Ugh, so far the positive sign from yesterday was very short-lived. Session isn't over yet but so far I've gone right back to the same-old, same-old.

1) $5.50 heads-up total PKO: Lasted about 10 minutes again, busted when I got all in on the flop with an EOSD and backdoor NFD and ran into villain's flopped straight.

2) $2.20, 1k guarantee: Min-cashed. Knocked down to a short stack in the middle stages when my AA got cracked by 33 but managed to recover. Tripled up thanks to this hand:

PokerStars - 100/200 Ante 25 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 23.12 BB
UTG: 24.88 BB
UTG+1: 12.52 BB
MP: 7.89 BB
MP+1: 29.88 BB
CO: 14.75 BB
Hero (BTN): 10.51 BB
SB: 64.5 BB

8 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has K A

fold, UTG+1 calls 1 BB, MP calls 1 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 10.38 BB and is all-in, fold, fold, UTG+1 calls 9.38 BB, MP calls 6.76 BB and is all-in

Flop: (31.03 BB, 3 players) J 2 8

Turn: (31.03 BB, 3 players) 9

River: (31.03 BB, 3 players) 6

UTG+1 shows T A (High Card, Ace)

Main Pot [25.79 BB]: (Pre 24%, Flop 15%, Turn 17%)
Side Pot#1 [5.24 BB]: (Pre 29%, Flop 16%, Turn 24%)

Hero shows K A (High Card, Ace)

Main Pot [25.79 BB]: (Pre 47%, Flop 66%, Turn 69%)
Side Pot#1 [5.24 BB]: (Pre 71%, Flop 84%, Turn 76%)

MP shows 5 Q (High Card, Queen)

Main Pot [25.79 BB]: (Pre 28%, Flop 19%, Turn 14%)

Hero wins 31.03 BB

LOL wut? It's hands like this that make me really wonder how I'm not killing these games.

Back to the session summary...

3) $5.50, 30% PKO: Card dead, out on a 99<AK flip.

4) $3.30 zoom, 500 guarantee: Found myself in some really weird spots in this one, I'll post some of them separately. Lost a bunch of chips on these weird spots and then busted on a bad beat, TT<A8s.

5) Winter Series $11 PKO: One interesting spot I'll post separately but otherwise couldn't get anything going. Busted on the following hand:

PokerStars - 250/500 Ante 60 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (UTG+1): 46.26 BB
MP: 48.3 BB
MP+1: 52.7 BB
CO: 39.4 BB
BTN: 95.51 BB
SB: 123.48 BB
BB: 58.6 BB
UTG: 41.84 BB

8 players post ante of 0.12 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.46 BB) Hero has Q K

fold, Hero raises to 2.55 BB, fold, MP+1 raises to 7.5 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 4.95 BB

Flop: (17.46 BB, 2 players) Q T J
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 5.76 BB, Hero raises to 14 BB, MP+1 calls 8.24 BB

Turn: (45.46 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero bets 24.64 BB and is all-in, MP+1 calls 24.64 BB

River: (94.75 BB, 2 players) 5

Hero shows Q K (One Pair, Queens)
(Pre 30%, Flop 42%, Turn 23%)
MP+1 shows K A (Straight, Ace High)
(Pre 70%, Flop 58%, Turn 77%)
MP+1 wins 94.75 BB

Can't ask for much more than flopping TPTK+OESD+2ndNFD but once again ran into a flopped straight. So ugly.

MTTs are stupid. They're way too top heavy and you can have a long run of garbage results as a good player. Learn how to play cash games in my opinion. You can play as short of a session as you like, whenever. More freedom and less variance in cash games.

MTTs aren't nearly as top heavy as they used to be, the payout structures have flattened compared to what they used to be. Regardless, though, I really don't enjoy cash poker at all.

So this isn't funny at all, I'm starting to feel like Pokerstars is just stealing from me. I know I said I would try to post fewer bad beat hands, but when they overwhelmingly represent the notable hands I play, it's hard to avoid. This was my bustout from the Hot 4.40 PKO:

PokerStars - 40/80 Ante 10 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 62.5 BB
Hero (BTN): 52.1 BB
SB: 133.49 BB
BB: 83.92 BB
UTG: 57.2 BB
UTG+1: 48.65 BB
MP: 16.26 BB
MP+1: 77.14 BB
MP+2: 67.74 BB

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.62 BB) Hero has A A

fold, fold, MP raises to 16.14 BB and is all-in, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 16.14 BB, fold, BB calls 15.14 BB

