Graveyard for Fun Hands

K I don t think I can take it anymore. Lost 3 consecutive AI's pre w pairs in LP wars vs Ax where "x" was lower than my pair. After that got set-over-setted and lost a 70-30 at plo600 as I was shutting down my tables.

I suppose I have no choice but to take a break and clear my head. I really can't fathom doing that right now since the games are so good and my game feels good, but it's unlikely I'm playing as well as I think I am when running so terribly.

Since Monday (mostly in euros, so about 1.7x worse than it looks) :



The other thing that is mindblowing is that most of this has felt like I've been playing great, finding good spots to bluff and betting well for value vs the regs who give me no credit.

So disgusted right now. I'm extra embarassed at taking a "break to clear my head" because this I'm coming off a nearly 1 month period where I hardly played, so I felt fresh and pumped. I've been really disciplined about eating and sleeping right, etc.

All I want is to wallow in self-pîty and disgust right now.

what running bad looks like over my past 20k ish hands :

oh my god thats brutal...

just bustoe'd too sorry couldn't get u out of this shit, i tried real hard tho

damn dude, that graph is gross

somehow lost AI pre AA to 68s and then AI on flop with overs and flushdraw to an over and a gutter right at the end of my session, but played exclusively 1-2 and 2-4 and made about 15 buyins in 3k hands today

felt good.

today s session went fine and I played great, made some huge folds that I feel were correct and just overall played great.

until I unclicked "auto-post blinds"



*sigh*

I don' tknow if its bad but I don't even usually finish my orbits. If I'm quitting.. I just sit out everywhere and that's it.

I've had too many bad things happen in the last orbits on tables!

Just played an awesome session.

Got AI pre w AA twice at 2-5 pound tables and lost both times to KK, then got AI w KK vs AKo 130bb s deep at 2-5 pounds and managed to lose that one as well, then lost KK to TT ai pre at 2-4 pounds so... lost my 4 biggest preflop pots of the day, everytime dominating and still managed to make money.

one of these days...

yesterday was just the same old. played about 3k hands and played goot but lost moniez through tons of coolers, seemingly always in gross spots with my big hands, etc.

oh well. rav railed me and he was pretty amazed at how bad i m running bad said he thought things looked good overall.

god some kind of heavy news about a friend that put things in perspective. i m lucky to be able to get worried about trivial things like poker variance. overall i m comfortable and happy. just gonna keep grinding baby.

man me and you have had the most epic downswings...my -36k at 2/4 and 3/6 (something like 74 buyins) and yours is now at least as bad as that. Sooo sick there is definitely something we do wrong during these times but it's also a lesson in variance. I've had 80% winning sessions this month and i doubt i'm playing better than you.

wow just when I think i am all zen about things and philosophical I have yet another session like today

i was skyping with a buddy and as I told him what was happening he just kept saying "really? u sure you re not exaggerating?"

KK just simply refuses to hold vs AK ai preflop

straights and flushes refuse to hold vs sets

then hands happen like this :

A pretty nitty and bad player raises the CO, I 3 bet AQs on the btn.

Flop is J88 rainbow, I have Ad for backdoor flush. I know that his calling range OOP has pretty much zero 8x hands, also that he s passive enough that he won t be raising Jx for value on this flop.

I c bet my usual 55 or 60% pot and he quickly raises about 2.5x.

I tank and shove and he INSTA calls w AKo and I lose my biggest pot of the day.

I mean, seriously, how the fuck does that happen. Obviously it s high variance, but he simply can t have anything. He s not the type of player who would fast play flopped top boat or quads... Just pretty much typical of how things are going right now.

i like your op
i don't like that you're running bad, run better please

seriously.

your recent posts have made any moaning about variance from me seem kinda pathetic, so I haven't been moaning too much = I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing?

