Its frustrating. I have Tens in the big blind with a 22 big blind stack, 5 limps and its on me I ship it and get snapped called by JTss.....YESS!! Great spot for me.

Flop is Jd 4s 8s...............he has 18 big blinds. So I waste the next 30mins of my life with 4bbs, then -1 bb for small blind. I wait until I'm UTG with AKos just to run into Aces. Waste of time, next time it happens I'm just leaving the 3bb there on table.

Stop looking at short term variance, it'll stunt your growth massively

Short term variance happens. Point is if any given single tournament, I don't care how good you are if these players are risking it with JTss or T2dd, its fine to get the money in as a good fav. eventually it will take its toll and you bust out. That is to say dodging these types of draws for all the chips 10 or 20 times in a single tournament you will bust out because you are unlikely to win all of them.

Poker is all about making good decisions and winning is a side effect.

You say things like your opening and closing sentences which are very solid and correct statements, and then in your efforts to vent and rant you lose a sense of logic. I think your problem isn't how to deal with calling stations and is instead a huge problem with tilt control.


Also, you shouldn't need to be all-in 10-20 times each tournament. Of course you're going to bust out if you're constantly at risk. That's just math, so how are you going to solve that? Double up sooner or bust. I know your 10-20 estimate is an exaggeration because once you were down to 4bb in your example you waited '30 minutes' for AK. You need to be getting it in way sooner than that.

Your complaints just sound like bad beats. Like I said, you need to work on tilt or your understanding of variance.

I think I have a good understanding of variance that is to say its better to have a good size bankroll to handle the swings and I don't play much poker due to this fact - the fact I don't have a bankroll despite the games being really soft.

I do struggle with tilt but not in a spewing way I would fold a lot more hands and when I take tilting bad beats I end up not playing poker for months.

and what I mean by a bad beat is not when I lose a hand. its the combination of folding all those other hands and waiting for a good spot, this spot when I get the money in and lose......I don't play because I remember how boring it was and then lose as well.

I am at a $120 tourney at the Taj 6-7 years ago. I make the final table (Point Illustration #1: if memory serves, this was partly due to a 3-way flush draw coming through that I had no business being in the running for).

Point illustration #2: I get QQ in MP. Blinds are 5k? I open to 20k or so. Think I had an M of about 10 at this point, so I am committed to this hand no matter what. A young kid of Asian descent calls. Flop comes x4x, I open for either 40k or a push. Kid calls. Turn or river - it doesn't matter - brings another 4. Kid has Q4 and I'm gone. He apologizes profusely for his stupidity.

So what is the point I am trying to illustrate? IT'S A GOOD THING THAT THERE ARE SUCKY PLAYERS. My god, man. I know it's frustrating to get sucked out on, but you WANT people like this in your game. You NEED them on that wall...oh wait. You need them in your game to make the cash flow to your stack easier. As someone said, would you rather be up against a much of savvy players?

This entire thread makes it pretty clear that poker might not be for you. It would be one thing if you were venting, but you don't seem to grasp the basic principles of variance. The very thing which makes poker maddening is what keeps it alive: being drawn out on, especially by someone who made a bad decision.

You have to deal with the fact you are going to lose with the best hand sometimes. Probably of even greater importance: you don't seem to have the patience for the game. If you cannot accept this then take up chess or another hobby where variance is not a factor.

I understand your frustration about bankroll issues. I had to stop playing live poker tournaments recently because I had some unexpected bills spring up that I had to use my roll to pay for. Now when I do get a chance to play, it's really frustrating when I don't cash. I love playing poker and it sucks being better than a lot of the people I play with and not winning money, but at no point do I wish they would change their style.

+1

If you go all in and lose, you're obviously out of the tournament. But if you win two straight all-ins, you're probably not going to have to be all-in for a while--because your two double-ups will give you a decent stack, and if you shove against the player to your left and you have him covered, villain will be the one at risk.

I'm not advocating playing shove or fold poker just to get a big stack early. What I'm saying is that when you make good decisions and accumulate a decent stack, you will be the threat. The smaller stack might find someone else to pick on, because shoving against you puts his tournament life at risk.

