Hand 1 I didnt want to get raised and have to fold.

it's fine to get raised on that spot, if you're getting value from worse

villain won't bluff you a lot there, so by betting you get value from worse and if villain raises, what's the problem of folding? he has the best hand most of the time on that spot.

i think your checking in spots that u should really be value betting

Stars can just go and **** their selves.

Its just set up after set up.

Villain is 38/28 after nearly 200 hands. Somehow I talk myself in to believing he has anything other than KK/AA.



This one against another fish and its the easiest fold ever on the turn. I cant make it though.



Shock horror about the run out in this one. Didnt see this coming.




More and more I just believe this game comes down to luck. If we take two players, one of them is me and the other is lucky Joe. I run like I have on the wrong side of coolers on approx 7 occasions now at NL25. I have yet to cooler anyone at NL25.

That leaves my BR down at the $180 mark and struggling to make head way and having massive confidence issues in my game.

We then take lucky Joe who is always on the right side of coolers. He dosnt have confidence issues in his game because he always seems to be moving forward. Not only does he get to keep his 7 buyins that I lost he gets an extra 7 buyins that he won instead. Lucky Joe is sitting there with $530 in his account and is likely playing NL50 by now.

Thats a $350 swing all because someone was luckier than someone else. Thats quite a big amount. Obviously the answer is to get luckier which we really dont have a lot of bearing on. The other answer is simply not to put lots of money in to the pot without the nuts. Ive not seen a raise by a full stacked fish or reg not be a nuttish hand yet at NL25.

Whinge over.

And this is why its pointless betting in Zoom............Seriously dont put any money in once you are called on the flop people are not folding so you better have a monster.




Luckily for lucky Joe he was sat there with 72o and didnt put a penny in the pot.

Lol I cant even win hands like this:-




Probably should just fold thinking he has at least one over card which is bound to hit lol

22: Well, I'm not sure about this one. Can't he play QQ/KK/AA exactly like this? Or at least AA? I think you played the hand well.

LOL




I just know Im ahead while hes calling but should still fold the river when he raises.

He can but it just never is.

32: I know this very well too and it is tilting me badly. TBH I would have bet smaller OTR.

now its just pure tilt. Villain tank calls the flop and raises the turn he always has a set.




Just for an added incentive stars lets me hit the ace on the river lol

cant be arse with this ****.

Anyone know how you go about excluding yourself from Stars? Do I just email them? How about these forums. Done de done done done, Poker really isnt worth the way that it makes me feel.

Ive sussed Stars and am now self excluded from there. Going to get this thread locked up as it always descends in to the same. Will be taking a proper break this time as the thought of playing poker makes me feel physically sick.

Thank you for everyone who has tried to help and sorry to those that I have let down but I dont think I have the mentality to play poker.

^^^ In the lobby menu: Requests --> Responsible Gaming --> Exclude me from Playing...

I have never done it though myself and I also don't think you should. Just have a break (few days perhaps).

The question that needs to be asked is why does it make you feel like this when you know you are a winning player ?

You have posted many screenshots of your win rates and most of us would love to have the earn rates you have.

You can easily crush the levels you play and like everyone else you must learn to accept the times when things go wrong ... eventually we all just have to master this aspect of poker.

I know what you go through because i do the exact same thing .. im up 18 buy ins in 6k hands and yesterday i had a rocky 1k hand session where the things started to go a little wrong.

Everyone knows you cannot run good forever and i knew that kind of session was on its way but it still did not stop me from getting really frustrated and losing some control.

The fact ive been on a heater had little relevance to that session .... we all need to learn to look at the bigger picture.

As furkae says ... take the weekend off and do something else and come back in a few days ready to go again.

Poker is similar to life it self in some way. In poker there are situations where you will play the hand perfectly (or almost perfectly) right way .. but still bad beat will come time to time and we will loose.

And we can't do anything about it.

In life there is still death waiting for all of us. It makes us sick if thinking about it. Life is (usually or sometimes) good and we would like to stay here for a longer time.

And we can't do anything about it.