One comment/suggestion - focus on keeping on playing well, tilted buyins are expensive.
I've been working a bunch on avoiding downswing-enhancing-tilt (kinda like steroids for those crazy luge kids). Mostly to avoid mashing buttons too quickly (case in point below). Keep playing well, avoid mistakes that compound the downswing, and stick it to the variance machine...

$0.50/$1 No Limit Holdem
3 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
BTN ($183.65)
SB ($140)
Hero ($117.70)

Pre-Flop: ($1.50, 3 players) Hero is BB
BTN calls $1, SB folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($2.50, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $2.50, Hero calls $2.50

Turn: ($7.50, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $7.50, Hero raises to $21, BTN goes all-in $180.15, Hero goes all-in $93.20

River: ($301.85, 2 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: $301.85
Hero shows

BTN shows


BTN wins $299.85 (net +$116.20)

Hero lost $118.70

you re absolutely right about focusing about playing well rather than whining and bitching

the thing is, I keep my "real life" pretty disconnected from my poker results and spitting out whatever whining I have cooped up inside in this blog helps ensure that poker tilt doesn t become full-blown life tilt. also, for the past 4 or 5 sessions, i feel that i ve done a really good job of just patiently focusing on the hands in front of me.

it s funny; getting sucked out on doesn t tilt me at all. making plays that seem bad immediately after i ve made them tilts the fuck out of me. i don t feel like i ve made too many of those lately, so whatever poker tilt comes my way usually only hits me after I look at my results and realize that I played well and just lost the equivalent of a decent used car.

random blog promise to myself :

until I have 3 consecutive winning sessions, I will not make 1 single high variance play. i know that i m a winner in the games I play even when I play my very nittiest poker possible. it s not as profitable long term to avoid spots where I can fold out lots of hands in high-variance shoves and preflop 4 betting and river bluff check raises... nor is it as much fun.

but

i need to stop the bleeding in a huge way, both for my BR cushion and just to gain some momentum

Soooooo... nothign high variance. 3 sessions in the black.

then i can have fun again making money.

Originally Posted by Genitruc

...then i can have fun again making money.

I've just now noticed the slogan to the right of the banner at the top of this website. :P

decided to grind for an hour or so after thinking seriously about taking a day off to just clear my head

instead, I fired up a few 1-2 tables and then saw a whale at a 3-6 table with one weak reg playing him

I played 7 hands.

3rd hand, I overcalled from the BB w JTdd, flop K73ddd, gg vs Q9dd.

7th hand I overcall 33 from bb (in both hands I have pos on fish)

flop T63 rainbow, I check call

Turn Q bringin heart FD, I check shove and lose to QQ gg.

someone plz tell me why these two hands both happened at the only 3-6 euro (5-10$ pretty much) table I was sitting at?

Solid 114 hand session.

played 2 more short sessions tonight, both of which consisted of winning a buyin right away and them getting sucked out on and coolered for multiple buyins immediately afterwards, causing me to just say fk it and shut things down.

For the first time in a long time, I'm worried that this downswing is affecting my long-term drive to play poker.

Short sessions/long sessions, PLO/NL, Cash/donkaments, mass-tabling/ 2-tabling, late-night vs donks/midday vs regs, high stakes/low stakes, high variance and aggro/low variance and nitty... it seems like none of it matters. All I can do is lose, lose and lose some more.

The spectre of slowly grinding it all back up is so disgusting that I don't even want to think about it at the moment. Moving way down (something like playing exclusively 1-2 for awhile) seems ridiculous since the games are so good.

I guess I'm just at a loss. All of the traditional solutions (take ***gasp*** ANOTHER break from poker, move way down in stakes, etc) just seem pointless and absurd. The only solution to my problem is to stop losing with sets to overpairs, to stop running KK into AA pre, to stop constantly losing to people's 2 outs when I get AI pre w AA, to stop getting flushed out, to stop getting set-over-setted and flush-over-flushed vs donks who play top pair like it's the nuts...

