Frustration or Introspection??
It's very frustrating for a player like myself to not see the results I'm used to seeing. I'm right now in the midst (hopefully at the tail end) of about a 5k hand break-even streak. Most of my losses have come at my "home site" of PokerStars. Sometimes it's just my being impatient, sometimes it's just a matter of me being wrong on a read or running into a cooler (99 vs. TT, etc.).
All I know is that it needs to stop. I had a fairly lame month last month, only netting about $800 or so, and even though much of it is due to my playing less, some of it is due to bad play.
That's why I'm writing this post.
When you get into that bad groove, you need to get yourself out of it. Pronto. No way is better at getting you out of the doldrums than getting back to basics. Think about hands you're playing--review your PokerTracker info--look at the hands that are costing you money. Look at the hands that you lost the most money on. Were they due to just poor play? Was it an unfortunately unlucky break? For me, most can be attributed to poor play or a blown read.
What I do is go session-by-session, and I find those sessions (NL) where I lost a stack or a good chunk of one, then go hand-by-hand to see where the money's disappearing to. I look at the opponent, their PT numbers, then break down the hand in the hand replayer. I look to see if someone sucked out on me, was it because I gave them adequate odds to call? Or was it because I tried to slowplay and got it stuffed down my throat? I look at hands I played out of position, in position, and just look at each mistake I made--and how to correct it. One of those introspective sessions is overdue, IMHO.
It's amazing how much either success and failure can change your game. What separates the truly great players from the merely good is how you react to either success or failure and how you adjust to make your game the best it can be.
All I know is that it needs to stop. I had a fairly lame month last month, only netting about $800 or so, and even though much of it is due to my playing less, some of it is due to bad play.
That's why I'm writing this post.
When you get into that bad groove, you need to get yourself out of it. Pronto. No way is better at getting you out of the doldrums than getting back to basics. Think about hands you're playing--review your PokerTracker info--look at the hands that are costing you money. Look at the hands that you lost the most money on. Were they due to just poor play? Was it an unfortunately unlucky break? For me, most can be attributed to poor play or a blown read.
What I do is go session-by-session, and I find those sessions (NL) where I lost a stack or a good chunk of one, then go hand-by-hand to see where the money's disappearing to. I look at the opponent, their PT numbers, then break down the hand in the hand replayer. I look to see if someone sucked out on me, was it because I gave them adequate odds to call? Or was it because I tried to slowplay and got it stuffed down my throat? I look at hands I played out of position, in position, and just look at each mistake I made--and how to correct it. One of those introspective sessions is overdue, IMHO.
It's amazing how much either success and failure can change your game. What separates the truly great players from the merely good is how you react to either success or failure and how you adjust to make your game the best it can be.
1 Comments:
I totally agree with the success/failure aspect to poker play. When I'm running good it seems like my decisions are consistently solid. When I'm 80 hands in and my winrate is 1/20 wsf and 0/4 at showdown I make way more bad decisions
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