I decided a few weeks ago to really commit to grinding online (as opposed to live which I have done for a while but no longer can b/c I moved).

I dumped $500 on Stars and stared 8-12 tabling. I really feel/know that I should be a winner at these stakes. I've been making good reads, gotten my money in good fairly often, and only have lost big pots to coolers or to paying off river suckouts.

My stats over my first 7500 hands are VPIP 15.9 PFR 7.1 Agg 2.94

Unfortunately, despite a +2BI upswing during my first 1k hands, I am now down to $340, the last -4BI happening over the last 1500 hands.

While I realize that 7500 hands is not NEARLY enough to get a sense of my winrate or anything much else, I still get the sense that I shouldnt be losing 10BI within a 6500 hand period...it just seems like to much with a playing style that isn't insanely aggressive.

My fear is that I somehow am wrong about being a winning player at 25NL on Stars, despite feeling really comfortable at the table and usually only losing big pots to cooler-ish hands.

Is having a -10BI swing something that can reasonably happen within a few thousand hands? I know it happens on occasion, but I can't imagine that I just happened to get THAT unlucky in my first few thousand hands. I am really doubting myself now, and trying to figure out if I need to just give up on poker completely. I have such a better understanding of the game than I did a year ago or two years ago, but if I'm still stacking off to 25NL donks and cant make money there, maybe its time to give up?


Any advice is appreciated. You guys have been great in the past.




/depressed rant

Is this 6max or FR. Your stats are way too nitty for 6max. Maybe you're stacking off too much with TPTK and overpair like hands and not getting payed off when you're ahead?

It's FR. And I havn't really stacked off with TPTK but I have a few times with overpairs.

Another problem is I'll often get a feeling that a river card improved the villan but I have a hard time not paying it off because I'm almost always correct that I was ahead the entire hand (this isn't with FDs but with villan making two pair or trips a lot of the times)

welll if you feel you aint that good start playing less tables... seriously you cant play your best game at 12 tables.. thats what fees said... no more than 4 tables if you wanna get better.. and grinding bonuses always < learning to play better... so i think too much tables is an issue here...

I really do think I am good enough for 25NL, thats the problem perhaps but I really do feel I get my money in good and only spew occasionally or against pretty coolerish hands. If I'm completely wrong on this I have a much bigger issue.


I've been considering playing fewer tables as well, but when playing 10 tables I don't feel rushed at all. I take my time with all my decisions, and feel confident in my decisions. I'm sure playing fewer tables would be marginally helpful, but I really don't think its my problem (if I actually do have one).

What do you guys think of my downswing? Is that pretty standard? It just seems unlikely to have that much of a swing in the first 10k hands, but I have never played this volume of hands before so quickly so I dont know.


What kind of winrate can be expected from 25NL?

playing ten tables at fullring is fine as long as you don't feel rushed. 10 bi downswings happen all the time, but they'll happen less frequently the bigger your edge is.

eck, you see pretty certain that you can play 12 tables and play them well and perhaps you are just being unlucky....however ill still go with what the guys above me said about playing too many tables. even if you play a good generic ABC game at 12 tables I'd bet that you miss alot in terms of reads. Sure, youll get the reads on the big fish etc but youll miss alot of the stuff that is being put out there if you played less tables.

you are limping too much...raise more of the limping hands preflop, seriously

I'm curious about raising more hands at FR..so you shouldn't open limp with pp's to set mine UTG etc. But raise any pos and try to isolate and build a pot if you hit>

I think i run at 17/11 atm and intially i was more nitty. But recently i've been looking into upping my PFR. However, i'm unsure how i'm going to get around the 16/14 mark. I'd have to raise up a seriously wide range with a fold or raise strategy.

As for your sample size, it might be a downswing. I play micro stakes and have break even runs of 5k of hands and then break out of it. Hoewver, ur losing and your vpip and PF seems pretty standard to me.

Anyways, I'll leave it to the better players. How about moving down one level and then take another shot?

play less tables, i would have thought this would be the obvious solution.

Play 3 tables for like 5k hands and see how you do.

Agree with above try 3-4 tables for 5k hands.

Sorry bud while you think you can, I dont think you can with your mindset. You are losing quite a bit over such a small sample due to you multitabling so much but you are trying to blame it on maybe its a rare occurence for a downswing. You are just being blind to yourself here

Feeling rushed is really a lot different than making correct reads. When im down at 5nl and 2nl I will run 20 tables because i dont feel rushed and i can sit there and play like a robot because so many players are predictable. 25nl plenty are predictable as well, just theres some other things you have to sit down and think about. Also they just dont pay you off as easy so you cant just bet pot every time and have them call like 2nl and 5nl.

My problem was exactly yours, I would bump up to 25nl play 8-12 to try and max my winrate and i lost 300-400 4x over. Right now im running a 5.5bb/100 over 25k hands and I wont let myself exceed 6 tables. My biggest problem right now is the fact that I keep running into kk vs AA and i havent won it once. Kinda frustrating that its actually losing 2 buyins, so if that ever changes and improves I should be in pretty good shape

In this thread pretty much everybody is saying the same thing about the multitabling, even when you say you dont feel rushed

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm gonna put in a few thousand hands playing 4 tables and see what happens

Just as a side note (if anyone is still reading this thread ), I haven't been able to get the Hold'em Manager HUD to work. Are there any common problems to getting it started that might have me held up or do I just need to e-mail them?

Thanks again.

-10BI swings happen all the time but that said, I would still be concerned about one at NL25 given your stats aren't showing a very aggro style. Can you post a screencap of your positional stats?

Definitely drop down to 3-4 tables and concentrate on making the best decisions vs playing tons of hands.

After a session replay your 10 biggest winning/losing hands. Did you misplay them, was there an obvious mistake, did you miss value? Pick 2 that you're most unsure about and post them in the micro FR forum.

Do you have the full Registered version? The trial may limit the # of tables it will work on (I'm just guessing).
Any other info...did it work then stop, error messages etc?

There were a few spewy river situations where I would improve and my opponent would hit his draw and I'd pay them off, but I don't know if those are just the unavoidable situations or if I can actually get away from top two pair when the only hand that has me beat is a rivered straight (and I've bet strong the whole way, for example). I've also lost a lot in situations where I have overpairs and I get played back at on the flop.

I'll post a screencap when I get home from work, and any graph or additional stats that would be helpful as well.

I'm doing the fewer tables thing, but I find myself making the same decisions and don't feel like I'm playing any better, but I'm gonna play a couple thousand hands this way just to see if it makes a difference.


I really feel like this is 85% varience maybe 15% spew but I like hearing from you guys to keep myself grounded and hopefully improving...I'm sick of micros and want to grind my way out of them to at least 100NL in the somewhat near future, and I'm finally (after years) really putting the time aside to work on my game and grind out a ton of hands.

The one big thing I can think of is that I pay off on the river when I'm fairly sure I'm beat (despite having a decent hand), but the problem is a lot of the time I call and they show a bluff or, worse yet, a hand that was behind until the river.

How do you get away from a hand when you are correctly confident you are ahead the whole way but then are outdrawn on the river (not FDs or SDs but just rivering a higher pair or an Ace making them a higher two pair, etc.)


Basically the entire point of this thread is my trying to figure out if I am encountering a larger than average number of situations that are tough or impossible to not pay off or if my game really is fundamentally flawed before spewing off my BR...