You can see where this is going. The sick thing is, I know I only need a couple winning sessions to put this behind me. Last week I had ONE normal, decent winning session and was all ready to get back on the horse, only to get fucked in the ass every single time I sat at the tables after that.

I'm not special because of this epic and massive downswing, but it's far and away the grossest losing sample I've ever experienced or witnessed in what I'd guess to be close to 2 million hands of played, railed, coached and sweated online poker. So it's incredibly hard for me to keep the faith, to stay focused and to keep my poker tilt out of the rest of my life.

gah i hate even writing this but

no poker this week

started up a session for 1st time in 8 days, felt like my mind was clear, ready to own etc



at least I lasted 600 hands this time before tilt-shutting own my cpu

and just like that, i feel like i m right back in the swamp of "i can t win at poker"

man i srsly don t know what the solution is. i sit down, play 600 hands and lose w 444 vs a turned gutter in a reraised pot in a blind war, AK on A52 board in a 4 bet pot, TT vs KK in a LP squeeze war vs a monkey, AK on A hi board in a rr pot... and this is AFTER moving down and playing the donks at 1-2.

i know this shit happens, but how the fk do I drop 6 buyins IMMEDIATELY after taking a long fucking break. Most of these sessions are the kind of things that happen once in 7 or once in 8 sessions.

And they just happen EVERY FUCKING TIME i fire up a few tables.

it just seems like there s simply no solution

playing below 1-2 would be completely absurd, i ve taken 3 separate breaks of 5-10 days in the past month... nothing works.

I just have to say, that I share your pain at the moment...

I probably have a milder case of it though... anyway, fuck poker

enjoy life though

ya at least I ve got the last part working pretty well lately

hopefully that will spill over...

thx for the posts guys. might seem trivial, but i appreciate it.

At the risk of sounding like a massive douche (which i am not):

Are you a winning player in the games you are playing during this run?

Why not drop not to nl100 and work on your game (and more importantly your confidence and love of poker)?

Saying ''playing below 1-2 would be completely absurd'' is a stupid attitude which can do nothing but cause problems, either now or further down the road.

Just because you have to move to nl100 doesnt mean you have to stay there. Just move there, crush the games, then move up again. If you cant crush the games at nl100 then at least you wont be losing at nl200, and if you can crush the games at nl100 then it doesnt matter, you will be back at nl200 and then nl400 in no time

haha no worries about douchebaggery loser, thx for the post.

the sick thing about this run is that it s taken place in such a short span of hands. since I try to play less when I'm losing, it feels like it s been going on forever (in terms of actual real-life days) when it's actually a really small sample (approx 30k hands).

I'm somewhere between a 5 and 7 ptbb/100 winner at nl200 over about a zillion hands spread over various DB's and sites and am sitting with 100ish buyins online right now so, yeah, it would feel absurd playing lower than that. I'd only "moved down" for about 2.5k hands lol and was feeling absurd when the swong simply got worse, not better.

You are absolutely right about confidence being more imnportant than expectation (at least that's what i think you were saying) during a shitty run and if i really began to question myself at a limit like nl200 i d definitely move down.

yes that is what i meant.

I can only speak from personal experience, and of course everyone is different, but on bad runs i find it helpful to move down to nl100 and put in sick volume there for a while. Once i have regained confidence there I will move back up to the stakes where i should be playing. Of course, this makes no sense from a mathamatical point of view BUT it makes sense from a physcological point of view.

Consider this, after you grind nl100 for a month, when you then move back to nl400 it seems to be alot higher stakes than it would do if you hadnt been grinding nl100 for a while. This, in turn, focuses the mind. You almost get a buzz. This has worked for me many times, but obviously its not for everyone

I didnt realise it was such a small sample, in that case stop being a nit a grind out of it :P:P

thx man.

btw, where the fk are you playing these days?

Originally Posted by Genitruc

thx man.

btw, where the fk are you playing these days?

