I have this constant problem that I spend days obtaining relatively small winnings and then crashing to zero. It has been plaguing me for about 2 months now. It hits me on cash games and tournaments. 2NL-10NL (when rolled) 1$-5$ SnGs/DoNs

Its driving me absolutely nuts to see my hard earned winnings disappear each and every time. I end up stacking off and eatting a suckout/badbeat (and that can be expected) but my stack off losses almost always hit harder then my winnings. I don't seem to get many chances to stack off for a lot (sets, flushes, etc). I slowly raise my winnings graph and crash it in a day. I generally don't see massive jumps upward.


What do people do to win it and keep it?

if your losing it all back to zero then either you have some serious leeks in your game or your underrolled for whatever your playing.

you should post some graphs and stats so that people can see that just to try to help fix anything that could be obvious.

Simple solution, don't stack off. Play small pots and you won't experience these "suck out" situations. Also, go back and really evaluate the hands you are losing all your chips on. Did you really get the money in with the best hand? Could you have saved money some how? Could you have resized preflop, on the flop, etc that might have kept the PSR down and avoided a stack off?

The biggest thing here is going back and being honest with yourself about your play. If you really are playing these the best way possible, but can't emotionally handle the variance involved with monster pots then stop playing them. Play some low ball small pot sniper type of play and accumulate your winnings that way.

Best of luck,
Fielding

Your probally not a winning player from the sounds of it. The game has upswings and downswings, a winning players upswings >ds ldo.

Work on your game, the small winngs you get are just upswings.

Perhaps you shouldn't be moving up. Stick at the lowest limit for a while and eek out some consistent sessions. 3-5K hands or a couple hundred SnGs. Your sample will still be small, but at least you'll begin to understand your game.

One other thing, SnG and cash require two different skill sets. Pick one or the other and concentrate your energies on learning to beat it.

Thanks for the replys!
5NL 6 Max over ~8k hands (Current Game)
Stats: 23.18 17.35 1.85 x/y/z

27.06 blind steal, 6.12 3bet

W$WSF 42.37 WTSD 34.75 W$SD 43.90


Position Wise:
VPIP, PFR, CCPF
SB: 39.29, 17.14, 3.41 (Not raising enough here? Too loose?)
BTN: 26.95, 19.15 16.67 (High Cold call? Raise?)
CO: 21.15 13.46 1.47
MP: 20.79 14.85 0
UTG: 19.67 15.57, 13.33 (Seems I should stop limping here)
BB: 17.93, 10.34, 0 (Do I not play BB enough?)

Read the section on bankroll management:

Beginners Forum Frequently Asked Questions

If you can beat 2NL there's no reason anyone should ever go busto.

When you get at least another 2k hands at 5nl, take a pic of your positional stats and post it Here. And people will be glad to help you find any possible leaks.

same here.. it takes me 2000 hands to build something, and only couple to ruin it all.

I have drawn by myself last line down/beat, cause it was cropped.



buuut i have to play only 5300 more hands before finding leekz
can't wait.

sounds like you suffer from tilt issues like myself. Any little losing streaks disrupts your game. Couple days off should do the trick

Easiest answer is focus and really put all your energy into one form, either cash or tournaments. Not that you can't be profitable in both, but focusing on one lets you better understand the ins and outs of it quicker and become more profitable. One of my biggest problems when I first started was I believed I had an edge at every game (most I didn't) and would switch all the time, often underrolled. LHE one day, Turbo SNG's the next, 10nl the next day, HU SNG's after that, and I would wonder why I was slowly bleeding away my BR. Just focus on one, learn to get away from the game when you are being affected by tilt, and you will do great.

Thank you all yet again for the replys.

It does look a lot like my graph. lol

I don't know how badly I'm tilting after a bad beat, but it is something to keep tabs on. I'll try to focus on tilt control and 6 max.

Umm, your two downswings are ~945 and ~810 hands, almost 1000 hands each.

It's taking you half as many hands to lose your money as to win it. That's not a "couple" hands at all.

I just don't think you may be a winning player at this point. Look at WTSD, most agree this should be around 25%, you are wayyy too high. And you're losing more often at showdown than you are winning, that makes it kind of hard to win in the long run. This should be close to 50% and preferrably 50-55%+

Way too general, but it seems to me that if you're winning small pots and losing big ones, you're not betting/raising for value enough when you're ahead, and/or calling too much when you're behind. Study up on hand reading, bet sizing, and playing in position. Post some trouble hands as well.

Hmm I didn't even think about that. Thank you. Shall keep an eye on it next time I play.

Well your clearly under-rolled if you keep going bust. And considering this repeats itself you don't sound like a winning player.

Could very well be. Either that or I'm an amazing tilter.

downswing is that big, and it doesn't bother me, what bother's me are those lines that go straight down.. that's where i lose most money.

You should post some hands, specifically the huge "what theee ****k" hands on your graph, and maybe some people can give you some pointers.

If you don't feel comfortable with that then I'm always open to discuss hands, not that my advice is by any means great, but could help...

Aim: just fielding
skype: fielding.johnston

Okay, so now we've gone from losing all your money in a "couple hands" to losing "most" in a couple hands.

Except that's not really true either. Look at hands 1486 to 1891 and hands 4051 to 4591.

If you look at your downswings, they're not actually caused by you losing a couple big pots. They're cause by you losing a bunch of big pots and a bunch of little pots. Look at 3781 to 4051. That's not just a couple hands!

You're telling yourself that the only reason you're losing is because of a couple suck-outs here and there. That's wrong and you need to get past that before you're going to start winning. Your graph just is not the graph of a winning player. It's the graph of a player riding the waves of variance up and down. At your peaks, you're only up 5 buy-ins. We all have downswings, but they don't bust us out again and again.

I suggest is short stack and once you accumlate like $5-$10 leave the table and join a new table and short stack again like half the buyins

OP, you are not alone.

I took a couple of knocks when I started, and now I grind away (well it seems like it to me. I am still under 1000 games) and I slower build it back up and wham, with in 1 or 2 hands I am back down.
That is basically my graph.
I find that when I hit the big PF hands like QQ+, Occasionally I get absolutely no action at all and make 1 or 2 bbs, but more often I get dominated KK v AA etc but I have paid him off or I am dominating and they river.

I know I am still a beginner, but it starts to make me want to play more hands, so if I hit a unseen hand I can make something from it.
My AA & QQ are currently losing me money. And KK is just over even.

Again, I know I haven't played much, but its really hard. I think I need to change and as soon as I'm half a buyin up, to stop for the day.

It seems a good number of us are in this situation. We got a lot of learning to do =]

looking at your positional stats it seems that you don't have much if any positional awareness.

You're playing about the same number of hands in all positions, except from the SB, where you're completing way too many hands. You're UTG stats should be much tighter than the button, and yes, you shouldn't be limping UTG.

You could probably do with tightening up altogether. 23/17 might be a little loose if you're having trouble winning at these stakes.