Flop: (50.04 BB, 3 players) K T 4
BB checks, Hero bets 35.84 BB and is all-in, BB calls 35.84 BB

Turn: (121.71 BB, 3 players) 8

River: (121.71 BB, 3 players) K

BB shows Q K (Three of a Kind, Kings)

Main Pot [50.04 BB]: (Pre 13%, Flop 9%, Turn 0%)
Side Pot#1 [71.67 BB]: (Pre 14%, Flop 25%, Turn 12%)

Hero shows A A (Two Pair, Aces and Kings)

Main Pot [50.04 BB]: (Pre 69%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)
Side Pot#1 [71.67 BB]: (Pre 86%, Flop 75%, Turn 88%)

MP shows 4 4 (Full House, Fours full of Kings)

Main Pot [50.04 BB]: (Pre 18%, Flop 82%, Turn 95%)

BB wins 71.67 BB
MP wins 50.04 BB

I spend hours watching videos, taking notes, analyzing hands - what's the point?

The bigger the MTT the more top heavy it gets. Take for example a tournament with ~2k players that I played and won vs the same tournament that I got 11th place in. When I won I got 268x my buy-in. When I got 11th I got ~9x my buy-in. When I busted in 11th place I had AK lose to AJ all in pre flop for a larger than average chip stack. The equity of that pot was probably 50x buy-ins or something.

If you want to play tourneys but want less variance than play sit n goes. Or learn how to play cash games. Because tourneys are stupid. I'm on a huge downswing in tourneys. It's just crazy how bad you can run in tourneys over a decently large sample size. There's no guarantee you'll get out of it and the long run is a lot longer than you think it is. Especially as a more part time rec.

There is no point if you're just going to play turbo MTT's. All that stuff about time and kids and whatever are just excuses to avoid doing the right thing. Every good player at every variant of poker started from with the basics; learning good fundamentals. This means 100BB classic ring game poker. Sure there are outliers, natural born slayers who just jumped into HU or SNG's and murdered the field, but these are outliers. The vast majority of players who specialize in all types of poker all come from the same background, 6max or 9max NLHE fullstacked cash. Forget these goofball game types youre hoping to shortcut your way to success and start with the basics. Prove you are a winning player in that format and then dip your toes into these lesser played game types.

Also that last hand hand wasnt a bad beat, it was a cooler. You tried to trap with AA, underrepped your range and got unlucky vs an opponent who had every reason to be there.

I appreciate you taking the time to read and contribute to the thread, but with all due respect I disagree with pretty much everything you said here. You're clearly someone who is very biased towards cash as though tournaments are a joke and cash is the only game of skill. Cash and tournament poker are two very different games that emphasize different skill sets and you absolutely do not need to prove you're a winning player in cash games in order to play MTTs. Suggesting that I'm making "excuses to avoid doing the right thing" (implying that playing cash is the right thing) or that I'm trying to shortcut my way to success, is pretty ridiculous.

As for the hand, I think you're completely wrong. Flatting AA when a shortstack shoves in a PKO is definitely an optimal way to play the hand. It's highly unlikely that anyone else will overcall a 16bb shove, and it can entice someone to re-shove behind to try to isolate the bounty. Everything about what happened after that was a bad beat, not a cooler. My AA got cracked by the shortie's 44 for the main pot, and I got the rest in on the flop as a 75% fav for the side pot. Running KK into AA or losing flopped set over set is a cooler. This was a bad beat, and a pretty brutal one at that.

So what makes KK vs AA a cooler but not TPGK vs AA?

A cooler is basically an unfortunate but unavoidable situation, the kind of spot where you're losing a big pot no matter how you play the hand. A bad beat is when you get your money in way ahead and villain sucks out.

So then you're saying KQ misplayed the hand I guess. Meh, maybe.

Greatest thing you need to do is play each tournament as if it's entirely divorced from your track record as of late.

I feel that you're placing too much pressure on your result to bink a tournament, and when you invariably bust out (which is going to happen more times than you win, this is how it is), it demoralises you, throwing off your mental state of mind during the next tournament.

Each game needs to be played within a vacuum regardless of suck outs.

Otherwise my advice would be to pick a softer site like Ignite where the grindhouses and collusion doesn't exist to the degree it does elsewhere.

Not necessarily, calling 16bb with KQ there would be a huge mistake in a regular MTT but it might be okay factoring in a chance to win 2 bounties. Once he hits TP on the flop he's obviously not folding. So you could say the hand was a bit of s cooler for him, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a bad beat for me.