Pretty much since the end of crypto i was full time at boss 400 euro (with some 100 euro when i needed confidence). A few hands on other sites but nothing major

Just made the move to mtt's though.

I think we played a few hands on boss, although not alot

donkaments?

i think that just put me on tilt for you.

Thanks again for chiming in and gl shoving J8o with a 6bb stack from the CO!

Originally Posted by Genitruc

Thanks again for chiming in and gl shoving J8o with a 6bb stack from the CO!

tsk tsk thats a fold 9-handed ldo

Originally Posted by Genitruc

donkaments?

i think that just put me on tilt for you.

Thanks again for chiming in and gl shoving J8o with a 6bb stack from the CO!

J8s i prob shove

my donkament carrer prob wont last long and then i will be back donating in cash prob

Originally Posted by Loser18

Originally Posted by Genitruc

donkaments?

i think that just put me on tilt for you.

Thanks again for chiming in and gl shoving J8o with a 6bb stack from the CO!

J8s i prob shove

my donkament carrer prob wont last long and then i will be back donating in cash prob

someone keep me posted when this happens, and I'll make my return to whichever euro site need be!

If ravageur wasn't on there, I might have returned already.

holy fuck

played a decent session this aft, made about 3k in about 1.6k hands

i let the good feeling sink in for a few hours.

then just fired up 3 tables, 1 nl200 and and 2 nl300 and played about 350 hands (laptop away from HEM)

the big pots were :

set-over-set on AT4 fd flop

flopped flush over flopped flush

turned boat vs turned bigger boat (JT vs KJ on TJJK board)

QQ down in flames to KJs AI pre

AK loses twice to QJ for 50bb s then 100 bb s vs same fish

and the "shut down" hand was losing another fullstack w AQ vs 68 on A59 to backdoored flush in rr pot vs the QJ guy

i m not making this up. little over an hour of 3 tabling.

good fucking game.

but at least I kind of feel zen about it right now for some reason

but you won overall though right?

and just to put the nail in the coffin

i took a quick peak before shutting things down and found the big fish from earlier sitting at 2-4 plo

1st hand I play I pick up AAQ9 dbl suited in the BB and the action goes CO raise BTN 3 bets, fish cold-calls from SB, I 4 bet 60% of my stack

btn folds and fish calls

flop 799 with diamond FD for me I smile as fish snaps my shove. I make my nut flush on turn to go with my top trips but frown when the almost 1k euro pot is shipped to the fish's KQ77

but i m still smiling so wtv

if only he hadn t insta-left I could ve been happinly grinding 1 table of plo dammit

Today's session was tainted by shoving AQo from the button with a 7th place chipstack in the daily big rebuy on interpoker and getting called by JTo and losing with 16 ppl left... 1st prize was 11k and with such a top heavy payout I cashed for 400$ lol

Oh well at least I played some cash (almost all 1-2 with a little 2-5 mixed in) :

past 2 days :

YES

eww playing a late night session vs some fish and just lost AA to TT ai pre 200bb s deep then AKs in 4 bet pot on K53fd board 170bb s deep at some higher stakes

bleh there goes 5k really quicly

oh well just reviewed the session and i m really happy with how i played.

i was at great tables vs fish who were playing terribly and just got 2 outered for the biggest pot of the night and then had a guy call 55 oop in a 4 bet pot after I had 4 bet him 5 times and bink the 25Kfd flop vs my AKs.

the fish were playing higher and i know this is a risk of playing these crazy late-night sessions where you have three 65/25 players at every table yet somehow end up just getting coolered by the regs.

it looked something like this :

ooooh it s a few minutes after that horrendous session and I feel completely calm and peaceful, not the slightest bit tilted, eager to get back to playing tomorrow and sunday

whatever the results of the next few days, sure feels like i m back.

