I have been playing online poker for about a year, and up to a couple months ago, was relatively successful. I built up a $2K profit playing in 25nl and moved up to 50nl where I was also successful, making an additional $500. Things started to change, however, after I cashed a 10k for $1,000. I was most likely tilted and started to lose relatively quickly. I remember playing a session where I lost $250 in about 5 hours or so. (I did make it back the next day, however...)

Anyway, to date I have lost about $1,500 of my winnings, and can barely even play 25nl successfully. It just seems that whenever I am betting a hand for value, I get raised and don't know when to continue, whenever I am ahead and calling down, I get outdrawn by some random air, and whenever I try to make a move against a weak opponent, they have the goods.

Here's an example of what just happened to me 3 hours into an already losing 50nl session:
$25 stack OL, I raise AA to iso 4x and he flats for a HU pot. Flop is K23. I make a near 2/3 pot cbet and he x/c. Turn is a 3 and he donks for about 1/4 pot. I decide to raise because of the possible flush draw and because I don't really understand what he would donk on this board besides possible 2s. He jams and I more or less have to call given that he only has a few combos of 2s, 1 of 3s, and a bunch of random draws/Kx hands. I call and he turns over A3.

Also, in the same session, my first hand I was dealt AKs in mp and was 3bet by the BTN. BB flatted and I decided to 4bet to isolate the BTN. Flop came Kxx rainbow, so I cbet for about 1/2 pot. He flatted. At this point I wasn't entirely sure how to continue because As are in his range sometimes, but so are Qs and Js, etc. I decided to check to him and he bet about 1/2 his remaining stack, about 1/3 the pot. I decided to just call in case he was eager to get his money in with entitlement tilt. On the river he jammed the rest of his stack and turned over trip Ks.

I get that these are just random bad beats and coolers, but this same sort of thing has been happening to me for the past month to the point where I have lost a lot of my confidence and am no longer sure whether or not I'm making the correct plays. I am rarely getting any value for my hands and when I get action, they always have better. I have just finished reading Applications of NLH and have read several other books as well. I've been watching tons of YouTube videos, and I just can't solve my issues. It honestly feels like people can see my cards.

1) Understand variance.
2) Get a book about mental issues in poker.

20 buy in swings tend are increasingly likely the more hands you play so $1k swings at $50NL aren't necessarily worrying. If you play enough hands even insane 50+ BI downswings will eventually happen and to a few in a million people it does indeed happen. If you're one of those, tough luck. That said, there is probably a lot of tilt to blame for at least some of the losses.

They are called downswings and they happen to everybody. Good players tend to break even during times of downswings, while bad players can lose a lot of money.

Your hand with the A3 is one of these. Raising that turn is a very poor choice, not because you may have the worst hand, but because if he was bluffing, you let him off cheap, and when he is value betting, you lose more than you should. Raising to deny him odds to a flush is a silly reason to raise because a flush is a narrow part of his range given the action and a heart will actually be a good card for you on this board as you were behind. Also he may try and bluff hearts if he was bluffing with the Ah which you don't even tell us if you had the Ah.

had you of played your hand correctly, you would of just called his turn bet, and possibly his river bet. Your AK hand seemed to be played fine, but you failed to give any reads you had. Maybe the guy never plays anything other than AA or KK which a lot of low stakes players do. When I used to play live 1/2 NL I could easily fold AK and KK pre flop as some players never 3bet anything other than Aces. They were happy to win the $15 or what ever from me, and just kept playing really tight.

As for running good or bad - I won about $10,000 in November, broke even in december, and am up about $2000 in january. The game can be very swingy even if you play correctly, but I make a lot of mistakes.

Poker is a game of small edges and huge deviations from expectation.

Here's a variance simulation for a group of players that are expected to win at 5bb/100 while playing with a relatively low standard deviation of 70bb/100:



Over 100,000 hands, the luckiest player in this sim wins at 12.5bb/100 (more than double his EV). The unluckiest loses at 2.5bb/100. If this was real money, the gap between the two players would be 150 buyins.

95% of the players will fit between the green lines on the graph that show the 95% confidence interval, but they still have a range of about 4bb/100 above and below their 5bb/100 EV. If your theoretical winrate is <5bb/100 or your standard deviation is higher than 70bb/100, you can expect some absolutely horrendous downswings if you play for long enough. Note that the unluckiest "guy" on that graph was actually breaking even for the first 40,000 hands before starting the downswing from hell.

Variance simulator: http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

WOW. So if you play 300H/our and for 16 hours a week. You can run bad voor like half a year ! hahaha. holy ****.

Edit: I went to the simulator. You need a 4BB/100 winrate to have a 95% chance of a positive result after 1 year of playing.
That's just crazy.

At a winrate of 2BB/100, you need 2 years of playing for that hahaha.

Yeh, no way i will ever become a pokerpro :-)

Very few pros play 300h/hr for 20 hours a week mate. Fulltime pro regs should be clearing at least 50k hands a month, and really they should be playing double or more than double that in certain formats.

Unless you're a live pro obviously, but then you should be making like 30bb/100.

My worst run was at NL25 with 68 BIs below EV... brutal yes, but I know several others that have experienced worse. As far as downswings go, having a negative 6-8 buyin stretch is completely normal, even during a single, multi-tabling session. If losing that much effects your ability to make +EV decisions, I'd recommend implementing a stop/loss until your mental game catches up.

Still bad. Then your making long days, playing 50k hands per month and still can only break even after 4 months of playing. Thats gotta eat you up

Long days? Even with a modest rate of 500 hands per your (which is much less than most can do) it's 100 hours a month and with 2bb/100 the chances of losing 4 months straight are only 13% and for the year 2,5%. Not many people who work for themselves have a 97,5% of making money over any given year. Any increase in winrate or hands played and those numbers go down fast.

I work for myself and my chance is 100% that i make money in any month. So thats probaley why the difference in opinion.

Probably you are playing in extremely marginal games and not game selecting well.

Do you use a HUD?

Hey guys, I am reading all your responses and they are helpful so thanks. I just had a minute so I wanted to reply to this one. I've been playing on ignition because the games are typically much softer than other US sites. They don't allow HUDs etc., so it's pretty difficult to gauge my play as well as make reads on other players. Typically, I will take a lot of notes while I am playing; however, players often take super bizarre lines. I just deposited $50 on ACR and plan to play 100k hands or so in 5nl just to look at my stats. Obviously this will be different from 50nl, but I feel like I have to start somewhere.

And i thought my current 49 BI below EV was bad

Man been playing poker for about 4 months and it wasn't up until a month ago that I started using a hud. I can't even imagine not using a hud. I would feel like I was blind. I can't say much for advice but if you're not using a hud then you shouldn't multi table.

Also yes you can get huds to work on ignition this is completely incorrect. I myself don't play on ignition (anymore) but in the past I've used them. I'm not sure the rules of me saying this are. I'm new to this forum and not sure if hud use violates ignitons agreement.