Growing as a player, getting stuckk

I know this is a pretty general topic, but how do you guys get better and grow as a player? Is it by just playing more hands, reading books, coming to the forums, etc etc?

I think I've had a good start. I started with 1 tabling $5NL and i'm currently playing 12 tables of 25NL on ps. ( Withdrew some money when I tried to work off the ps bonus ). This was last year.

This year, Jan is almost over and I don't feel like I've improved at all as a player, maybe even gotten a bit worse. My BR is definitely stuck, i have some 3-5 buyin swing days, depending on if i run good or bad, but most of the time, i'm around even, up or down a couple dollars over a session. (Usually average 1500 hands a session). My winrate is at around 0.5BB without the bonus, which I think is terrible.
I know it's still a small sample size of around 15k hands but the feeling of no growth definitely gotta stop. Right now, the only way that I'm "improving" is by just playing more hands and reviewing the sessions afterwards. I'm thinking of finishing some books, review and clean up my notes, etc etc. But is there anything else that I should do?

Any helpful input and suggestions would be great.

Thank you

Take your 12 tables, and cut them in half.

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

Take your 12 tables, and cut them in half.

Ya, this definitely is a possibility. I just moved up to 12 tables recently and that's when the win rate dropped. I was winning pretty consistently before playing 9 tables.

I've moved up to 12 because #1, i'm greedy, and #2 I wanted to improve and push myself, #3, it fits perfectly on my 27' screen, lol.

The only question I have for that suggestion is isn't pushing yourself to higher stakes and more tables an important part of growing and getting better as a player?

Originally Posted by Fedora

The only question I have for that suggestion is isn't pushing yourself to higher stakes and more tables an important part of growing and getting better as a player?

no, because a 0.5BB winrate at 25nl sucks ass. until you work on your poker game itself, you're not going to make very much regardless of stakes/number of tables (unless of course you wanna be a FPPs pro)

Originally Posted by surviva316

no, because a 0.5BB winrate at 25nl sucks ass.

lol ya, it sucks donkey ass, one of the main reasons why i'm here. I was averaging around 6.00BB/100 - 10BB/100 playing 9 tables, just the move up didn't go so well. Lost around 5 buyins first day I could definitely treat it as a failed shot, and come back to 9 tables.

I guess it wasn't the right time. I guess one more question then, when is the best time to add more tables?? I mean for moving up in stakes is set in br management, for me is move up with 20 buyins, move down when down to 15 buyins. But what are the rules for adding or getting rid of tables?

Well I'm not going to lecture you on how many tables I think you should play because it's different for everyone. Also, when approached correctly, increasing the number of tables slowly in a structured way will give you the best chance at a smooth transition.

But I'll leave you some food for thought:

Me playing about 5-8 tables of 100nl FR:




Me playing anywhere from 9 or 10 to 20 tables of 100nl FR:




PLAYING TOO MANY TABLES DOES NOT DO ANYTHING FOR YOU BESIDES ENHANCE FPP ACCUMULATION (which in my case it was necessary at the time though it did set me back from my other goals and now it's back to the drawing board and working on moving up)

In short, don't play so many tables when first taking on a new stake. Wait till you've grinded it out for a bit and gotten familiar with it all, then perhaps attempt to make more money playing more tables when you feel ready to move up to pad your bankroll. Just be careful because sometimes you may end up making less.

Also, playing too many tables (pretty much proven here ^) will decrease your edge thus increasing your variance thus increasing your frustration! Which leads to tilt/spew/autopiloting, you name it. Being pissed off, making snap decisions, and not focusing isn't really a great way to learn poker. Something to note is each sample size isn't huge, but do act as a general indicator that play less tables = learn and move up smoother.

Now if only I didn't have those few mass tabling sessions at 200nl

20 tabling is pure insanity. I won't play more than 6 FR tables because any more than that I go on auto-robotic mode and I fail to look at stack sizes and other fundamental bullshit.

But hey, if you want to grow as a player, playing more hands is obvious but not at the expense of stunting your growth. Put more study time in. Review your sessions like a mad man, no excuses. Opinions may vary, but if you're not really improving much, splitting your play and study time at 50/50 wouldn't be a bad idea.

Play more hands: yes. Play more hands in shorter amount of time by multi-tabling: no.

You don't learn anything except how to click faster when you massively table before you're ready for it. I started at 4 tried 6 and then 8. My winrate was fucking horrible at 8 and variance was massive. I dropped back to 6 and am now around a 10-12ptbb/100. Why sacrifice over 6ptbb for more fpps? Real money > fpps.

Increase your study time. Whether that results in putting in more overall hours, and maintaining the same play time, or decreasing your playing time, just so you can incrasee study time while putting int he same overall hours.

Playing hands is great with getting experience, and experience can take you a long way. But I remember watching a vid that explains this very well. A poker player can be looked at as a ship builder, and his poker game/strategy as the ship. Humans will diverge towards perfection over time as they seemingly self-correcting beings (learn from mistakes, etc). With unlimited time and experience you will diverge towards building the perfect ship (aka playing perfect poker). However, with ample theory/strategy studying, that's like being given the blueprints to building the ship. It can greatly reduce your time by learning to do something right away from the table and applying it at the table, rather than putting in countless hours at the table learning for correcting your mistakes. Not to mention away from the table the added pressures of monetary gain/loss, pressure, stress, is null, and you can think about a situation more objectively, clearly, emotionless, and make more correct decions, while retaining more information.

So while getting in hands is important to improving, I think it's one of the least effective ways of improving imo. Sit down with a session you have played previously and review the hell out of it. Looks at every hand if you must. Is this a profitable open from HJ? Should I be calling this guys open on the BU with this hand? If not with this hand, what range is profitable to call with, and why? What is the EV of this flop cbet facing this particular villain given this assumed range? Learn to answer those questions away from the table, so when faced with similar situations during game time you have a sense of familiarity, and when faced with a difficult situation, you know what you must do to understand this particular situation.