bleh played pretty well during today s session, got it in 3 times w QQ vs AK and lost all 3 hands (all at only 2-4 table I was playing) and got coolered couple times and sucked out blahblahblah good bye 3k that I didn t feel like losing.

meh meh meh

bleh bleh and more bleh

god it s hard to win a flip right now

unfortunately, i m back to feeling like i have to manufacture winning sessions, rather than let the money come to me.

can t win a flip, can t hold a 60-40, can t avoid running into top set whenever i make a move in a rr pot...

this is what that feels like :

since nov 1

annoying :

whoaaaaaaa that session should ve been huuuuuge

but alas, a few massive 2-outers at the end = fk me and small loss

highlight was AI on turn for 1.6k pot w 88 vs A8 on AKQ8 board, riv A obv

also somehow AK managed to lose AI 150bb s deep vs a 5 bet shove of K9o???

wtv played really goot today not much i can do

wow that since nov 1st graph is so sick.. ughhhh

New year coming up.. time for things to turn!

amen

posting ev lines from boss isnt relevent though is it? cos u dont see mucked hands

Originally Posted by Loser18

posting ev lines from boss isnt relevent though is it? cos u dont see mucked hands

So the EV only represents the hands that hero lost, cause those are the only hands where both hands are known?

Originally Posted by griffey24

Originally Posted by Loser18

posting ev lines from boss isnt relevent though is it? cos u dont see mucked hands

So the EV only represents the hands that hero lost, cause those are the only hands where both hands are known?

makes sense to me. So thats still running bad. But that means his runbad can be even worse if hes running under EV on the hands he won?

Originally Posted by Alexos

Originally Posted by griffey24

Originally Posted by Loser18

posting ev lines from boss isnt relevent though is it? cos u dont see mucked hands

So the EV only represents the hands that hero lost, cause those are the only hands where both hands are known?

makes sense to me. So thats still running bad. But that means his runbad can be even worse if hes running under EV on the hands he won?

that's one of the funniest lines i've read on FTR

ya the light green EV line isn t really relevant

i m still definitely running way under EV but it s impossible to know exactly how much on boss

the relevant thing is more that the maniez are disappearing!

Originally Posted by daven

Originally Posted by Alexos

Originally Posted by griffey24

Originally Posted by Loser18

posting ev lines from boss isnt relevent though is it? cos u dont see mucked hands

So the EV only represents the hands that hero lost, cause those are the only hands where both hands are known?

makes sense to me. So thats still running bad. But that means his runbad can be even worse if hes running under EV on the hands he won?

that's one of the funniest lines i've read on FTR

lmao, ya i thought it made sense at the time. failed

no no... i liked what you said the 1st time!

Originally Posted by Genitruc

ya the light green EV line isn t really relevant

i m still definitely running way under EV but it s impossible to know exactly how much on boss

the relevant thing is more that the maniez are disappearing!

ya only 1 line matters really!

All this talk of 'lines' and 'going down'... Sounds like a recipe for a good time > Video

fuck meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

played about 5 sessions since last update, each one should have been huge but because of gross coolers and suckouts towards the end of 3 of them ended up being breakevenish

now tonight I m way up, sitting at some amazing tables and then the fking doomswitch hits and all of a sudden there goes another fucking skislope to hell. prob a good thing i m not playing with HEM tonight because I think reviewing the session would just make me wanna throw up.

but, in other news, I think I played great. make a few awesome calldowns (despite not being a station throughout the session).

the big pots I lost were 3-betting small with air on a dry KJ3r flop to a tagg's small flop raise and shoving a turned gutter for just under pot. vs the villain in question I think the turn shove is profitable once I get there since I expect him to be 4-betting the flop with sets, on top of the fact that he just folds to the flop 3 bet a ton. he also shows up with unpaired big cards quite a bit (QT, AJ, AT) that were tempted to call the flop when I basically clicked it back.

He had KJo gg.

