Back to the drawing board, advise please..

[joshuadzl]

My last 6 months have been all over the board. I was up a bit, back to even due to playing outside of my BR, then down.. down.. and down more. As I stand I'm down about just over a grand as I'm writing this.

The month of November I was playing some of my best 4 table poker online at the .25NL tables. December hits, I go on vacation come back and start playing .50NL and go on a rough streak. B&M I've hit a rough streak as well, which is where most my loses come from. My bankroll has gone from $750 down to about $600. I've decided to go back to .25NL since my BR no longer supports .50NL. I suppose thats what I get for playing .50NL with a marginal BR for it.

The one thing that I am shining at lately though is my tournament play. I've locked up over $600 in winnings (to offset the horrible couple months of ring play) in the last month alone. My results are always consistent for Sit N Gos and MTTs. I always play to win though, never for just ITM.

I guess I'm just looking for advice on where I should go. First off I'm moving from FullTilt to PokerStars. I still have some bonus to clear on FullTilt which I'm working on once thats done I'm moving striaght to Stars for a bit of a change. I'm done with live play at my Local B&M for a while until I get back to even.

Overall, as long as I've been tracking poker, my most profitable play is tournament play. The thing I'm scared about though is if I start playing strictly SNG's and MTTs that I'll begin playing to be ITM rather than winning. Entirely depending on tournament play for my BR kind of intimidates me. Should I just stick with .25NL for a while? What do you guys think? My view of tournament play for BR building a bit skewed?

I will say that my big loses come from putting my money in with the best of it, but its cost me to the point where now I'm outside my BR.

thanks..

[Fnord]

So you're running really hot in MTTs and pretty bad in the ring. Meh.

[Miffed22001]

ARe you multi tabling 25nL?
if so go back to one table and check your HH's and stats and double/triple check you have no leaks.
I dont think tourny play is bad if its your sole way to make cash for your Br

[joshuadzl]

ARe you multi tabling 25nL?
if so go back to one table and check your HH's and stats and double/triple check you have no leaks.
I dont think tourny play is bad if its your sole way to make cash for your Br

I am multitabling the .25NL. I'm still studying my HH daily and every day I find leaks. Its something I've been doing a lot lately. I haven't been busting on losing a lot of hands. Its been big hand vs little all in situations. I honestly can't say once out of side of the thread I posted about hitting two aces on the board in the last two months I've pushed without having the best of it. I've just been getting extremely unlucky. I have leaks that have been making me lose 20% of buyins on tables though, that is something I work daily towards trying to improve.

[drmcboy]

MTTs - not good for building roll. Play small buyins as a treat now and then. Expect -ROI.

SNGs - perfectly good for building roll. Play at your roll AND comfort level. If you single table and you put 500ish on starts, I would start with the turbo 15s looking to move to 20s or 25 Turbos pretty quickly if you're up.

Once you get above 1k, mix in more MTTs.

On your "Will I stop playing to win"... you don't really expect anyone to answer that but you?

[joshuadzl]

What does turbo mean? I'm at work and can't login to stars to look.

[salt3d]

Turbo = blinds up every 5 minutes.

[joshuadzl]

Almost sounds like a crapshoot? Give it a shot I suppose..

[Pelion]

for the love of god dont play turbos. They seem to be about pushing any hand with an A in after you get past about the first 20 minutes.

[Miffed22001]

from what ive seen of turbo's if you have an post flop skill above 'turd' level then play normal sng's
I would say that though, i think sng's are the badgers leftovers

[samsonite2100]

I'm gonna throw my completely subjective and probably ill-informed .02 in here. I've been single-tabling 5 .5/11 SnGs for about 2 months now and have twice built a BR from 25 to over 200 (first time, I withdrew. This time, I have goals and am keeping the money for poker).

I've also played some ring in this time, and have found it to be wildly variant. Some times, you plop down 5 bucks and walk away twenty minutes later up 50. Other times, you correctly call an all-in and get destroyed. Now, having read some of the long-term posters' opinions, my impression is that that's just the way lower limit rings are. You cannot push people off hands--they will go down with their sweet, sweet low pair, or whatever.

My point being, I find SnGs, at least the cheap ones, tend to proportionately reward skill more than cheap rings. At the lower levels, players tend to want to push constantly--with SnGs, this type of maniacal style results in many bust-outs early, with the occasional 1st--in general, they don't seem to reward bad play quite as much, or maybe they don't punish good play.

