I'm making this thread in hopes of getting some honest evaluation of my overall play and what I should do to improve going forward. This is probably too long for anyone to read thoroughly, but any comments are greatly welcome even if you don't read it all.

I'm a 26 year old architect. I live and work in Manhattan and play 3-4 nights a week at two clubs in the city (one is 1/2 and the other 1/3) as well as the occasional home game. I'm a smart guy (I have an Ivy league degree if that means anything) and have always been good at games of strategy like chess and other board games. I'm not the nerd-type though.

I've only been playing poker consistently since late January. I have around 120 hours of play time, and I also have about 10k hands of online 5NL and 10NL play, but I hate playing online. 10k hands is a small sample but I beat 5NL handily and 10NL at a decent rate. I obviously understand that I'm a beginner and I know that I have a ton of improvement to make, but I believe I'm a decent player and I have been taking the game pretty seriously. I oftentimes feel that I am better than the average player at the games I play. I have decided to stop playing the 1/3 game for now because the competition there is much stronger. The 1/2 game is usually full of fishy players.

Here is my dilemma: I have been losing a lot (-$2485 in the last 30 days), and I can't tell if I'm actually a bad player or if it's just bad luck over the last several weeks. If I should expect to continue losing at this rate I need to stop playing because I can't afford it. The reason I play poker is because I want to earn a little side cash doing something that does not involve what I do at my day job - which I enjoy but I like to get away from the computer/desk. I am not a gambler, I always try to make the decisions that are supposedly profitable in the long run. I could do freelance work and earn a guaranteed $30-70/hr instead.

Here are my stats:




I get ahead in almost every session, even when card dead, which I have been for many hours in the past few weeks. I feel that for 95% of the game I do everything very well. But then I lose one or two huge pots to monsters. Like flopping broadway and getting sucked out by a boat OTR. It's not like I'm just spewing and leaking away small amounts at a time, and I'm definitely not a calling station. There are definitely flaws in my game and I'm sure I make tons of mistakes, but overall I feel that I make solid plays. I know my bet-sizing could be better. There are also at least 2-3 BI's that were lost due to just straight up bad play, like shoving with JJ against what I knew was an overpair, and shoving on a 9 outer flush draw against good TAG players.

I have a pretty tight opening range which is position-dependent. I fold to a lot of 3bets. I avoid marginal situations, try to control pot sizing depending on the strength of my hand. I limp/call suited connectors and small pocket pairs in early position. I have read a ton of material, most recently Sklansky's Theory of Poker, and am halfway through HOCv1. In other words, I'm pretty sure I have at least something of a grasp of the fundamental concepts of this game, and I believe that I should be handily beating the competition that I play against.

I have posted hand histories of several of these big losses here on 2p2 and for the most part been told I made the right calls, though some of the hands could have been played a little better in terms of bet sizing, etc.

Is it normal for a decent player to have the kind of bad run that I'm on? Or am I actually just a bad player in denial? In the last 30 days I have played 90 hours at an hourly rate of -$27.70 for a total of -$2485. Does even a bad player have this kind of bad run at 1/2?

Yesterday was a really bad day. I lost two BI's with TPTK. The first one was against 97 UTG who called my raise and flopped two pair, then shoved the river. The second one was with AQs on Q34 flop. I tried to take the pot down with a $75 bet on the flop, but 56 called and hit his straight on the turn. I was ready to check/fold the river but then I hit the wheel and had to call villain's shove. I lost a third BI with T9 against AT on JQK flop.

My thought going forward is to take a week off, try to finish reading HOC, and maybe reduce my play to once or twice a week for the rest of the month and see how it goes.

Any thoughts or feedback are greatly appreciated. Good luck out there

I'll leave this open for a little while, but generally these type of threads don't help the original poster much. The reason is that you're not far enough along to start recognizing your more insidious leaks, but are instead looking the bad beats you're taking. Therefore, we're not going to be able to help you much in specific.

