Lately I've been thinking about where my profits come from in poker. My winning over the past years is very inconsistent, but has a general upward trend as I think I've improved during the time. I think I came up with the following equation:

My profits = My ability - Average opponent ability - rake

As I play different times of day/days of the week I find I run into some good players in my room. People who play higher stakes and I get run down a bit as the 2nd term in my equation increases.

Also I think I've found a bias I have - I see when I get unlucky (ex. I open KQ the other day, some weak passive player calls IP, flop 7-4-2, x x, turn Q, bet call, river brick, bet call - he has AQ). I remember these moments where I was 'unlucky' or on the receiving end of 'it'. But I never see the times where I gut the other guy (ex. flop comes T-T-4 and I have AT and gut someone with QT). Because they don't show their hand. This leads me to a confirmation bias where I think I dont suck out on people but only get sucked out on.

Lately I've been on the receiving end moreso and while I'm not losing money, I'm up ~100$ over the past 126 hours of live play. Analyzing tough hands I've found I lost the minimum a lot and sometimes made a misclick - ex. should have check-folded but instead bet-folded small. My plan is to take several weeks or months off.

Ex hand:

6 handed, H on 235$, 1/3.

H opens A 6 in CO to 20, V calls BTN, all others fold. HU OOP to a flop of Q 6 3, H cbets 20, V calls. Turn (85) - 6, this V is very aggressive and pounces on perceived weakness so I decide to check (?), he checks back (oof). River (85) - 7, check again, he bets pot, I jam, he snaps with 77 beating my trips.

But my thinking has been: Are we just shovelling money back and forth? Especially when I play the higher up 2/5, 10/20ish players...it's like the hands play themselves and the casino just takes their cut.

The answer to your original question is “No.”

There are always going to be legit cooler hands in which either side would have lost the same amount (and only the house wins in the long run), but more often than not this isn’t the case.

Here is some reading on this subject. A little dated, but I think it’s a good perspective.

https://www.tommyangelo.com/reciprocality/

This is a weird hand, river feels really bad.


Yes, robots open to 2.25x with 100bb ... but that's against other robots ... You are opening way bigger (7x!) and V is aggressive and can be overcalling assuming he'll bluff you out.

Flop you aren't supposed to bet middlepair.

Turn in theory you check a lot BUT that's because you don't bet middlepair on the flop, so I'd be tempted to bet again now. Also wtf. are you going to do after V bets x/r turn? How strong does that look if he has QJ or even KQ?

Now on the river the "aggressive" player took a free card, so just fire again and get calls from Qx/JJ-88. The only real draw on the flop was 54s, and that got there on the river.
I guess you assume he always bets 5 high on the turn with lots of outs and leveraged river bets, and always bets 76s/86s/K6s for value?


I would lean towards b/c river without reads ... but even that is such a weird line to check back turn and bluff river.

x/c seems fine if you are worried about 76/54 checking back turn ... or to just give him a chance to bluff again.

x/r seems the nut worst though, esp. when he pots it. wtf does he call with? What are you ever bluffing with? QQ/66/Q6 and maybe 76 but even 33 and 54s are getting dicey for your line, and A6 ... no.

Yeah, I think xc is always the most profitable line with good non nut hands against overly aggressive players, once you start raising them they can either put your brain in a blender by reraising or just fold.

In answer to your original question, I can tell you that my play got a lot better after I started spending a lot of time playing low stakes cash online. I felt I knew exactly what to do, put people on ranges without hardly thinking, and stopped "freezing up" which was where I did not know what to do and couldn't do math or think logically because the pot had grown huge and my opponent had done something unexpected.

>literally never study or watch videos / look at sims
>ignore feedback about recurring leaks
>frequently blow up vs players you perceive as "good"
>have unaddressed tilt / mental game issues (new elliot roe book phenomenal for this)
>game select based partially on quality of table talk

>ask if skill exists

There are tables like this. Truly good players don't play on those tables.

There is an old piece of advice in NLHT&P: when you first sit down at a table, figure out whether your profit will come from big pots or small pots. To that I would add: when you first sit down at a table, figure out whether any of your opponents are doing anything to deviate from this "pushing money back and forth" dynamic. (The only way this happens is if someone is often making mistakes.) If the answer is no, do not keep trying to squeeze a profit out of that table!

If you're a winning poker player, then no, you are making a profit, not just shoveling money back and forth.

But yes, a lot of poker is just winning and losing a bunch of small pots, then waiting until someone hits a set or puts someone in a massive cooler spot for a huge pot, and you will be on the losing side of a fair amount of the time. If you're a winning poker player, you should still come out on top in the long run.

Today when I played a 2/5/15 4 handed game, I lost 2.1k in a 4bet pot, turned two pair vs binked gutter. I lost over pair vs a turned boat that set me back 600. I lost 1.5k to trips vs a straight (I flopped trips and he raised me with an open ender, binked turn, and barreled river). The session lasted 6.5 hours and I was up 4k by the end of it.

I won a bunch of small pots, a lot of aggression with aggression. I won a 2.2k pot boat vs overpair. A scooped a 3k double board PLO bomb pot, set + nut straight vs weaker straight + two pair. I won 1.3k pot flopped straight vs turned trips. I won a pot where I bluff raised 3k all in into a pot that would have been 2.6k if I called with the nutflush blocker on the turn and got a fold. I chopped a 3 way 3.5k double board PLO bombpot with quads.

So yeah, poker is a lot of routine stuff punctuated by huge hands where a lot of money is exchanged. You want to have the mental toughness and bankroll for when you get the bad end of variance. You want to be able to rebuy reasonably deep and continue to play your A game, untilited. And fairly often, you will be on the winning side of a massive cooler. Although yes, you can go many hours without getting dealt aces or flopping a set.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say we've all been waiting for you to start hosting home games.

^Phil Helmuth syndrome, as I call it. Wins are because we're better than them. Losses are because they got lucky on us.

To be fair, I think there is some logic to the idea that the better we get, the more skill contributes to our wins, and thus the more getting unlucky contributes to our losses.

That said, there's also the unseen hands opponents fold because they got unlucky, and the tendency we have to remember our painful losses better than the wins that caused our opponents' pain.

One of the things I've been trying to work on is minimizing how much rake I pay, by playing a mostly raise-or-fold strat pre (no flop, no drop in the rooms I play), and trying to avoid playing a lot of smaller pots with marginal hands post-flop. I'd rather win one $300 pot and pay $5 in rake than win three $100 pots and pay $15 in rake.

Final note - your recent threads suggest you're trying to muscle your way through instead of going with the flow and letting the game come to you, and not really working on the leaks you may have. Taking a break from playing can't hurt, but what would definitely help is studying or working with a coach to improve your game.