I just started playing no limit a few months ago. I'm up a few thousand dollars and I only play during weekends and only 5/5 or 2/5. I started winning more by becoming less aggressive, tighter starting hand, and following pot/bet odds strictly as I can.

I notice some Internet players tend to be over aggressive and spew all their chips against passive station. I think it's dangerous unless you believe you are a very good player.

I can play abc all day at my home casino and win 90% of the time. They play way too many skeptical hands and they never fold. Choo choo value town.

This is pretty much what I do. I tighten up if I'm short-stacked and either don't want to or can't add more chips. I will also add unsuited broadway cards OTB and CO depending on image, limpers, blinds, etc.

I had an hour and a half session where I lost another buy-in. I am having a hard time distinguishing between running bad and playing bad at this point.

a few thoughts...

An hour and a half is 40 hands max. You need another 9960 live hands to be certain about how you're running and probably a lot more. There's a reason the live pros and amateur regs keep 20-40 buy in bankrolls.

be ruthless in your evaluation of your play. When you play a big hand, note down exactly what happened and then analyse your play and post the hands.

Don't just focus on the hands you lose either. Look at the pots you won and consider how you could have made more profit. My win rate has more than doubled in the past 200 hours vs the previous 500 after I really focused on value betting and winning the max.

I agree that the sample size is not a lot. I have 79 hours total, which is about 2100 hands max (a hand every 2:15) if I use your rate.

Part of my problem is honestly that I don't know if I'm running bad or playing bad. I don't know if this is a bad downswing or a lot of bad decisions. I feel like I make pretty good decisions and I definitely feel that I am the best player at the majority of 1/2 games I sit in. That's not saying much because I see nearly everyone I play with make just awful mistakes that I do not repeat myself.

I honestly don't want to wait until I have 7900 more hands - or even more - to decide that I need to make some changes if there are things that I can be doing differently now.

I do both these things. I take meticulous notes at the table (discreetly on my phone) so I can post the details later. I've posted a few threads in here on winning hands as well. I have learned a LOT but feel like I can improve more.

You just have to work hard. Keep posting hands and look at the feedback.

Poker is such an odd game because the immediate results don't necessarily correlate with whether or not you made the correct decisions. That's why it's so hard to learn strictly by experience alone. And that's why there are still so many live fish. People tend to be short sighted and results oriented when it comes to gambling.

A lot of decisions are not very intuitive either.

A shortstacked 1/2 game (where everyone has 40-100 bucks) is going to be near impossible to beat due to the rake imo. You really should play SUPER tight, and forget about implied odds and position.... thats only important with 150bb+.

wait for good hands, play them fast, make folds when its really obv you're beat, and hope that you hold. eventually you'll run good/better and built up a roll + get some good experience. Then, move to $5 big blind games as fast as possible.

One of the reasons learning poker is hard is that it is very hard to separate good luck from good play and bad luck from bad play. Learning to honestly review the hand and see which ones you played badly even when you won is a critical skill. Another thing to keep in minds is that the right play for another player might not be the right play for you, because reputation and situation at the table changes things.

Short stacking has more variance then deeper poker, so your going to see some wild swings. With more all in moves preflop and on the flop, there are more chances to draw out and more situations where your putting your money in when only a small favorite.

With the sort of short stacks your playing against, a very conservative preflop strategy is probably best. In EP I would be playing TT+, AJs+, AQo+, so that in EP I'm mostly playing hands I can call with if a short stack moves in. Open up a little in MP and a little more in LP. But with the inflated preflop bets typical of 1/2 and stacks mostly under 50bb, you should be planning on playing every hand for entire stack.

The range Mr Spyutastic mentioned earlier has way too many small pairs in it for a table of short stacks. You shouldn't be raising with these hands pre because you won't be getting the odds you need. Small pairs are limp in after other limper hands at these tables, where having multiple villains improves your implied odds. If the table is fairly passive, they may be playable in LP.

He said they were bad. So I believe you can get away with not being as tight. But there's nothing wrong with playing a tighter range either.