Originally Posted by XxStacksxX

Increase your study time. Whether that results in putting in more overall hours, and maintaining the same play time, or decreasing your playing time, just so you can incrasee study time while putting int he same overall hours.

Playing hands is great with getting experience, and experience can take you a long way. But I remember watching a vid that explains this very well. A poker player can be looked at as a ship builder, and his poker game/strategy as the ship. Humans will diverge towards perfection over time as they seemingly self-correcting beings (learn from mistakes, etc). With unlimited time and experience you will diverge towards building the perfect ship (aka playing perfect poker). However, with ample theory/strategy studying, that's like being given the blueprints to building the ship. It can greatly reduce your time by learning to do something right away from the table and applying it at the table, rather than putting in countless hours at the table learning for correcting your mistakes. Not to mention away from the table the added pressures of monetary gain/loss, pressure, stress, is null, and you can think about a situation more objectively, clearly, emotionless, and make more correct decions, while retaining more information.

So while getting in hands is important to improving, I think it's one of the least effective ways of improving imo. Sit down with a session you have played previously and review the hell out of it. Looks at every hand if you must. Is this a profitable open from HJ? Should I be calling this guys open on the BU with this hand? If not with this hand, what range is profitable to call with, and why? What is the EV of this flop cbet facing this particular villain given this assumed range? Learn to answer those questions away from the table, so when faced with similar situations during game time you have a sense of familiarity, and when faced with a difficult situation, you know what you must do to understand this particular situation.

dogisheadsup om nom nom

solid advice, I'd like to ad that when you DO play, you should be thinking about all your options in EVERY hand and WHY you choose one line over another etc. Explain it to yourself out loud and be ready to catch flaws in your reasoning. Doing all this study away from the table is essential to moving up at a reasonable pace with confidence. Just remember that when you do play, you've got lots of information stored in your brain from all that study and in order to apply it correctly, you're going to need time to think through each of your decisions. (you have more time to think/re-evaluate 6 tabling than you do 12 tabling). I agree that getting in tons of hands isn't the most effective way to get better (I'm sure we all can) but of course you do have to play and apply that knowledge, and the best way to apply it CORRECTLY is to be very aware of what you're doing, and playing fewer tables should increase this awareness and allow you to consciously apply everything you've learned. While playing fewer tables and spending less time playing/more time studying may feel as though you aren't really going anywhere at first (because omg you aren't playing 2436375737 hands!), but you'll realize over the long run you will surpass many players at your stake that refuse to open a book and learn about pwning nubs the easy way.

fwiw every 20 tabling 25nl reg I've played with back in June is well, still a 20 tabling 25nl reg, with maybe the exception of 1 or 2 who just happen to be very efficient learners.

Another thing that will probably be beneficial is to just start criticizing your play more. I know you feel stuck, and was able to admit that you don't feel like you have improved, and even created a thread to get advice/help, which is great.

However, you also stated that in your OP that you "have some 3-5 buyin swing days, depending on if i run good or bad". Which is fine, it will happen that way some of the time. You will have negative 3-5 buyin sessions, positive 3-5 buyin sessions, and loads of other kinds of sessions. Sometimes it can be attributed to running good or running bad. But a lot of other times it can be attributed to playing good or playing bad. And the amount won is not positively correlated to how well you played. There will be times when you play well, that things don't go your way, and you run bad. But there will also be times when you end up 3-5 buyins that you made loads of mistakes. It's pretty important to be able to objectively view the situation and be honest with yourself about your play in any given session. Losing 5 buyins only to say "I played well, just ran like shit" can leave you not reviewing sessions as intimately as needed because you don't think you made mistakes.

I saw this kind of thinking first hand when I discussed poker with my dad. In a lot of cases he was quick to describe his winning sessions by saying "He played well, and ran decent", while when describing losing sessions would start with how badly he ran. It will work out that way sometimes, but not always.

Wow, thanks for all the advice guys. I definitely should question every action more, I haven't been doing that as much with 12 tabling. I also haven't opened a book in awhile, so that might be another good change.

So everyone basically mentioned learning, what sort of learning are we talking about here? Is it mainly just reviewing my sessions? Or maybe reading or rereading a good book, etc.

And yes, I'm definitely dropping from 12 tables, not sure to 6 or 9 yet, since I had a decent win rate at 9. I think i will drop down to 6 just to get used to questioning every decision and then moving back up when things are getting slow again.

And tks again

Drop to 1 table. Play half an hour (probably all folds) and try to put every opponent on a range of hands every time they act. Try to put them on ranges of hands before they act, so when they act you already know what part of their range you think they are on.

I'm not saying play 1 table. I'm saying - a brief (1/2-1 hour) study session with hand reading on just one table is definitely an exercise that is worthwhile carrying out and repeating. You can still do a multi-table session once in a while, but definitely cut down from 12. Don't commit to 9, 6, 4 or some other numbers, but try the extreme (1), note the lessons and reads you can establish, and try to determine how much of that is possible with each given multiple of tables and decide based on that (how much you lose with multiple tables) exactly how may tables you want to play on every single session taken into account how much you want to learn this session, how much you want to earn this session and how you are feeling etc.

Practice critically assessing what you are capable of and take that into account for every session you play. Don't just open up 12 tables because you're a player who plays 12 tables. That should not define you.

Some other possibilities.


Play four or fewer tables and spend all your free time writing player notes, or doing hand reading when you are not in the hand. Cut and paste interesting hands from instant HH onto word processor print them out and study them.


You can pick a particular opp, do deep player notes and interesting hands just for that opp.


Get inside his head.