Next big hand was getting it in w TT vs A4s on a 49Tr flop (not joking) and obv lost to the binked 4 on the riv, then losing w over and NFD to the 1 flopped set that villain could have, then blahblahblahblahblahblahblah....

Originally Posted by Genitruc

Next big hand was getting it in w TT vs A4s on a 49Tr flop (not joking) and obv lost to the binked 4 on the turn & riv...

FYP

lol, i meant 489 flop bleh

been playing great games lately, incredibly swingy and still running pretty shitty... can t win any flips at plo and had AA cracked HU in a 4 bet pot 250bb s deep while playing a juicy 3-6 game last night.

it ll come.

I think I've logged more quality hands in the past 24 hours than any single day up to this point.

I made a little bit, but it could've been a big bit were it not for 3 for 11 in flips on the flop at 3-6 PLO and losing my single biggest pot of the day by getting it in 200bb s deep at 3-6 NL w 33 on 7378 board vs KK (obv river K).

I'm back to playing everything up to 3-6 and if this week goes well, I'll be back to 5-10 in no time.

also, i think i have to seriously consider the possibility that i m a bigger winner while 7-9 tablign on my laptop with a shitty touchpad and no HEM than at my desktop "office"-style setup with a couple more tables and all of info HEM delivers.

I just always seem to play good without HEM and run like death whenever I take the time to use HEM.

massive, epic sessions over the past few days...

my 3 biggets pots are gross suckouts where i lost but i at least feel like things are kind of normal. i ve been winning at a decent clip, although it sure feels like i should be raping every table i m at. feel like my plo game is much better and NL game feels on point.

i ve been playing tons of poiker since christmas eve on my trusty old laptop without HEM.

this setup suits me, since i just follow the fish without really worrying about anything besides taking the easy money. around this time of year plenty of people are just playing casually and the games ahve been amazing.

too bad i ve run worse than death over this period, but i m having fun playing for the first time in a long time. just as well that i don t have tons of hands to post to get sympathy. it s just horseshit that doesn t really do anything but slow down my jump to higher games. nothign i can control really. i haven t tilted or made anger-based decisions during this entire run of 6-8 hours/day.

when my run normal or run good kicks back in, things will be nice.

ugh

the plo games have been mind-boggling over the past few days. i ve sat in some great games and played really well, making some adjustments i don t think i saw anybody else making vs the bad players. over this stretch i ve lost 4 of the 5 biggest pots I ve played (between 700 and 1000bb s), 3 of which i have 75% + equity when I got it in (pretty tough to do in plo). The worst was getting it in w AQJJ vs a laggtard's TT23 on 557 board for 800bb s at 3-6 plo and losing to the running straight.

these are super high-variance games, very dangerous to my sense of momentum and my bankroll, but they are just so juicy that i feel that it would be a huge EV mistake long-term to pass them up.

poker is just sad right now for me.

i keep losing 500 bb pots with the effective nuts vs fish at high stakes, crushing my roll and all of my momentum. games are amazing, i m playin great, game selecting great and managing thigns great. just can t stop losing mind blowing hands.

tonight s highlights (besides losign KK to AJo AI pre 180bb s deep) was losing w 57dd in a 3 bet pot in pos 250bb s deep after raising a 57K rainbow flop and bet-calling a Td turn that gave me 2pr +FD.

villain, a winning reg, bet-called 7To on the flop and turned 2 pair to stack me.

back to the action today

felt really good overall. got owned pretty badly in 1 spot vs a reg who 4-bet snapped off my 5 bet shove w AQ in a spot where i thought he d be polarized and folding a ton (i had KQ gg)

besides that, took a stand vs a 91/17 once and ran into his turned flush, then lost a 70-30 at plo for 800bb s



one of my objectives for the next little while is to keep my focus at a maximum. i was gonna whine about the downswing at the end of my session and blame it on fatigue but tbh it was just b.s. while playing great games and getting fucked over. today was almost all 1-2. meh.

fuck poker