Just a couple of things come in mind that are buried in your post. You appear to over value TPTK. The average winning hand at showdown in NLHE is two pair. If you've got TPTK at showdown, you've got a weaker than average hand. A weaker than average hand should expect to lose the majority of the time when playing with a full stack. I'd spend time looking at your opponents and seeing what they put 50% or more of their stack in with.

The other common leak is calling too much pf. It is easy to forget all those calls with hands like T9 preflop and then folded on the flop because you missed. Unless you're in a super soft game (which are becoming rarer), you won't make money with those calls long term without a plan to at least occasionally win without hitting your hand. And forget about "outplaying" your opponents when there are 4 others going to the flop. You can't outplay someone who hit their hand hard. A related leak is completing the SB in a limped pot. You're not going to stack someone with TPWK in a limped pot.

If you are after $, then $30-70 per hour is more than you should expect at 1/2 or 1/3. 30/hr would be a great winrate at 1/2.

Your sessions look pretty swingy. You're probably playing too loose both pre- and post-flop.

Yeah, I know I can make more doing other things, but I'd rather make a small profit playing poker than sitting in front of a computer for 70+ hours a week

Thanks for that

Yes I need to tighten up in the SB and probably overall preflop.

I rarely show down TPTK especially in a big pot. On the second one, like I said I was going to check or fold the river but I hit the wheel and had to call. Probably shouldn't have raised otf there.

Play less...study/read book/read same book again. When you do play, pay attention to everything. Don't be lazy, just because you aren't in a hand doesn't mean you can't learn something from it. Keep track of the pot, bet sizing, put ppl on hand ranges, etc turn it into a habit.

Most importantly learn from losing don't just get caught up on it. You've been playing for 3 months. You can't expect to hit the ground printing money. Sounds like you're trying to play too many hands and push too many small edges that may or may not even be there before you're ready.

My advice would be tighten up alot. You're just starting out...play a solid almost nittish game for a bit and learn to be a small winner first. Its alot easier to open your game up once you have a solid base then to plug the leaks you don't even know you have this early on in your playing. Focus less on analyzing what your win rate could be and just get a win. It'll help get your confidence back up. Playing wide open and losing multiple buy-ins a night while trying to learn the game seems to be just putting you in a deeper hole right now. If you feel yourself not playing well, get up and leave.

Ive been looking for a game in New York....Would be happy to try to evaluate your game a bit. If your interested I sent you a PM.

It's not enough to be better than the average player. The players at my table who are 3rd best or 4th best or even 2nd best out of 9 or 10 players tend to stink. They don't make as many glaring mistakes as the other players at the table, but they are still weak players.

One thing to keep in mind is even if you reach a point where you are a winning player, you could have bigger swings if your winrate is low.

Play like an OMC nit as you are playing live.

Not saying that's optimal.

But in my experience you are playing too many hands and putting money in the pot too often and too liberally.

We all get the same good hands in the long run, and we all win about the same number of pots, also in the long run. How much or how little we lose when we lose a hand is the single largest variable affecting our win rate, IMO.

$2485 in 30 days represents a trend.

To reverse that trend, change your play by tightening up.

Poker is not easy, like any endeavor where there is a decent amount of money involved. If you watched a couple of episodes of HSP, PAD, WSOP and thought poker is cool, I can beat it, I m smart, I have Ivy League degree, then be ready for a rude awakening my friend. Slansky is like a encyclopedia. It will tell you everything, but won't tell you how to do even a single thing. If you have read slansky and got all the basic concepts, now read small stakes cash games by miller and Harrington. They will tell you how to use the knowledge you learned from slansky. If you want to watch videos, watch live at bike or kings casino videos. Listen to Bart Hanson podcasts. Read bllsnl from the stickies above. You are playing too much. Play like once or twice a week. Download poker odds calculator app. Watch winning players at the table.
Your Ivy League education will help you only later. Now if any, that will be you will be a quick learner. Overcoming emotional/mental part is the first hardest step. People who were good at sports have it easier when they start playing poker, like discipline, repetition, patience, know when you are beat or outmatched, feel when the opponent is weak ....... Comes natural to them. Poker is boring, need lot of patience, discipline. People watch edited version in PAD, HSP, WSOP and see action every hand. Real poker is dull. Watch kings casino video, live at bike. It's dull. It's about being ready when the opportunity arrives, atleast at the beginning of your poker career when survival is important.
But you can do it. Just don't try to sprint before you learn to walk. You are losing too much. It's not sustainable.