Great advice, and I know this at a rational level but it's hard to do in practice when each bustout is just the latest in a long string of failures. And like I said before, I can handle bustouts on flips or close decisions or getting caught bluffing or whatever. When the bustouts are overwhelmingly due to bad beats and coolers that it really gets to me.

I'm going to do some thinking about how to mentally separate myself from the results.

You want to use a much more polarized sizing on river here, instead of around 1/3. You basically always have the best hand on river here since villain checks behind brick turn and river also bricks. Because he didn't bet turn your continuing range is also a lot wider than if you would've called two barrels. You have tons of missed flush draws and straight draws, even some backdoor spades you floated flop with and some A high hands that probably aren't good (although probably not good to bluff with) on river. You can easily size up to 2/3 - close to pot here. Looks a lot more suspicious than milking 1/3 here also.

I've been reflecting quite a bit on my emotional state during this downswing and some of the advice people have been sharing in this thread. And I do want to emphasize that even if I disagree with you, I do appreciate you taking the time to read and contribute to my thread.


Despite what some have suggested, I'm not giving up on MTTs. I really do enjoy playing this game. What drew me to poker way back when I started was the strategy. As soon as I discovered the game I started soaking up every book I could read on the topic. What I love about tournaments in particular is the clear objective involved (outlast everyone else) and the gladiatorial competitive nature - there can only be one winner. Although I have played cash at various times throughout my life, I don't enjoy it at all. It lacks what I love about tournaments so I find it boring. And I have no interest in spending my free time doing something I don't enjoy.


Part of what I love about playing is the journey of personal improvement. I love the challenge of being bad at something and learning to get better at it. I love analyzing hands and gaining a deeper understanding of concepts, and then practicing how to apply what I've learned at the tables. I love identifying leaks in my game, or things I need to improve, and then figuring out how to improve those things. I love finding myself in challenging spots, reasoning through it, and making a big call or pulling off a well-timed bluff. But this is all process, not outcomes. Obviously I want to become profitable at this game but I'm not asking for much. I'm not looking to get rich, or turn pro, or play at the highest levels. I just want to find enough success that I can earn some extra disposable income.


So the challenge is how to separate my love of the process from the results, so that I can continue to get all the enjoyment from playing and learning without getting frustrated and depressed at the bad beats and downswings. I've come up with a few practical ideas, but please feel free to share any others.

1) I will hide my online balance so I'm not reminded every time I log in about how much I've lost and won't stress over watching the number drop after a bad session. Unless and until I get the "insufficient balance" popup, there's no reason for me to pay attention to my balance.

2) Any time I go all in, I will immediately minimize that window and ignore the result. Once I've made the decision to put my chips in, the outcome is irrelevant. I can review the spots later to make sure my decisions are correct, but otherwise I will not pay any attention to what happens. This will help avoid the immediate anguish of any bad beats and the tilt it might cause for the rest of my session.

3) I'm going to do some digging to see if there are some regular speed MTTs that I can manage within my schedule. A long session of turbos can run 7-8 hours so if I'm willing to do that, I might as well try some regular speed tourneys if there are any within that timeframe. I'm just not willing to commit 10-12 hours or be stuck playing into the wee hours of the morning.

4) This isn't directly related to the results issue, but I've decided to put a bit of money back on GG and perhaps take a break from Stars. A change of scenery might help me mentally reset - a different player pool, different structures, etc. I haven't been on GG in a couple of years but the site is more popular now than it was then, so hopefully the MTT offerings might be a bit more varied than before.

Wishing u the best, but please refrain from using the phrase "rock bottom".....if u want to read about rock bottom read my short lived pgc and paistings,

I agree I'm likely good there, which is why I went for value, but it's clearly a thin value spot. Maybe I could go half pot but this isn't a polarized sizing spot because my hand is smack in the middle of my range here. I think it would be very difficult to get a call from a worse hand with a 2/3 pot bet or larger.

You're not just likely good here, you're almost always good here. Maybe villain checks the same hand or KT behind sometimes on the turn, but he really should be close to pure betting any hand that beats yours on a turn brick, both to extract value and protect his equity. He ​can get called by weaker Kx, Qx and numerous draws. He can have a ton of bluffs on this drawheavy texture himself, so he needs to offset this with a lot of valuehands or he's gonna be extremely imbalanced on this board if he plays it even remotely standard with a lot of his draws. River is completely meaningless unless he has exactly 33, so unless he has very little understanding of the game, you're simply good here.

