I have played an absolutely ridiculous number of HUSNGs from the $2 level to the $220 level.

I have also played a pretty ridiculous number of hands of HUCash, from 50NL to 600NL.

I generally think of myself as at least a moderately intelligent person, a very capable problem-solver, and good at working things through in a logical manner. (even though I regularly embarass myself when I try to do simple math in any of the math-oriented threads, despite being thought of as a "math guy". adding is hard yo!)

I've had coaching for both HUSNGs and HUCash, not a ton, and not any recently, but there's been some, with cwar and chiry for husngs, and paster and jsnipes for hucash.

I've participated in many study groups, talked theory occasionally with some of the forum greats, and organized the semi-regular session reviews (that I've recently given up on, in part because of the same frustrations that are leading to this post).

But I still suck at heads-up poker, and it's frustrating me to no end.

After almost 20k games, I'm just barely better than break-even at HUSNGs, and I am very much not happy with this result, because I don't know what it is that I should be doing that I'm not doing.

I've tried reducing the number of tables I play, I've tried focusing more, I've tried thinking more actively about my reasoning for making plays, I've even spent the past 3 months recording at least 30 mins of play every week, and not-really-consistently rewatching those videos.

My biggest weakness by far used to be monkey-tilt from running bad. But I really think I've got that one somewhat under control. I still fume a little bit when somebody goes runner-runner on me in a ridiculous spot where they have no business being there to begin with, but I think I'm much better at recognizing monkeytilt than I used to be, and better at quitting if the monkey really is an issue. Besides, after such a ridiculous number of hands of poker, the 1 and 2 outers that you used to fume about seem so ridiculously pedestrian compared to the perfect-perfect ******o backdoor beats, and even those happen frequently enough that a few minutes of fuming usually has me cleared up.

After at least semi-fixing that, I'm fairly sure that my biggest weakness is that I don't really adapt well, as in I don't recognize things that I should be adapting to, what sorts of adaptations are required, and why.

Which obviously is a *huge* part of heads-up poker, and poker in general. And frankly, if I haven't figured that out after as much as I've played, then I'm not sure if I ever will, and without that, obviously I can never be more than second or third-rate at poker.

But I love the game, and *really* want to not suck at it. The odds of me ever making enough money at poker to even entertain the possibility of leaving my somewhat cushy job are extremely slim, but I still want to at least feel like I'm doing something other than playing mid-stakes until the end of time "because that's what I can beat".

I just don't know how to proceed. All I know is that I've been on the verge of just simply cashing out my roll for about the past 3 months, because I have been stuck at the 100-200 level for practically my entire poker career, and I am simply not happy being a second or third-rate. I would seriously rather not play at all.

I'm more than happy to pay for coaching, but my roll is relatively short, and there's just no way in hell the wife will ever go for paying for coaching out of real-life funds, no matter what the potential future payoff is. She has far too much faith in my own abilities to figure things out on my own (she thinks I'm a whole lot smarter than I truly am), and views paying somebody else as a waste of money.

Even on a somewhat short roll, I could very easily pay for an hour or two or xSCWx's or somebody on that level's time, but I'm not convinced that what's holding me back can really even be discovered in an hour or two, much less fixed.

Somebody advice me please. I really don't know where to go from here, but I know that I can't keep grinding the $100 level for a modest profit, without ever feeling like I'm actually getting anywhere.

/whine

Well winning players win because they play lots of hands/games and they play them profitably. Losing players don't play as much and they play terribly. You sir are somewhere in between.
No single coaching session is going to make you a better player imo.
Option #1:
I suggest posting HH's of some hands you are unsure about or big pots you won/lost.
See if anyone may have insight that might open you up to some new ideas about where your leaks are as a player. I know how you feel i was in the same place for almost a year till i became a winning player, it takes a lot more than just wanting to be good at the game. You need to study and train yourself to be a better player, noone can do that for you imo.