I'm also a beginner trying to improve.
I agree with playing tighter,I also would recommend watching live at the Bike(just discovered this)
Posting here is great for our game as well.

I find thinking through my hand and actions to be the most important but at times hardest thing to do.
It sounds obvious,but for a beginner I think asking ourselves why we're about to do something BEFORE we do it can be tough.
Focus on improving,good luck.

Only read the first half above the pictures and looked at the pictures. I'll tell you right off the bat, you're not going to be making $70+ / hr playing 1/2, and I most likely playing 1/3 as well.
As far as getting better, post hands. Keep track of all your big losing hands, and if you have none, then your leak is you're probably a gambler and call too much preflop. So we have to tighten our range. Write on your phone / memorize your hands when you lose and the action, post them on here, get the feedback, and actually read it and analyze it.

GL

I can feel some gambling tendency too. If you are playing poker for different reasons like trying to get away from some problems in life, that's a recipe for disaster. Better to see a therapist. If you are a rec player, you are putting in too much hours. If your job is dull, poker is no different. Players making a living at 1/2 are grinders. Life is a grind. It's glamorous only to the top 2-3% players. Then Life is glamorous for top 2-3% in every field.

It doesn't mean a thing..

Are you certain of this, or is it wishful thinking? If they play worse, you should be able to tell exactly what mistakes they make, and should have reasons why you believe you're better.

That's a helluvalot to lose one month. I just got off nearly two years' worth of runbad, and I never booked losses of anywhere near that magnitude. If it's beginning to bother you, then that's the surest sign you should take a good long break to re-asses your game. If I were you, I'd take those freelance assignments, built back your playing 'roll, and advance your primary career for now. Jack "Treetop" Strauss could put his last dime on the table and play his A game. There aren't many who can do that (this includes some high level pros) and for the rest of us, it's a sure-fire disaster waiting to happen.

This looks contradictory. You claim to do 95% very well, and yet confess to making very elementary, very fishy, plays like shoving jacks into higher overpairs, or thin shove-bluffs against good TAGs. If you don't trust your own reads, whose will you trust?

Another elementary mistake: these kinds of hands should be thrown away from the early positions. Limping in up front is generally a bad idea unless you know your table is unusually weak/tight. You don't know who's in and who's out, whether you'll be playing against big stacks or shorties, whether you're gonna get a look at the flop for the price of a BB, or if it's gonna cost you a raise. Then you have the dubious value of playing a marginal hand with the worst position.

When I get suited connectors up front, they hit the muck without a second thought. If you always fold to a raise behind -- which you should -- all you're doing is donating. Save those chips for when the BB comes around to you.

If I decide to play a suited connector from an early position, I open-raise with it like it was aces. I'd do that if I thought there was a good reason for that play. If I thought I had a good chance to smack around a table filled with FoF players post, if I needed to show observant vills that an early open-raise doesn't always mean AK+, QQ+ for an opening range. Otherwise, no, just no.

Being the first one in with a limp looks weak as all get-out. Even if you hit your long shot, you won't win much with it since it'll be real easy for the players behind to figure you flopped real good when you wake up with a flop c/r, or start betting big OTT.

Here is another big mistake. There is no need to "read a ton of material". I have always said I can tell from your Poker library how much of a fish you are. An expansive collection of books, all with pristine pages, means BIG FISH! One or two good volumes with dog eared pages, cracked bindings, and pages filled with high lighter means you're probably someone I don't want in my game. It's more important to study the material, play some, go back to study some more, until you fully understand everything. "Something of a grasp" isn't good enough.

Looks to me like you're intoxicated with shallow draughts.

I suppose anything's possible, but it's never happened to me.

