A leak of mine.

This will be my last post for the day. I played about ten hours of poker at 5 NL, 4 tables, and my bankroll came out even at the end. Huge swings and huge variance day. Up one minute, down the next, up the next, etc etc.

I think where I'm getting killed is pushes on the turn or the river. At 5 NL, people don't play according to ABC poker (they limp in with AA KK, bluff for no reason, mini bet, mini raise ahh) so its so hard to read them.

But I think we know the situation. The pot is big. You've invested quite a bit so far. Flop comes. You hit TPTK, or even worse you hit a great hand like a set. Now the turn comes. All of a sudden the player who'd been calling bets huge, or even worse goes allin with his whole stack making it terrible pot odds.

I encountered this situation at least 20 times during my ten hour session and it is the main culprit of my huge swings. I feel I have to gamble too much. On one hand, you call, and you were right, he was bluffing, and you take his stack. On the other hand he hit a miracle monster, and now you've just taken a huge hit. Or even worse (in my case) you don't know, and you just fold. Sure I can reason well if he did have the monster, I saved money, but looking back, I lost so much money from investing in the hand prior, that this situation repeating itself has added up to major loss.

Now reading some of the replies to my other HH posts, I'm seeing strategies where you push it all on the flop or on the turn..... how can I incorporate this strategy into avoiding situations like the one above? This is probably the most irking situation of all.. I hate staring at a $5 pot where I know I have TPTK (such as AK on Ah 9s 2s flop, 7s hits the turn and suddenly BAM "donk goes allin for $11.25" and I think he could have 99 22 77 97 27, or a flush, so i fold and give him the $5 pot to find he just had K7. or in other situations where I call and I actually was beat, and the guy had trips or the flush).

Ok I'm just ranting now. Goodnight

It''s up to YOU to make these players pay over the odds when they're on their draws. Hell, if you have 99 and the flop is AQ9 two hearts and they bet the pot on the flop, YOU can be the one to push! Then when top pair flush draw calls you, you will win MORE THAN TWO THIRDS OF THE TIME!

I do feel for you, up to a point. A solution of sorts is to raise almost all the hands you play pre-flop - this will hopefully get 27, 97 or K7 out of the hand and leave you slightly clearer what sort of hands your opponents may have. - or playe looser, calling for cheap pre-flop with the kind of hands that'll make lovely sexy straights and two pairs that the donks won't even begin to notice.

Remember, if you play CORRECTLY against these people, you won't just win long term but you'll win big. It sounds like you had an unlucky session - it happens (50% of the time, in fact, if we're being technical ).

Originally Posted by RevolverX

At 5 NL, people don't play according to ABC poker (they limp in with AA KK, bluff for no reason, mini bet, mini raise ahh) so its so hard to read them.

It seems like you're already catching on to improve your reads nicely. It'll be going better soon.

People keep doing this not only at 5NL, but all throughout 10NL, 20NL and 25NL. Higher up I dunno, it probably gets rarer.