The only time anyone has 150 BB's at this game is if they just won a huge pot and are about ready to get up and leave. It's uncommon for someone to sit on a 200 BB's for more than a half hour.

I would love to play in a different casino where the fish buy in deep but that just won't happen. I play during the day a lot when work is slow and I can't drive 2 hours to a real casino at those times. What I got is what I got.

True, being better then the other players does let you open up somewhat. But against short stackers where you will be facing a lot of preflop and flop shoves, straight pot odds dominate.

I suppose that becomes a question for the OP. OP said there where a lot of bad short stack players taking shots, but laying out a strategy needs more details. What are the typical raises? How many callers to the average hand? How many shoves are there preflop? What percent of hands are shoved on the flop?

I'm assuming opening raises are $8-$10 or so, and there are often multiple callers. This results in bloated pots relative to stack sizes, so shoves on the flop with any top pair are probably standard, shoves with flush or straight draws are common and shoves with weaker hands happen regularly. In such a situation, straight high card value dominates. But I may be over estimating just how bad the players are. If opening raises are smaller and get more respect and c-bets take down pots fairly often, then you can open up starting requirements.

Average opening raise varies widely from player to player. Often the size of the raise is an indication of the strength of the hand. I see raises to $8, I see raises to $25. Most of the time the larger raises are premiums and the smaller raisers are pot-sweeteners with small pairs and SC's - but they are often weak aces, non-SC's, or other raggy hands like 74o.

I would say that there are on average 3-4 people to the flop in a raised pot. It's difficult to size a raise to get just one caller because if one calls, they all call. If your raise is too large then no one calls. If everyone limps (1/2, $4 to come in) then there might be 7 people in it. Family pots are not uncommon and some players will limp with literally ATC, hoping to make two pair.

There aren't many open shoves unless there is an uber-shorty. 3-bet shoves are not uncommon but they are the nuts 99% of the time.

What gets shoved on the flop again is player-dependent. I saw a player shove $160 into a $30 pot. I saw a player check-raise all-in $200 into a $100 pot. These are generally TPGK or better hands, sometimes top pair no kicker. People generally don't shove draws unless they are one of the better players.

In my session yesterday, I sat down with $200. Two players had < $30. Three were around $80 to $100 and three had $160 to $200.

C-bets work when no one had any pair or draw. A cbet will get called by bottom pair just to try and make trips or two pair. Again, player dependent.

Theoretically, these players are not difficult to play against. I think my game is fairly solid but I know I have a few leaks. I think that I have just been running like Corky. I have been card dead, coolered, and sucked out on a LOT in the last few sessions.

Where do you play? CR, Capitol?

This is CR. I've played at Capitol but honestly the players there seem much better than the CR/Limelight donks.

The all over the place stacks, big preflop bets and ragged play make the situation murky. A lot of play here will have to adjust on the fly, because optimal strategy against a $50 stack is very different then against a $200. Your going to have to think about every villain in the hand and what it is profitable to play against them. To a raise, you can mostly focus on whoever raised, they are the most likely to be active in the hand. In a limping situation you can think about who you want to target with your hand and who the other deep stacks are.

Against a stack around 25bb and a lot of opening raises to 5bb, your playing every hand for entire stack. You don't want to play them unless you have a hand good enough to put them all in with TP, because they are going to shove TP+. Against those guys, I'm using the very tight range I mentioned above. If the deeper stacks opened, you can call much wider. If you both have stacks of $200, you can limp behind or even call a small raise with any PP and small SC. With stacks in the middle, you will have to adjust your range on the fly.

Position is every important here also. You don't want to limp in an EP and get raise by a short stack that you can't call. That sort of leak will steadily drain money off your hand. How lose you can get in late position varies, but in an EP with multiple short stacks at the table you need to be pretty tight.

Against short stacks, don't c-bet a lot and against multiple villains don't do it much at all. If sacks are short you can put them all in whenever you want anyway. If the players are particularly oblivious, you may not need to c-bet multiway at all.

As I mentioned before, short stack play is actually higher variance. Getting your money in on the flop means more chances to suck out either way. From the sounds of the place where you play, it sounds like your just going to have to get used to some wild swings.