Morning guys,

I'm a 20yr old guy that has been grinding micros for like a year after work in a Pokerstars closed market in my country.

In the last 2 months and a half I've been going through a downswing, nothing that can hurt me financially but enough to get me discouraged. During this time it feels like I can't win a flip, that my opponents live cards always seem to hit, and that even with overpairs my opponents hit sets, the usual.

I feel like I am an okay player at my stakes, ofc I am still trying to learn but I enjoy the process. What does discourage me is the fact that as I live in a closed market, even when I go deep the prize pools are ridiculous (this weekend - 2nd out of 150 in a Saturday afternoon hot 5 euro for 98Euro, or 7th out f 350 nightly Bounty Builder 5euro for 38 euros....), making my losing downswing weeks look so much worse in comparison to how my previous winning months looked good (I dunno if that sentence sounds weird, English is not my main language).

I understand that it is super possible that a downswing of this nature can happen for this long, and as I am still a newbie I try to never overestimate my skills and always try to learn from my mistakes.

My country is joining a shared market probably either this week or next, and I am excited about that prospect, but my questions are -

Do you guys believe that playing these stakes with these prize pools, combined with my lack of experience compared to other players and still learning all the nuances of poker make this market completely unprofitable?

What pieces of advice can you give regarding moving to much bigger player pools? (I assume the afternoon hot 5 on a weekend will have well over 150 registers and that the Sunday Storm won't be 10kGTD)...

Any outside the box downswing dealing tips I have not read to oblivion?

Should I have just folded pre?

Thanks Guys

PS - been lurking this whole time, only joined now.

You sound like a serious recreational player (as am I) so I'm sure you have read some good stuff on tourney variation...I'm a cash game player anyway, so probably can't offer any more advice other than variation in NLHE is vicious biatch that can go on (seemingly) forever...and that's just cash...tourney are much worse!

Interested to know about player volumes in a segregated country though, as I might be moving to Spain before too long. Which country do you live/play in?

I live in Portugal but it is expected that next week we will join the market with Spain and France (Italy soon). The prize and player pools in the shared market are much bigger and Portugal and Italy will only help. If you see the tournament schedule for the Portuguese market compared to the Spain/France shared market the pool difference is huge. can't wait!

That has to be the softest player pool ever assembled in history. If you also can get Greece on board you're basically guaranteed to be making a profit.

De acuerdo ... adiós Escocia, me voy a las playas soleadas y al paraíso del poker ... ¡el viva espana!

Variance in MTT's is huge, sometimes even 100 BI roll is not enough.

Also stop being a NIT, learn to be a good TAG or even a better LAG.