Are you reflexively calling for stacks with TPTK? It's a better hand for fixed limit because it only costs you a few bets when it gets cracked. In NLHE, it can cost you your entire stack. TPTK is a good hand, but it's vulnerable, and most likely to win you small pots, but lose big ones. TPTK goes way down in value at no-limit. It's a hand you need to learn to get away from when things don't look favorable, or your vills are determined to defy all your efforts to keep pots on the small side, especially when stacks are deep.

"I was ready to check/fold the river but then I hit the wheel and had to call villain's shove".

There's no such thing as "have to" call! Given the vill's shove, what else could he possibly have other than a six? If he was bluffing, a Wheel won't win a dime more than a pair of queens.

"I lost a third BI with T9 against AT on JQK flop"

You seem to have a weakness for dead end straights. Flopping a KQJ to a T9 isn't a good thing. AT has you nutted right there, and any AK, KT, QT, JT can certainly come along with their big pair, gutter draws. You should have realized that that flop hits a lot of hands, and 2nd nuts is nothing to get excited over.

I see a tale of woe punctuated by clear instances of dubious decision-making, failure to read the situation, failure to think ahead to later streets, unnecessary second guessing, tilted play, failure to take full advantage of the materials you already have.

I would quit for awhile, at least until you've given yourself the chance to fully assimilate HoC by really atudying, not just reading, for a "some what" comprehension.

Then I would nit it up after returning. Don't try to get "fancy" at tables where the rest of the field won't understand "fancy". That definitely means passing dubious hands up-front. While you're nitting it up, you will sit out a lot of pots. Use that time to get a read on the active players. There's no better time when you have no stake in the action. It'll pay dividends when you finally pick up a "go" hand, and you're in there with them.

Thanks for all the feedback

I'm definitely playing too loose. Now that I think about it, most of my good sessions have been very nitty.

I'm going to take some time off from poker and just continue reading. I'll cut back to once a week for now and play super nitty and see how it goes. I'm going to take some time this week to develop a basic script of opening and limping ranges and post it here for feedback.

Last question: if I am just playing to learn at this point, would it be smarter to play at the 1/3 game where there are better players, or stay at the 1/2 game that is more fishy?

Waste of time in bold. I don't think you're approach to the game is going to help you become a winning player. I've only skimmed this thread, but advice about tightening up, and trying to play less swingy is great if all you want to be is an ABC poker player.

There are some who say that you should learn to play ABC before opening up your game. If that appeals to you go for it. I used to coach youth lacrosse and we tried to teach the first timers to play equally left and right handed. Some parents would complain and say "Let them learn the game on their dominant hand and once they know the fundamentals, they can switch hands". I believed that giving the kid a tendency makes him a WEAKER player overall. And I believe the same goes for poker. If you rely on an ABC strategy, you make yourself more predictable and exploitable to your opponents. And that WILL limit your development.

As a 26 year old architect, your bankroll for LLSNL is infinite. You can pretty much be a losing player for life as long as you have a steady job and a salary. So don't waste your mid-20's trying to be a TAG/Grinder and squeeze out $18/hour. Attack stacks, and whenever you run good, take your winnings to a 2/5 table and try to run better.

Turning $200 into $5k in one night a few times a year will do way more for your confidence than bet/folding your way through 1000 hours.

The key to no limit hold em is to find your opponents unbalanced lines. And at LLSNL, these unbalanced lines DO NOT CHANGE. If a guy raises pre-flop, bets with top pair, checks for pot control, and then value bets the river....then that is going to be his line, every single time he has that hand in that situation. There is no book, no study, no research and certainly no SCRIPT that will help you recognize those patterns. You simply have to play lots and lots of hands until you recognize the exploitable imbalances in your typical opponents. What people do on the turn and river is HUGELY revealing.

Almost every word you've posted has been about YOU and YOUR game. All of your efforts are internally focused, and thus, I would bet that alot of your thoughts at the table are internally focused as well.

Play more hands, but more importantly, pay more attention at the table.

