So frustrating when fish get lucky, knew this guy would call with basically anything and I was betting for value--running way under EV against fishthe last month:

Full Tilt Poker $33 + $1.50 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 2 players - View hand 1067722
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): t1455 48.50 BBs
BTN/SB: t1545 51.50 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BB with J J
BTN/SB raises to t90, Hero raises to t270, BTN/SB calls t180

Flop: (t540) 6 8 6 (2 players)
Hero bets t260, BTN/SB calls t260

Turn: (t1060) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t925 all in, BTN/SB calls t925

River: (t2910) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t2910
Hero shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
BTN/SB shows 4 5 (a straight, Eight high)
BTN/SB wins t2910

Cliffs for last week: Ran bad. Tilted. Played bad. Dropped a few hundred. Began transferring my modest Poker Stars over to FTP. Banned myself on FTP for 3 days to refocus on other aspects of life, take a break from poker. Got the itch to play 6 max cash while watching The Big Game the second day of my FTP ban, fired up Poker Stars 25NL 6 max tables while watching with the rest of my Stars' roll. Made $40, had a lot of fun, ran great. Played more 6 max tonight after watching The Big Game, 50 NLHE and 50 PLO on FTP, made roughly $300 running hot, but also playing more passively/thinking than normal, also made a small amount from hu sngs. BR currently between $3.7k and $3.8k (including $300 from my Stars' roll, so would have been down a few hundred). Have $100 left in my Stars' account and will probably just transfer it over.

Sorry to hear. Just take a break for few days or just lower the volume and take time to do some session reviews, go through basics again to clear your head. Sometimes you need to make one step back if you want to do two forward.

GL

it was pretty fun playing you today. sucked that i leveled myself a couple times after you told me you were 2p2 but its all good haha

hehe, agreed that it was fun--iirc I ended up in a few spots where I leveled myself as well also, I don't want to elaborate further, but playing you exposed a leak I didn't realize I had in my game, so I appreciate your playing well enough to get me to think about such things

just saw that you have your own challenge thread too--best of luck, hopefully in not too much time we'll have climbed up to the 88s or 110s

BR UPDATE: $3.8-3.9k; for the first time, my BR climbed to $5 below $4k today but sadly never passed that mark...hopefully soon enough, getting pretty fed up with treading water

Goodluck man, i read all of the first page and im very motivated by your stories and experiences. Will be reading the rest later! Hope you succeed!

Thank you--I appreciate it! Enjoy the twists and turns all the way to breakevenfest

I'm by no means a great poker player.

I'm not here to put you on blast.

It does seem like you complain a lot about running bad.

I know this kind of graph. I've seen it before. It comes from and playing bad and then tilting and playing worse. I did this for years.

If you haven't already, go check out Hokiegreg. His PG&C thread is very educational and will help you a lot.

Try to stop being so results driven. Poker is all about making correct decisions and controlling your emotions. If you consistantly make the right decision, the results will come over time.
Good luck in your adventure. Hope you go on a life long heater!

No offence "knowtheledge", but I think that karamazonk know this things.
Goodluck both of you!

Thanks for the suggestion to go check out Hokiegreg’s thread—I just took a look and already found a couple of really good posts. It’s reassuring to see that other people have suffered with big EV downswings. The more normal it seems to me, I think, the less I will tilt. According to the book The Poker Mindset, there are four emotional stages of evolution as a poker player (most of us are constantly shifting up and down between them). The last stage (and a stage the author speculates many players rarely ever reach) is total indifference: you don’t care whether you end up losing the hand, so long as you know that your play is +EV over the long term. Instead of focusing on the fact that you lost the hand and how unlucky you are, you focus on the fact that you got it in as an 86% favorite and were able to exploit a leak you found in the villain. The fact that you lost, as you will 14/100 times, is insignificant, because you take comfort in the fact that you will win over the long term. I have a very tough time adopting this mindset, even though I know if I could it would be massively +EV. Instead, if I get it in as a favorite and lose three games in a row, I start to take it personally and think the world is out to get me, and that I’ll never be able to win with such overall bad luck. Even worse, sometimes after a particularly bad string of bears I think I unconsciously set myself up for situations where I try to suck out to even the score, which is ridiculously dumb. When I tilt, I’ll often just keep playing “until my luck evens out,” even though I’m typically playing much worse and playing at all is not +EV.
With due respect, I don’t think the graph comes from generally playing bad. My honest assessment is that I have a very good edge against most players at the 33s and at least a small edge against most 55s regs. I think the main problem that has held me back is tilt (and, generally, running under EV). That being said, I’m realizing my game isn’t totally solid. In fact, (and I can’t elaborate on this, b/c good villains read this thread) I’m starting to think that I do some things that are fundamentally unsound, but have historically ignored these problems because I do a good job compensating via very good hand reading and picking up on villains’ tendencies quickly. However, some moves are always –EV, no matter how well you know your opponent, and I need to adjust accordingly.
Anyways, I really appreciate the support from everyone in this thread. Work has been really busy lately, so I don’t know how much I can play over the next couple of weeks. I don’t really expect to hit my goal by February 1, but that’s OK—it’s a nice improvement to finish the year up a decent chunk online. I wouldn’t have been able to do that last year. This thread has helped a lot in receiving encouragement, advice, and helping me keep me accountable to myself. As such, I'm going to keep it going regardless of whether I meet my goal (I'll likely set a new one). Hopefully I have a very profitable 2011 to look forward to