Your hand also isn't smack in the middle of your range here; you have some A high floats, you have missed diamonds, you have missed straight draws and you have Qx. You're high up in your overall range in a spot that's supereasy to overbluff. Therefor you don't just have a 'thin' valuebet here, you have a super obvious valuebet that's gonna have to be polarized with the amount of bluffs you'll have on this runout. Like, what are you gonna do with JT, J9 and missed diamonds in this spot? Just bet 1/3 on river and give villain like 5:1 on a call when you bluff half the time? The sizing you chose simply doesn't make sense mathematically.

I concede that folks in $2-$5 MTT's probably don't think this way and will rather focus on how intimidating a big bet looks like rather than what your range looks like and not call light enough as a result, but they're not complete morons; they're gonna realize a lot of draws brick and you're probably gonna have a lot of bluffs. You're leaving value on the table and you end up with an overall strategy that is gonna get you trouble when you actually don't have top pair in this spot, which will be the majority of the time.

Interesting, appreciate the thoughts.

What hands in your range would you use a small sizing on the river? Any?

You're welcome. I ain't no magician, but I know the spots where I've got something of value to add.

I personally wouldn't size anything 1/3 on this river. Perhaps if there actually is a magician out there lurking or commenting this thread he can let you know what hands he would size 1/3 with. As a rule of thumb your valuerange has to widen significantly if you're gonna use a smaller size on a board where so many draws brick and you're polarized to a shitload of (weak) valuehands and pure bluffs. If you want to make a 1/3 bet make sense mathematically, you need to bet at least every Kx, every Qx and likely even worse hands for value, given that you have a lot of hands you want to bluff with and villain only needs to be right 20-25% of the time. It's gonna be a real struggle making that work. You're just way better of making a substantially bigger bet in my opinion.

A general heuristic you can follow is that once your range becomes more polarized towards valuebets and bluffs, you need to size big.

I guess this is where I'm a bit confused: my range isn't polarized here at all. Yes I can have a lot of bluffs here but after defending and facing only a single small flop bet, I can have a whole lot of very marginal made hands here too. My range in this spot is super wide.

I should've worded more carefully what I meant, polarized wasn't the right word to describe it. I didn't mean you can only have very strong hands or bluffs on the river. I meant you have a range of both a lot of (weak) valuehands and a lot of bluffing hands when you arrive like this on the river.

You're right about you having a lot of (weak) valuehands on the river, but even if you can balance the amount of (weak) valuehands you have out with the amount of bluffings hands you have, you're still laying your opponent fantastic odds when you only bet 1/3 in spots like this. What does he care if you even have twice as much valuebets as bluffs on the river if you're only betting 1/3? He only needs to be right 20% of the time to make a profitable long-term call when you lay him odds like that. He can just happily call and lose a single cookie two or three times to you for every one time he's right and wins four cookies. This is why your sizing is theoretically incorrect; you're gonna have to find like four times as much valuehands as bluffing hands for him to even have a breakeven call, let alone a losing call. Even if you have a lot of weak valuehands, that's borderline undo-able on a board where all straight draws and flush draws brick, which is exactly why it's recommended to size significantly larger on boards where a lot of hands you would've been drawing with miss. In theory, you can only size small if you have a far greater amount of valuehands compared to just a couple of bluffing hands.

As a side note: you answered in your first comment to me that you felt like K9 was a thin valuebet on this runout. If K9 is a thin valuebet, how are you ever gonna find like four times as much valuehands as bluffing hands when you bet river this small? That's obviously not gonna happen. So when you encounter spots like this in the future you can either start experimenting with sizing up, which in my opinion is far superior and the theoretical line arguably any poker coach worth his salt would teach you, or you're gonna have to bet every Kx, Qx and a boatload of 6x like this to create this huge imbalance in the amount of valuehands you have versus the amount of bluffing hands you have. Rather you than me; that's gonna be a hell to implement without being more beneficial than just choosing a bigger sizing.

Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

You're welcome. When is your next session?

I think your idea to not pay any further attention to your balance is great by the way. I know of a spins player who won in exces of a million dollars grinding spins that said he basically checked out his balance once at the end of the month to let some small backers know how much he won and that was it. There's really no need to pay attention to your results all the time if you've set a healthy bankroll into place and have an edge at the stakes you play.

All the other measures you're looking to make seem like interesting things to experiment with as well.