Anyway .. this is not a reason to stop playing poker (if we are good in it and if we like it) or to stop breathing and living our lives (if we are good in it and if we like it).

We have to DEAL WITH IT like a boss



Take a break mate. Have a nice walk in park, go do some sport, have a cigar and coffee with friends, do some chat, see a movie in cinema. After this, if you really like poker (and if you are good at it, which you ARE) .. play some hands = SHIP IT !



GL

Come on Martin, 4 days ago it was fun at 10nl.
Seriously drop down and stay down for a month of confidence building.
You are setting yourself up for failure with such an aggressive BR policy at 25nl/50nl.
The coolers just mean too much there where the stacks are such big chunks of your cash.

If you were still at 10nl with a BR of $250 you would take those coolers slightly less personal imo.

You can beat the game, look at where you took that few dollars.
But stepping up too high, too quickly and underrolled you are just beating yourself.


A few days off, then back to 10nl with you.

Another epic meltdown :O This thread invites a certain morbid curiosity. Not sure why you play nit ring when you obviously get so tilted by nits. FR requires more patience than other forms of poker and you obviously don't have it. Have you figured out your hourly from poker to see if it's worth it? You don't really seem to have got anywhere with the mental side of the game.

[QUOTE=MartL;37414489]

More and more I just believe this game comes down to luck. If we take two players, one of them is me and the other is lucky Joe. I run like I have on the wrong side of coolers on approx 7 occasions now at NL25. I have yet to cooler anyone at NL25.

That leaves my BR down at the $180 mark and struggling to make head way and having massive confidence issues in my game.

We then take lucky Joe who is always on the right side of coolers. He dosnt have confidence issues in his game because he always seems to be moving forward. Not only does he get to keep his 7 buyins that I lost he gets an extra 7 buyins that he won instead. Lucky Joe is sitting there with $530 in his account and is likely playing NL50 by now.

Thats a $350 swing all because someone was luckier than someone else. Thats quite a big amount. Obviously the answer is to get luckier which we really dont have a lot of bearing on. The other answer is simply not to put lots of money in to the pot without the nuts. Ive not seen a raise by a full stacked fish or reg not be a nuttish hand yet at NL25.

QUOTE]


Take a break for a while, couple weeks at least. The thing is in todays games, there is more variance then ever. If I went back in time 4 years and had a 15-20 buyin downsing I would think the world is ending and my game was broke. In todays games 15-20 buyns is a pretty standard spot unless your a massive bumhunter and only sit the jesus seat.

Edges are thinner, regs are better and more aggressive. The skill gap between regs isn't quite what it used to be. But 100% try and work on your mental game, in todays games that's really going to be a huge edge. Your only down 3 1/2 buyins from your peak of $269.00, I probably have 4-5 buyin swings each day.

Things are good, no more SNE for me. I'm back playing 400-600 again. Still coaching, asked for my ad to be put back up and I went to my bank to do a money order to send the money and then RBC threatened to close my accounts if I continued to make online gambling transactions.

Coaching thread on hold atm, but have a few students thru word of mouth. Currently looking for a new bank and getting that sorted out 1st before I start sending $$ to poker related businesses

Its safe to say my mental game still needs the odd bit of work.

I withdrew my money and banned myself from playing for 7 days and will actually do some off table work on the mental side of things.

The rage tilt side of things is no longer a major issue but I am still beating myself up over my own mistakes and I am still judging short term results as wins and losses.

This is by far the biggest problem I have. It goes against everything I was brought up with, I know in my mind that variance plays a big part in Poker, I know that the fish have to win for the games to be good, I understand that I cant win every hand and have to lose some to be a winning player. I know in my head that its all about the long term.

The thing is though it goes against all the logic that I learnt when I was been brought up. I just dont believe that losing is acceptable, I simply have to win at everything I do. You may say well you win at poker in the long term but I just dont see it that way. I see myself have a losing session and its the end of the world. It matters not how I played in that session all I can see is the loss in my results. Its the same when I am playing hands at the table and when Im deep in to a hand I just cant bring myself to fold because folding means I am going to lose and I have to grasp on to every chance of winning that I can.

