Dear Poker Fellows,

I hope this post finds you well. I sincerely need your advice/comments on this. My heart is broken and it's always me that gets bad beats and cannot win a flip. This is what happened:

Played at Day1B in Sycuan Casino and there were like 40 players left. 19 will be bagged to Day2. Blind was 1500/3000. I have like 62K with 20BB left. I was at BB and LJ raised to 2B and I have KJs. I thought about 3bet but ended up with a call. Flop was 5 7 J rainbow. I check and he bet 5k and I raised to 15k and he immediately shoved it with 85k which covers me. I tanked.. and told him I had a J and showed I have KJ and noticed his face turned red little bit. I asked would you show? He said $10 confidently. I tanked and somebody called clock and I called finally. He had JTo. Turn was 8 and River was 9. He rivered straight. I was out. Painful as hell because I made the right call but runner runner straight killed me. Takeaway: shall I 3bet preflop? Probably then still will be out flop I'd shove.

Played at Day1C again next day and there was 37 players left and 25 bagged for Day2. I have 135K left. Blind was 3000/6000 roughly 22BB left. I was at BB with QQ. UTG+2 raised to 2.5x 15K and LJ (tight didn't play many hands) cold called 15K. I raised to 110K which is 7x. and UTG+2 asked me how many I have left and shoved with 150K chips. LJ folded instantly. I am already committed so I called. He has AKo. He gambled with 25BB. Flop came A K 4 and turn river blank. I busted.


I am super painful after the bust and thought why did God always favor others in critical moment? Why was I always got sucked out? I lost multiple tournament locally in Seattle Nov and Dec as well. To be honest, since playing poker in 2021, my luck is always pretty bad but I just love tournaments! I've never had run good like Rampage did and I'm jealous very much.. So the quesion becomes this talked to myself that shall I quit playing poker? Because maybe I should have called with QQ and see if there are K or A on the flop but he still could have KK or AA preflop. I don't know and I'm heart broken.

What would you do? Any advice?

Thanks
Mike

If losing with QQ vs AK really bothers you then yeah, maybe you need a new hobby.

Play in games where losing the buy in doesn't leave you heartbroken

No one says you have to put 25bbs in preflop at that juncture of the tournament. On the other hand, well played.

H1: Either just call the flop bet or check-jam. Non all in raise is pointless at this stack depth. I prefer to check call and try to get to a showdown. If it goes check check on turn and runout is clean we can value bet river.

H2: Jam pre. Again, non all in raise is pointless. Utilize your full stack size for max fold equity (or for a max double up). This is a slam dunk jam with the caller in the middle. Squeeze play is teed up for you with dead money to win. Try not to be results oriented.

Btw neither of these are even close to bubble play. You’re still in the mid-stages looking to build a stack (in anticipation of abusing the bubble).

Hand 1: If KJs isn't in your 3-bet range then calling pre-flop is the way to go. If I am check raising on the flop then its a jam for me. My normal sizing would be between 17,500 and 20,000 which is basically virtually pot committing. If he calls and an A or Q comes on the turn it is an OOP disaster. I don't mind jamming here preflop with KJs because we block AK/AJ/KQ type hands and have a decent chance of getting a fold. Also, against AQ we are about 40% to win.

Hand 2: Raising to 110k makes no sense really. Imagine if he calls and you see that flop. Are you really folding to a bet? Just jam. It made no difference because he is calling your jam with AK anyway.

The thing is about poker tournaments you will basically take at least one bad beat in every tournament you play. It may not knock you out though. So becoming emotionally stable and being able to let it go is critical to being a good player. People who tilt and get over aggressive or over passive are not going to be excellent players.

The other thing to note is that in basically every tournament you go deep you will have to win a few all in flips. Imagine winning with AA over QQ, KK over TT and AK over AQ all ins. Your overall survival rate would be about 45%. I also typically get it in bad once (at least) when I am short stacked and first to act. So when I win a tournament the odds of me surviving are often under 15% and sometimes even under 1% based on my all ins that were called (and I count when I am close to all in as well)

Which means that you will not go deep in a tournament extremely often. There have been periods of time when I haven't cashed (or at least not min cashed) in a string of tournaments. Once it lasted over a year and another time over 10 months. I wasn't even surviving the 80% hands (like AA vs KK).

But then there will be the tournament where you won't even lose a flip. In the US typically only 12% cash in a tournament. In the WSOP its like 15%. Going deep? That is harder the more players are in the tournament and also depends on the quality of players. I have noticed that the WPT has really really tough fields so I don't even bother.

Ultimately it is important to train yourself emotionally to accept bad beats. I try to experience the pain in the moment and move on. Once I said "Ouch" out loud and a player laughed and said that he was impressed. I used to try to avoid my feelings when I was younger and that led to chronic depression. I have used my emotional awareness since then and applied it to poker. It is unfortunately a painful competition at some points.

Before I start a tournament I virtually always listen to music. And the song I always play right before I arrive is the Eagles "There's going to be a Heartache Tonight". And yes I get that mostly its going to be mine.

As others have said, if this breaks your heart, MTTs are not for you. Play cash instead.