Good session tonight despite being really tired--BR finally hit the magic # of $4k before I lost one to slide back down

BR: $3970ish (note to self: top shark missed $165 of profit last night due to I think problems related to FTP being down)

Here's my SS all-time graph (I think this includes 9 handed sngs from over a year ago, too, which I'm probably down like $500 in), for your horror at the swings:

cool thread. good luck. tbh tho, you're not even running that bad. 11 bi's below ev? that is like the most standard downswing ever. get used to it. not trying to be a dick, but if u r having trouble dealing w 11 bi below ev variance ur going to be spending the vast majority of ur career on tilt.

Decided to play some 33s for fun last night and today, proceeded to go on a much welcome Christmas heater (13-2), BR now up to $4250ish

****, tilted again--after losing a bunch of 55s I tiltsit the 100s and this hand happens, second of the game--went from running like god to tilting like crazy:

Full Tilt Poker $110 + $5 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 2 players - View hand 1093155
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): t1500 50 BBs
BTN/SB: t1500 50 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BB with 3 A
BTN/SB raises to t60, Hero calls t30

Flop: (t120) A 8 J (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets t60, Hero calls t60

Turn: (t240) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets t180, Hero raises to t1380 all in, BTN/SB calls t1200 all in

River: (t3000) K (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: t3000
Hero shows 3 A (two pair, Aces and Threes)
BTN/SB shows A K (two pair, Aces and Kings)
BTN/SB wins t3000




I'm done. 3.7k now, down $600 from peak

Maybe try self excluding yourself above a certain limit (that you would normally play) for a week and get your game back on track? like self-exclude 55+ ?

Just let you grind the 33s and remind yourself that your **** don't stink?

Just a suggestion, seems like tilt is your major enemy, not variance. Best of luck to you.

karamazonk, just keep playing good...what does EV says?

Thanks--not a bad idea (I already kind of do something like this), but here I don't think it's necessary since the swing happened in the course of 24 hours: 3.87k --> 4.3k ---> 3.72k. We'll see--if I play today and the immediate results aren't good, I'll grind 33s for awhile.

I haven't run it yet, but I'm sure I ran under EV (though probably not horribly under EV). Ofc if I didn't get sucked out on that A3 hand, my BR would be $220 higher. Note to self: don't tiltsit $110s That being said, I don't think I played all that great last night, either

NEW GOAL: ~$4k (12/28/10) ----> $25k in 2011, simply playing online poker (not strictly HU SNGs)

FYI, I am considering getting a coach or at least joining husng.com (thus breaking my longstanding refusal to read strategy for hu sngs, which I broke today by finally checking out and offering some thoughts in strategy threads in that forum). Only catch is, I'm not willing to pay more than $50/hour for coaching, so I don't know whether any of the best coaches will be available (and, tbh, I don't know how much I'd benefit from not having one of the best, since I think the biggest thing holding me back has been tilt issues; to the extent I have skill deficiencies bad fundamentals, those are pretty easily cured).

Definetely get HUSNG.com subscription first.

gl kar

Damn nice topic !

Keep it up

Thanks for the good wishes, fellas--I'll try to keep it a good follow (/hopefully sweat of ascent into livbness :-)))

Life is good right now--just went on a heater to bump my bankroll from ~$4k even to $4.5k, which will bump up to $4.6k tomorrow when my rakeback comes in. I'm starting to sniff $5k!

Tonight was the first time in awhile I felt I played my A game--I'd been stuck playing my C+ game for a long time, gotta find a way to play my A game more frequently

sick MTT hands go here (down to two tables from pool of 254):

Full Tilt Poker $11 + $1 Rush On Demand No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t600/t1200 Blinds + t150 - 7 players - View hand 1101096
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BTN: t29635 M = 10.40
SB: t24094 M = 8.45
BB: t34568 M = 12.13
Hero (UTG): t29769 M = 10.45
UTG+1: t42141 M = 14.79
MP: t46461 M = 16.30
CO: t15936 M = 5.59

Pre Flop: (t2850) Hero is UTG with 5 5
Hero raises to t2400, 5 folds, BB calls t1200

Flop: (t6450) 8 2 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t3400, BB calls t3400

Turn: (t13250) J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t13250) J (2 players)
BB bets t9600, Hero raises to t23819 all in, BB folds

Final Pot: t32450
Hero wins t32450

Ended up finishing 6th in this tourney ($11 rush on demand), and, coupled with hu sng success today, BR up to $4980ish...we'll see if I can get to $5k tonight