Major Issue...

Ok, I used to play NLH before 'Black Friday' and was a winning player. I just got back into playing again online and decided to start off at the small stakes to get my feet wet again. Here is the problem I just noticed I've been doing and it is a MAJOR Problem. For some reason I think that my opponent has hit TP, hit trips, completed the straight that hits on the turn/river every hand I get into. I'm just being way too weak and it it is a hugh leak in my game. Anyone have any advice on getting away from this/had this problem themselves at one point?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There's no easy solution. When you don't have a good, reliable, objective process for narrowing down the likely hands your opponents hold, then you just see what you want to see (whether you're the MUBSY type or the stationy type, results may vary).

You just have to get better at hand reading. Post some hands, and post the range you put villain on for each street, and we can critique which hands you think you've got wrong and why. That's a good start.

It can also be very helpful to spend a few orbits of each session just playing one table and actually watching the action of every hand and put everyone in the hand on a range (especially the ones you're not involved in).

You will suck for a while, then you will suck less, then after hundreds of thousands of hands, you'll be at the point where you only kinda suck at it, then hopefully one day you will be grandmaster hand reader if you play your cards right.

Sorry, that's the best I can do.

There's no way to fine tune your reads/ranges without experience and playing hands.

Some ppl may disagree with me on this, but I really feel as though in the early days/lower stakes if you think you are faced with a close to 0 EV spot, I'd probably lean towards calling (as opposed to folding). Calling is probably higher variance, but it also gives you information each time.

I'm not saying to go make bad calls, but if you legitimately think it's close to 0 EV spot (which is maybe hard to know if you feel like your ranges are off), but I'd just lean towards making calls as getting this information will help you fine tune your ranges.

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Originally Posted by cjdrum

Ok, I used to play NLH before 'Black Friday' and was a winning player. I just got back into playing again online and decided to start off at the small stakes to get my feet wet again. Here is the problem I just noticed I've been doing and it is a MAJOR Problem. For some reason I think that my opponent has hit TP, hit trips, completed the straight that hits on the turn/river every hand I get into. I'm just being way too weak and it it is a hugh leak in my game. Anyone have any advice on getting away from this/had this problem themselves at one point?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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OK, this was me. Like, what you're saying is exactly the way I used to think when I started playing and I hated it. I'm not embarrassed to admit this but I almost folded 100% of the time if flush draws got there on the turn and villain double barreled - I would just give up because 'lol, he must have the flush right?'

As both surviva and Griffey have said, there isn't much you can do about it other than learn to put people on ranges and ultimately you just have to realise that people don't have the nuts (or close to) all of the time. Sometimes they're bluffing, sometimes they're over valuing their own hand, sometimes they actually have it. This is why it's important to put your opponent on a range and work out which hands make the most sense for villain to play in that way.

I hope this helps because I know exactly how you're feeling and it really isn't nice. If you wanna talk about it some more, PM me.

I can get like this during a downswing, where they just seem to have it all the time and you're bet/folding a lot when the obvious draw comes in. I end up making bad calls during these spells because "this guy can't have it again, surely?", which means that what should be a 5BI downswing escalates into 10-15BI.

Definitely sounds like it would be worth you playing around with some programs like Equilab though, so that you can see how different flops hit your opponents pre-flop calling range.