Option #2 ^^

yeah it might be stuff like lack of adapting, lack of focus on opponent's frequencies, and using logic to decipher certain lines by opponents. when i watched husng.com/DC vids, the coaches all seem to do that really good - way better than me. plus they're often very good with bet sizing - so you might be missing out on getting chips against certain opponents because your bet size is too large or too small or you're betting rather than checking etc. good players seem to take all the info gained from previous hands and use it to determine their line/bet size. watching the videos makes it look easy but the nuances are very deceptive/subtle i think.

when i'm playing regs, ABC vanilla poker leads to a small winrate because the regs are not making as huge of mistakes as the fish. so that's where the focus on frequencies, pattern recognition, and adapting really matter to increase the winrate - or else ABC vanilla poker will probably just lead to a lot of flipping/coolering each other. i mean, if you're just looking at a HUD against a reg and saying "he raises X%, 3bets X%, and folds to cbet X% blah blah blah" when making a decision, then you're missing out on lots of info like gameflow and opponents' past lines. i really truly hate using a HUD. yet i still do it. it hurts my hu game; i swear it does.

now, if you're playing fish all day and you're stuck in a rut, well then you're probably ******ed

i would suggest taking a *long* break from actually putting in hands and put a ton of time into analyzing those 20k games by stake, $ev, and review some of your biggest losing sessions to pinpoint where you're going wrong. there's no good in continuing to play right now if you're confused about why the results aren't there. fortunately, you have a VERY statistically significant sample of hands that you can review, and use to determine where your flaws might lie.

you might want to pay for someone to review your hands with you, but i think that it would be best for you to do it on your own, maybe even post your review of yourself here publicly, and just let people rip it apart.

There's no way that spending that much time on poker and 2p2 that you can't to some extent analyze your play, and if you ever hit a spot where you say, "oh i did that cause...um...???" and you can't verbalize your thought process, you might have found one of your big problems.

best of luck sorting out your game, shoot me a PM if you want to chat

Do you truly realize how many games 20k is?

Where the **** would you even start?

Recently what was the longest period of time you didn't play poker? Like within the pat few months..

You made videos but did you go through your games yourself afterwards? Do you replay any of your matches in a replayer?

the first 15k games are probably not even relevant at this point... in terms of your play style.

haha yeah. well im not sure how HEM sorts husngs because ive never played but i would start by grouping it chronologically to see if there were stretches of bad play, stretches of good play, etc. if tilt was truly a former problem like you said, you should see a lot of red stretches in the earlier parts of those games and a lot less streaks in the later parts. if there's no significant pattern by naked eye (it would be awesome of HEM could do a runs test like for statistical time trends and multicollinearity) then we can rule out your tilt issues and move on to more fundamental leaks.

that's obviously something that's much more difficult to overcome, but if there was a way to sort your games like v. the quality of opponent or something to that extent then we could see if you're failing to adjust to regs who play a certain way, maybe sort your games by guys with a 3bet% of >25% or something to see if you can't battle aggression. Maybe sort your games for guys who have an AF under 0.5 becuase you aren't valuebetting properly or you're bluffing too much v. the wrong guys.

These are obviously difficult to analyze but if you're serious about getting better at poker and you haven't figured it out over this long a time span then you need to put some major time in. And again, it might not be a bad idea to simply sort through big hands you've played in the last maybe 2 months and see if you can nail your thought process on every one of them, and then also be sure that it's proper and optimal. Try posting more hands here when you can't explain your opinion, try posting in husng threads or cash threads as they popup and make sure your thought process is in line with most other forum regs.

There's a million ways to check your games, but just like zephyr said in his recent post on the poker mindset, you have to completely separate results from ability in the short term, and completely correlate them in the long term. I think your case calls for a pretty drastic review of ability, but it's by no means out of the question that former tilt issues, or even one or two simple leaks, is what's holding back your game.

Um.

I tried really hard to take a long break after some true nastiness at HUCash when I was doing a coaching/staking thing with snipes and paster.

I think I ended up not playing for maybe a week?

You play much higher than me but this aspect of the game makes no difference. I find when I get to the point where I feel helpless and that I have worked hard for a long time without much results I take a break for about a week or more but during that week all i do is watch vids, review my own HH's, read good posts, post hands but not play....and when I come back I can think much clearer, am motivated and I realize that I was not playing well in the first place.

Not saying that is your problem but a break will do you good no matter what, mayber you need more than a week. If what you say is true and your not really making money..then by taking a decent break your not losing out on anything, if anything it will gain money for you.

well obviously you have to pick a short period and then filter for certain situations.

filtering for big hands you lost a lot of chips is of course a given. but i think filtering for hands where effective stacks are a little deep and where you won a medium size pot is insightful because you can analyze whether or not you could have won more chips. like, say you have a big hand, you might have won a 300 chip pot. look at the opponents' tendencies/gameflow, texture, etc and see if perhaps a better line/bet sizing would have worked. a coach/better player might have instead won a 500 chip pot in that hand while mortals like you and me only win 300. regs and fish are usually worst at deep stack play, so not neglecting that area in reviewing hands should give you a decent edge.

anyways that's a start, unless you have bigger leaks (handreading, barreling, dealing with aggression, 3bet pots etc). if so, deal with those obviously.