It is ingrained in to my head the winning at all cost attitude and all that macho BS that 2nd place is just the first loser. It probably also goes some way to explaining why I beat myself up over the mistakes I make as I view mistakes as failures(especially given most of the time I know better) and failure is unacceptable. Instead of seeing a mistake as a chance to learn I just see it as an excuse to beat myself up.

I`m probably going to give 6max a go when I decide to play again and it will give me a chance to try and learn some new things and just change things up a bit. In the mean time I am starting to read The Poker Mindset and am actually going to try and study it rather than glancing through it half assed like I tend to do with things.

Im also not going to be updating this thread much with hands and results as I dont think its doing me any favours as Its just leading me to be more and more results oriented and if i have a bad month I fall back in to that same cycle of thinking because it wasnt that good it must be a failure. I will probably stick to a lot of the self help stuff and things along those lines as its quite interesting and is better reading than just constant bad beats which does apparently attract a bit of morbid curiosity.

I need to try and stop checking my results somehow and coming up with a way to do that is also going to be on the agenda as well. I want to play poker but I sometimes think that the bad days like yesterday outweigh the good times which is obviously not true but if the worse something makes you feel when its going bad is worse than the best that something makes you feel when its going well then theres a problem.

sorry for derail but this posting is so tilting.

every grinder has it tough some times but theres no need for you to come and post in here like that. you're post is so arrogant/ignorant and you come across as a massive tool. Everything in ur post is just so dumb, what on earth is wrong with you?

edit:

martl, at one stage you werent checking results iirc, were things better for you then? I mean with feeling like you need to win all the time, if you dont know ur results then u wont know if you won or lost.

wrt folding = losing, it just shows at times you aren't 100% focused on making the best decision which is the only thing that matters. Any time your facing that turn raise and you know you should be folding, you should always be asking yourself "what's the correct decision here?"

just my 2 cents ofc, gl.

imho stop looking at results may help you. try to look only after month

Aren't you the guy that constantly post 'bad beats' and can't beat 10nl? Definitely qualified to be a mental game coach on the side

Anyway, I was just offering another opinion; it's obvious from the last few pages that, despite a lot of efforts, he's struggling with poker, and he's right to consider whether it's worth it, given the context of his life (i.e. not depending on the money, running a profitable business). I don't think people blindly posting: 'don't worry about it, you'll get them next time' is particularly constructive. Taking a few days off isn't going to solve more serious issues. Anyway, who are you, the thought police?

MartL: your last post was really interesting, and it sounds like you've got a good grasp of what's holding you back. Sounds like you just need to find a way to feel like a 'winner' even when you're having a losing session/running bad. Easier said than done, I know.

Perhaps you could try small things, like printing off long term graphs of yours so you can glance at them when you're having a bad session, remind yourself that you are a winner, that your poker self-esteem doesn't hinge upon the results of one hand or one session.

I don't think the distinction you draw between nitty players who only bet with the goods and creative, thinking players is very useful. There's only good decisions versus bad ones, maths versus knee jerk reactions, reality versus fantasy. At any given stake you have to beat what's put in front of you. If Galfond played in a low stakes game full of nits he wouldn't worry about checkraise bluffing the river too much.

Work out how the people at the stake are playing, make a gameplan involving how to play against different player types. When bluffcatching try to estimate the % of times he's bluffing in that spot, and then work out if you can call. Try writing it down perhaps, i.e. when facing a big river bet, hit the timebank, write down on a scrap of paper what % he's bluffing in that spot, etc. A lot of your tilt seems to come from playing back against people who don't bluff, then getting mad at yourself. Need to do everything you can to slow down and make the best decision you can. That's what winning in poker is

Whilst i dont necessarily agree with the context or the tone of your last two posts Logic, I do think Martin could learn a thing or two from you in regards to the mental side of poker.

I remember reading a thread you made and your poker sessions and your mindset was pretty damn good if truth be told.

Do you have a thread in progress nowadays ?

**edit** not including your post above though