise, I play at those tables all the time.

And a quick word of advice, try playing more hands then just 15%. Ive been playing about 30-35% of my hands and I've been consistently winning at these tables.

Last things first.

Pough, I use Jiggus at Paradise. I think playing as many hands as you do is absolutely crazy, in my lowly opinion, though. That's an awful lot of flops, mate!

I use a 19 hand starting plan, and I stick to it zealously. Just checking PT,...

After 10,900 $2 NL hands, I've won $52.11, 11.95 BB/100, saw the flop 16.9% of the time, and I've won at the showdown 57.34%. That last stat is what I'm happiest with. It proves that the tight starting hands pay in the end.

So, I'm seeing about 17% of the flops.

As for where I'm moving to,...

Glasgow. Yup, I know that the northerners are friendlier than the shandy-drinkin' sourtherners! Smile

Besides, for a Canuck lad, moving from Holland to England is kinda like the same thing as far as crowds and lack of space goes, so Scotland is a nice compromise.

Jiggus, I empathize with you because I have a problem knowing if I play a good no-limit game. I do fine with the tourneys and SNGs, but the ring seems to usually confound me. I am primarily a limit player, but very much enjoy the no-limit game. I have some advice to give, which you will probably not take because I am sure it conflicts with your style. But that's cool.

First, I also play at Paradise, and when I want to blow off some steam and have some fun, I play the $2NL. I find it almost ridiculously easy to beat. I've probably played about 8 hours of it 3 tabling, and I know that's a small sample, but I've never played more than an hour at once and never made less than 15BB/hr/tbl for a session. As a whole, it comes out to around 50BB/100. When I play these tables, I see about 50% of flops. While my strategy is total crap at a decent table, at these tables it works very well, and there are several reasons for this that I will not go into in this post. I will mention that there are 2 keys to the strategy. The first is to see as many cheap flops as possible with almost any 2 cards if you think you can do it for .02. There is no unplayable hand in the SB if noone has raised for example. The second key is to extract the maximum with premium hands. Find out what people will call with at your table and when you get pocket aces or kings, or flop a set, drop the hammer. When I play these tables, if I notice that half the time one or more people call when there is a preflop all-in, if I have AA or KK, I will go all-in preflop with these hands ... the times people call more than make up for the times they fold ... get their money in the pot before they have a chance to suck out on you. When you know you have the best of it, bet a ton, because they will call you because it's only a $2 table. I'll try to post a more extensive description of my strategy for these tables later tonight. I would recommend it only because it will quickly get your bankroll high enough to play a more realistic table like the $10NL, after which you can throw my advice out the window.

Second, I recommend learning limit poker. The reason for this is that limit is cut and dried. The correct decisions are well defined until you get to the point of needing to read and play individual players for profit. You can go over your hands and know whether you made the right play with almost complete certainty, and if you can't, you just post it here on the limit forum and the other players will let you know. The basic theoretical, mathematical knowledge of limit poker is very useful and applicable to the no-limit game. Assuming a prior background of hold-em, and a good ability to learn, and a good teacher, anyone can make $8-10 an hour at limit hold-em with a $200 bankroll with probably only a week of study a few hours a day.

Hi Xanadu:

Thanks for your advice.

I am likely already starting to try it out to a certain extent.

I guess that you've forgotten some of my way earlier posts. I used to be a limit player until I saw the light.

I played limit pretty much exclusively for almost two years.

There are some on this site who are in disagreement with my super-tight play, however, my results, thus far, speak for themself.

I have well over 11,000 hands at the $2 tables and my win rate is a decent 12/100 BB. And I'm going through a bit of a dry spell, so it should edge back up to the 15 mark in a while.

I'm going to stick to this method until 15,000 hands. Then I'm going to start playing a more aggressive style, and a bit looser, to see which way that goes. Try that for about 5000 hands or so.

I reckon that then I'll be able to compare how the different approaches work. Already, I'm loosening up on the SB and last position, calling unraised pots with suited connectors and suited aces. That flies in the face of AOK's Performance Poker advice, but it's cheap so I'll try it.

I was a bad limit player, mind you. Well for the most part I was. Mostly due to external conditions I suppose, namely too much drink. That's over now, but sitting down at a limit table just does not excite me at all anymore. And you get a lot of big time suck outs in limit, from my experience, anyhow. You just can't set the odds. That's the great appeal of NL.

Post your more detailed description of your $2 NL strategy, though. That interests me greatly.

Many thanks,

Jigs

Just one thing to add - when you get to Glasgow, don't say "Gee, it's good to be in England". You will be killed.

pfff i think you live closer to me now than you will there lol.

Are you one of those Shandy-drinkin' Southerners, then?

urghhh i dont like shandy even a little. I am a southerner though. A guinness/ale drinking southerner with the odd whisky thrown in for good measure.

Haha I like shandy and am as southern as they get - SW London born and bred Smile

(Um - what other thing, jiggus?)

Biondino, I'm sure that this is too politically incorrect, and bear in mind that my wife is often-heard saying about me, "But you hate EVERYONE," but in my experiences with the English in Holland, there is a distinct air of superiority, especially towards us "colonials". I get along, don't get me wrong, but there is that feeling. The northerners that I've met -- including the Scots -- have been far less like that, if at all.

You should have heard the poo-pooing from some when I told them that I was moving to Glasgow. And not one of the poo-pooers had even BEEN to Scotland. One of them is from Swindon for Karma's sake! How can someone from Swindon belittle Glasgow!?

I think that the Scots sense that same attitude and that's what I like about them. Can't understand 'em all the time, though.

Scots are an amazing bunch of people. All lunatics.

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