In before lock.

Seriously - there is nothing wrong with being a midstakes player for life. Some people just don't have it in them to be high stakes players. That doesn't mean you can't make quite a bit of money from this game. Fwiw, i DO think you can beat higher stakes cash (and probably sngs). You just need to allow yourself to learn.

Idk if paying an expensive coach is what you need. You probably would get more out of hiring a cheap coach who can go over your fundamentals. You need to be open to the idea that you are misapplying many of the things you "know".

STOP AUTOPILOTING. Shut off AIM, 2p2, tv etc and just play. I know you had trouble with that in the past, and its not good for you especially when you are still in the learning stage. When you were thinking and playing, you had excellent results.

Keep making videos of yourself play. Even if you don't give them to someone, pretend someone is watching you. It will keep you from making dumb plays.

I just threw a bunch of words on paper while I was playing so I hope it makes sense. Hit me up on AIM if you need to talk more.

There's a problem with truly taking really long breaks though. I'm like 34 months into the iron man promotion on FTP, and it would suck to lose that, even though there's not a *huge* amount of value in the promotion. :/

I make iron almost every month btw, which should give you a sense of my addiction level.

Maybe focus on cash games?

Or try something new, maybe HU isn't for you. 6max ould be, or PLO, or something which fits your niche.

10 Recommendations/Questions to start with:

1. Prop bet me more for easier income.
2. Don't pay for coaching. I could go into the reasons why it's not right for you right now, but I think you have a good sense of them. If you want me to explain further just ask.
3. Do post hands, but don't make them specific, "interesting" (read: not broadly applicable) hands. Post an entire 20/40 to 30/60 level with a lot of shove/fold where you thought some decisions were close and see if other people agree that they are close, that sort of thing.
4. If you have PokerTracker or HEM, post your stats by blind level.
5. Post your EV graph. 20k is a huge sample that will render pretty much all graphs insignificant, but it's still worth seeing.
6. Call in favors. You've done a lot for people on these forums for free, ask if people are willing to review a tournament HH for free (I would except I promised mjw this months ago and suddenly had no time for it and never got it done).
7. Regardless of your dissatisfaction with the midstakes as a long term projection, are you still having fun playing? Do you think your enjoyment might be affecting your play, or are you still excited to think about and give your best effort while you're playing?
8. PM me your screenname (I forget the numbers) so I can look at a few things stats wise?
9. How much have regs been going after you these days? Do you feel more frustrated that you aren't beating fish at as good a rate as you'd like, or that you're too breakeven against weakish regs?
10. Keep wifey around, she sounds nice.

20k games are a lot most of ppl and I dont know how u do it in a short period of time. i guess u must be multitabling then?? even though i only play mid stakes so far, i sort know and learn the importance (learn from other pros) of sticking with just one table at time. I once heard from a pro that he played only thousand of games and probably not as many as u do but he has "SEEN" it all. I really like his idea because u see all the crazy %#$# stuff ardy, and u should not be surprised about those bad breaks so tilting issue may reduce as time goes by.

[X] Have a somewhat cushy RL job
[X] Enjoys playing poker
[X] Makes a modest profit playing at mid stake

I don't see a problem.

Most people would be happy with those things.

Think of poker as a profitable hobby and stop stressing over it. 20k games is just too much IMO if you have a RL full time job (not even some pure grinders have that many games).

I'd stop trying to be the best tbh. Being competitive is good, but dont let it control your game.
If you can crush the 100$'s or 200$'s that means you're way above average and a pretty solid player!
Maybe stuff that high stakes players say like "anyone can beat mid stakes with half a brain" makes you think its duable for alot of players to enter the high stakes,but the fact is that its not.
Those highstakes people mostly take their brain for granted and dont realise what it takes to be that good. Then again we dont realise how fortunate we are for being able to even make EV calculations, be able to differentiate and those sorts of stuff. Yet I can assure you alot of people just stare at those numbers with 0 ****ing clue what to do even after being told 100 of times how it works. Being human is always wanting more and not appreciating what you have achieved. Sucks balls.