1. Tournament Variance.

Not only can't you win every tournament, you shouldn't be trying to do that.

Tournament poker isn't about winning a lot of pots or a lot of tournaments. In tournament poker, most of the money comes in a few big cashes. Variance in tournament poker is huge. It's about losing over and over, then making it up with a few big cashes. It works like this:

In a tournament, most of the money is at the final table. At the final table, most of the money is in the top three spots. You won't be in the top three very often. That's what you play for and you have to take the risks to get into the top three, even if you get knocked out of multiple tournaments before you do it.

I played 70 online tournaments in August and it was a train wreck, my worst online poker month ever--until 8/25. I got a third place on 8/25. On 8/26 I took one down wire to wire. I was never out of the top three places after getting there in level one.

I went from zero to hero and made a small profit in August because of just two tournaments. Jonathan Little recently said that he's not afraid to go 50 straight tournaments without cashing because, as he put it,

"I'll get a 6- or 7-figure cash sooner or later."

I could give you a lot of other examples but I'll finish my variance examples with this one. A player who had his best year after switching from cash games to tournaments told me that more than half of his profit for that year came from just TWO cashes.


2. Getting Bored.

You seem to me to have conflicting goals. You want to have fun and win a lot more pots, but you also want to make money. The two don't always go together.

Sometimes, or maybe a lot of times, you're in situations where you just have to fold. A few years ago I had my worst run of cards ever in a live tournament. I went half an hour without getting an ace, a pair, suited connectors or any card higher than ten. The few times I was getting anything decent, the situation wasn't right, usually because there was a lot of action from early position. When a tight player makes a big bet from early position and someone calls, that's not the time to take a shot with QTo.

I folded the entire first hour. I guess that at some point I could have got a bluff through after being that tight. Maybe I just didn't have the guts to pull the trigger with 92o. I almost made a big comeback, winding up two spots out of the money.

Poker isn't always exciting. Sometimes you'll be card dead, or someone at your table will be tanking every other hand. It happens, you just have to roll with it. They call it grinding for a reason.

I am NOT trying to discourage you. We've all been where you are, trying to figure things out. When I found out about 2+2, I came to this thread every day, and it seemed like I got nothing back except multiple versions of "You're doing it wrong."

That's because I was doing it wrong and I needed someone to tell me that. It happens to all of us. His freshman year, Michael Jordan tried out for his high school basketball team and he was cut. Obviously he figured it out.

My freshman year I wasn't a good enough clarinet player to make it into any of the concert bands, so I was put in the pep band. Three years later I became the second person ever to start in the #4 band and wind up in the number one band, the Wind Ensemble. I immediately challenged the first chair player, the director listened to both of us play, and I was the new principal clarinet.

You care enough that you can probably be a good player if you don't expect too much too fast. Embrace the grind. Don't worry about what happens in every hand, or in every tournament. I had to learn those lessons, you can too.

Apparently it took you four years.

Poker has an element of luck, so sometimes you just don't get a hand and pretty much can't win.

If no one raises, you can limp more preflop. If you make a hand that you can bet, you will still get paid off. If you miss, you lose less of your stack while trying to make a hand.

Some things do take me a long time to learn. My brain is kind of mixed up: 154 IQ, but I have problems moving information from short- to long-term memory and I have Attention Deficit Order. Once I had the whole picture (some of this wasn't diagnosed until I was 40) it started to come together and I knew what I had to do to fight against it.

Now that I know what I'm dealing with things are going much better and I structure my poker time to give me the best chance for success. For example, since ADD can make one easily distracted, I study in total silence: in my office, with the door closed, phone put away, sometimes wearing earplugs. The closer I can get to total silence, the better everything works.

Once it comes together very good things happen. That clarinet player in the #4 high school band wound up touring all over the world with an army band for 20 years. I played clarinet and oboe and had an occasional vocal solo in front of the band. My last five years I was first chair and clarinet section leader.

Now I spend 40-45 hours a week on poker (at least 10% of that time is study) and it's coming together the same way that music did.

Well, hey, I hope you do well.