Play ABC until you see the weakness, and then exploit it.

No script will tell you when it's time to raise 2 limpers in the cutoff with J6suited. I'm exaggerating but the point is that getting better at poker means recognizing those spots and attacking them. Not memorizing a playbook.

+1

Op a couple of points.

1. Curious what your STd dev is in your tracking app.

2. Keep in mind the average player loses money due to the rake. So being above avg is still close to break even for a lot of players. To win at 10bb per hr you need to be one of the top players in the games you are in.

3. Your Ivy League education means you certainly have the smarts to be a winning player. However some of the biggest whales in the game are actually smarter than many of the players who take their money at the tables. It's one of 2 things usually in my experience. A) a successful business man or doctor has plenty of money and poker is fun like golf is fun and he doesn't really care if he loses overall so long as he wins his fair share of individual pots (feeding his competitive need). B) they want to win but are hampered by an entitlement tilt that has them feeling like they should be crushing since their the smartest guy in the room.

I'm not suggesting I understand your situation but since you mentioned some spewey spots I'd suggest that there is (at least by my definition) some tilt going on.

I'd suggest taking a short break, doing a little study and review of some of your recent tough spots. What kind of equity (vs opponents range) were you getting it in with. What are specific leaks you need to plug. How should you be approaching the games you play in. Give yourself 2 weeks. Post some hands in the forum, consider the feedback.

When you feel you have a realistic appraisal of your play and a game plan go back and play a session with a reasonable stop loss of say 2.5 Buyins (2 bullets and a topoff).

Note at least a half dozen hands for review. Post some of those hands and go from there.

GL

I really appreciate the feedback it is really helpful and making me reflect a lot on my game. But man I pay a lot of attention at the table. I'm focused on the game even when I'm not in the hand. I have no ADHD. Most hands I'm not in I'm constantly tracking pot odds and trying to put the other guys on a range of hands, paying attention to betting patterns, etc, and then using what I glean from that to exploit them when I'm in the hand. I know it's time to leave when I'm getting lazy with my reads. I can give examples where I'm sure I've made my opponents make mistakes by exploiting their tendencies. I really feel like my game is improving each time I play. Its just that I end up losing these monster pots - and im realizing that this isn't bad luck but more likely a fundamental flaw in my game. Though even when I lose for the most part I'm happy with my play. It's the times where I do dumb **** like call all in otr w TPTK just because I feel like my odds are good and the one where I shoved JJ.

In any case, I'm going to take a few steps back and try to tighten my game up a little. I may be calling too much in big pots. Are there times when I should fold a good hand in a big pot even when I'm getting the odds to call although I have a feeling I'm beat? Like if I'm only 25% certain I have the best hand but I'm getting 4:1, should I just lay it down?

This app doesn't give std dev. Do you know one for iPhone that has that feature? Or I'll try to find a formula after work and crunch some numbers.

Also, yes I probably suffer from a bit of entitlement tilt. It's something I've considered before and have to constantly remind myself of it.

Read Ed Miller's "Playing the Player"

This book changed my poker life.

No, just... no. If you're not willing to get your stack in with T9 on a KQJ flop for 100bb you might as well give up and find another hobby. Stop being results oriented.

Seriously, your reasoning makes absolutely no sense. So because villain hits an assload of 2nd best hands here, we should slow down and control the pot? What?

And yes you could lose 12 buyins and still be a winning player, but chances are you're either losing or winning marginally.

The good news is that it's completely irrelevant at this point, as you should only strive to improve your game. Tighten up, only play premiums in early position and don't defend your blinds with marginal holdings. It doesn't matter if limping/opening 77 or TJs UTG is profitable or not, YOU are not profitable doing it so just don't do it. It's not like you're giving up a ****ton of EV by being super tight in a live 1/2 game.

Once you start winning, slowly start adding more hands to play as you get a better understanding of ranges/equity. You're trying to do everything at once at this point, probably because you're above average intelligence and feel like you should be able to handle it.

As warned above, the thread has pretty much run the course. OP, you know what you need to do.

Locked.