Then again, it may just be that I'm tempermentally suited to SnGs. I like having a clear goal, and I like how many opportunities the SnG format offers donks to commit hari-kari.

[Pelion]

SnGs are great. Turbo SnGs are crapshoots.

[m3laNcholy]

Double post.

[m3laNcholy]

I will say that my big loses come from putting my money in with the best of it, but its cost me to the point where now I'm outside my BR.

How can that be?

I haven't been busting on losing a lot of hands. Its been big hand vs little all in situations. I honestly can't say once out of side of the thread I posted about hitting two aces on the board in the last two months I've pushed without having the best of it. I've just been getting extremely unlucky. I have leaks that have been making me lose 20% of buyins on tables though, that is something I work daily towards trying to improve.

Although "being unlucky" for 2 months seems a little extreme to me, let luck even out and keep working on fixing that leaks.

Other times, you correctly call an all-in and get destroyed. Now, having read some of the long-term posters' opinions, my impression is that that's just the way lower limit rings are. You cannot push people off hands--they will go down with their sweet, sweet low pair, or whatever.

Dont expect to find many spots when playing poker that you call all-in being a 100% favorite. That why "sometimes" you correctly call an all-in and "get destroyed" (i.e. lose a buy-in, bust off a tournament). Correctly calling all-ins is how you make money, unless math is rigged or sth.

And about people hanging on to their sweet low pairs. Let them do it. Just make sure that you dont have an unpaired Ace King when you go to showdown with them. A player who held onto a small pair when you had no pair didn't necessarily make a bad play, DUCY?

[samsonite2100]

Dont expect to find many spots when playing poker that you call all-in being a 100% favorite. That why "sometimes" you correctly call an all-in and "get destroyed" (i.e. lose a buy-in, bust off a tournament). Correctly calling all-ins is how you make money, unless math is rigged or sth.

And about people hanging on to their sweet low pairs. Let them do it. Just make sure that you dont have an unpaired Ace King when you go to showdown with them. A player who held onto a small pair when you had no pair didn't necessarily make a bad play, DUCY?

Yes, you're absolutely right, of course. I think, as I said, SnGs suit my style or temperment more. I suspect there's more money to be made at any level playing ring, but you have to be able to absorb bigger swings--something I'm not good at psychologically. I like the small goal aspect of SnGs and the fact that calling an all-in only puts a tiny fraction of your bankroll at stake. This was all by way of saying that IMO he should go back to SnGs to build up his BR.

[joshuadzl]

I will say that my big loses come from putting my money in with the best of it, but its cost me to the point where now I'm outside my BR.

How can that be?

I haven't been busting on losing a lot of hands. Its been big hand vs little all in situations. I honestly can't say once out of side of the thread I posted about hitting two aces on the board in the last two months I've pushed without having the best of it. I've just been getting extremely unlucky. I have leaks that have been making me lose 20% of buyins on tables though, that is something I work daily towards trying to improve.

Although "being unlucky" for 2 months seems a little extreme to me, let luck even out and keep working on fixing that leaks.

I know it sounds unrealistic. I've gone back and looked and relooked over my notes from my B&M sessions (my largest leaks) and my notes from my online sessions. Online, I'm not playing my greatest game lately. I've been playing patchwork it seems and just continuing to find and patch leaks. Cold cards online, but it happens.

B&M is where my major losses come. I've had quite a few bad beats as of late. Trip kings beat by a runner runner straight. Kings up against runner runner two pair. Aces up against running straight. Those three are prime examples, it happens to us all, those just happen to cost me a lot of money as I was more than willing to get all my money in there on the flop. The fact that I got unlucky sucks, I understand that, and it will improve. I know that, I just need to keep playing smart and just make a little change to freshin up my mind if that makes any sense. Only twice have I lost big pots putting my money in the worst of it. KK vs AA preflop, no problem with that one. Then AK vs 99 when the flop came AA9.

With all that said, I understand that you can not make a downswing out of only a handful of hands. The problem comes though is those hands came from my B&M BR, not my online, but I still consolidate all my loses\winnings into one document so I have always a realistic view of how I'm doing. My online play though has been in a small downswing, that doesn't make me feel much better. Not a horrible swing online, but its a small one. My tournament play does offset it though.

Miffed just turned me on (as he always does oh gawd) to the PartyPoker bonus whoring. Gonna do that to get me "back in shape" per say.