If you continue to play, you need some mental game work. I have read where players try to take all of the emotion out of the game, such that both wins and losses don't affect you. If you need to go that far, that is fine. For me, I do want to have some joy with my triumphs, so I recognize I will have some pain when I get knocked out. I just try to make both emotions about 50% of what they would have been. I'm still a little miffed when I lose. I won a (very) small tournament last week, and was happy about it, but it didn't reach the full level of happiness, due to the above tempering.

As to the play of the hands...KJs is mostly a 3! there. Calling is fine, however. Once you see a flop with SPR3, you are committed when you flop top pair. Others have suggested check shoving, but even with your check raise, you are committed here. If you aren't wiling to stack off with top pair, you should just shove preflop; potentially folding away top pair here would be a disaster, unless Villain was uber tight.

Hand 2 is a fist pump shove. Losing with QQ vs AK is just standard tournament poker stuff. To win a tournament, you have to both win with AK, and beat AK (I think that was a TJ thing).

One other thing, this might not be close to bubble play, but there is a risk premium that is greater than zero here. That shouldn't effect these spots, since they are both such high CeV.

It's just that i keep getting bat beat for last 3 months, that really drains me.

Lol I agree with this. It losing a flip at 20bb stack depth hurts, you should stop playing tournaments bc you are in for a lot of pain Hahahahhaa.

H1- idk if you want to 3 bet this hand at stack depth. If you do 3! It’s a jam most likely unless you plan to fold to a shove which you shouldn’t if you 3! Bc you are just bleeding chips. Hmm hand played out ok. Idk why you would tank. KJ is like the nuts on that board- stack depth 20bb you can’t just wait for tptk all the time or sets/ overpairs. Losing to a straight- boo hoo, who cares. If people didnt suck out once in a while, no
Bad players would play the game.

H2- hmm just a standard flip. Idk what to say. Again if that hurts- give up tourny poker. I feel losing a flip at a final table for 5-6 figures of equity might hurt but idk about some small buyin not even in the money.

One thing I can tell you from experience with my own mental game and my worst leaks, which tend to the side of pessimism when I'm running bad leading to passivity and trying to play it "safe": You have to push your edges and you have to gamble to win tournaments. You have to get as much money as you can in when you're ahead; you can't play it safe and hope for clean runouts before putting the money in.

These two hands aren't even close spots, they're no-brainers. If you're trying to find a way to avoid getting your money in with them, then you need some major strategy and mental game adjustments if you want to be a winning tournament player.

I appreciate the advice and I'd agree 100%. I realized poker favors aggression and those aggressive players tend to win more. Another question that how is your luck of playing poker? This question seems silly but it has happened to me in the past 3 years of playing poker that 90% of the time I'm ahead before all in that turned out I get bad beat and suck out on later street. 10% I'd suck them out. I don't think this percentage relationship is healthy and I don't know how to turn it around.

I appreciate your insight and personal exp. QQ on over a year or 10 months without winning, must be tough mentally or financially. How did you get over it during the tough times?

For example, you're running out of your bankroll or you have self-doubts about playing poker if it's a right call going forward.

What I normally do after bad beats is to keep learning and learning. What I meant by painful (some other folks are laughing about this which is fine) is that with the last 3 months running bad, I lost all of my profits and now my poker profit is down to zero or even negative a few hundred. Luckily I have other sources of income so I could continue. I'm curious how you managed this situation and appreciate it in advance.

I've gone through bad stretches, but they've always ended up turning around eventually (unless I was just playing in a game I wasn't a winner in, which may be the case here, but it's hard to say without knowing more about your overall play-- not that a live $360 should be that tough). In this case I suspect selective memory is playing a role here; it's easy for us to remember the times we got unlucky as being unjust for unfair, while not considering the same for the times we did get lucky.

I haven't really had a bankroll problem because I just move down to whatever stakes are reasonable when I'm on a losing streak. (I usually keep about 100-150 buyins of my highest game in my bankroll, and about 300-400 ABIs.) If it's pretty bad and it's affecting my mental game or my ability to enjoy playing, I take a break. I definitely don't play well if I feel like I need to win. But I also spend time studying when I'm not playing, win or lose. And I track my hands online and all of my results so I can look for patterns and hands to review.

I guess the question of what you're studying matters. And if you're online and not using Pokertracker 4 or something similar to track your hands, you're not getting the data you really need. Note any important or difficult hands from your play, live or online, to review later.

Hmm. Don't think I have anything else to add at this moment.

This is not really possible. Unless you are using biased samples as to what constitutes ahead vs behind, or the sample size is ~10, this just won't happen.

If you think of QQ vs AK as ahead, but QQ vs AA behind, they are just not remotely similar.

Here's an idea going forward. Note your all ins. Put them in an equity calculator. You will probably find that the percentages are a lot closer when you are ahead than you think.

As an example....it may seem like you have a 'lock' on the KJ vs JT hand, but Villain had about 15.5% equity on that hand. You had 84.5%.

You can score this as -84.5. Take all these spots, and add them up. Divide by the number of instances. When you have had 50 or so, come back to us with the number.