I'd just try to keep getting better at a level you beat, and instead of a 6% roi try to get a 10% roi etc. Even though "Its all about the long run", making money feels good and keeps you motivated instead of a hellish break-even like stretsch you're having now.

gl

I'd actually probably be reasonably happy if my long-term roi was 6%.

But it's more like 1%-2%.

:/

These are all extremely valid points, and a very kind way of saying "stop being such a whiny bitch!"

Yet somehow the thought of never being able to advance past the $100 level, because I simply have been unable to beat the $200 level after multiple attempts at stepping up is very unsatisfying.

And it really isn't a money thing either.

Don't play if you're not 100% focused! I always used to have on AIM, was browsing 2+2, and watching a movie on the side while playing...and it 100% distracts you.

It might be fine to do that if you are auto-piloting fish, but since the amount of fish at 220+ is smaller than at the 50s, you should try to fully concentrate and not autopilot (if you're doing that).

Keep on asking yourself "why am I betting/calling/folding here" and "shouldn't I be betting/folding/calling here rather than..." while you play. Question yourself a lot, for me that's a good way to learn...

you can buy iron months w medals, so that u can take month long breaks.

Lol. I got lucky, made a bad read that turned out to be the right result.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts here.

#3 is a very interesting idea. I actually haven't posted hands for ages, because I don't really come across spots where I feel lost, and I'll see myself making mistakes, and be able to catch on to the fact that I'm making them, and why they were mistakes. But I'm sure I take a lot of **** for granted that I shouldn't, and probably should feel lost in a lot more spots than I really do. :/

#4, HEM seems to be kinda weird about reporting tourney results, and I don't have access to my entire database right now, but here are some results over about 3k games that I played last year:

70+ bbs deep: 19,926 hands, +30bb/100.
50-70 bbs deep: 25,749 hands, +30bb/100
From here, results get a little weird, and I'm not sure how to get HEM to combine them appropriately

30-50 bbs deep
at 10/20: 8637 hands, +9.7bb/100
at 15/30: 31624 hands, +1.49bb/100
at 20/40: 9167 hands, -11.67bb/100

10-30 bbs deep
at 10/20: 3352 hands, -22.04bb/100
at 15/30: 12092 hands, +12.10bb/100
at 20/40: 15304 hands, -5.44bb/100
at 25/50: 12319 hands, +10.2bb/100
at 30/60: 5837 hands, +.77bb/100
at 40/80: 2238 hands +14.14/100
at 50/100: 821 hands -8.31/100

<10bbs
at 10/20: 501 hands, -46.47bb/100
at 15/30 884 hands, +5.32bb/100
at 20/40 795 hands, -5.18bb/100
at 25/50 830 hands, -33.83bb/100
at 30/60: 658 hands, -22.67bb/100
at 40/80: 485 hands, +22.42bb/100
at 50/100: 278 hands, -10.38bb/100
at 60/120: 169 hands, -12.24bb/100

I'm still not positive I'm getting the results I'm expecting to get out of HEM here, but it would appear I have massive leaks <10bbs, but don't spend very much time there.

Actually, I'm really not trusting these results. Just looking through some of the hands, it looks like there are a LOT of duplicate hands in this report. So I dunno if it really means anything. I have no clue why there are so many duplicate hands, but there definitely are. I probably need to rebuild my HEM database from the original histories again, because tournament support still seems pretty new and flaky. Or maybe I'll fire up pokertracker3, which I still own and just never use.

It's actually probably impossible at this point to get all my 20k games together in one database, since they're over a 3 year period. I'm fairly sure my last attempt to consolidate my databases (I've saved every hand history since I started playing) failed because the file formats have changed so many times.

Having said that, I'm positive that I'm a ridiculous amount below allin EV lifetime, but runbad either is tilting me a lot less than it used to, or I've become so fatalist about it that the backdoors are simply expected. (which I'm not so sure is the same as the results-indifferent "zen" state everybody aspires to, or nearly as healthy)

Besides, everytime I think I run worse than anybody on the planet, I just have to think about skates.

I don't actually know the answer to this. The amount of poker-related frustration I've experienced over the past few months would lead me to believe that no, I'm not still having fun playing, although I don't really know the source or the results of that.

T28333

Not so much at the $100-$110 level, and it's been a while since I played 200s last.

Definitely a keeper.

I'm actually very good about not allowing outside influences to distract me while I'm playing. I ignore AIM while I'm playing, only web-browse in between games, and never watch any tv/movies on the side while I'm playing.

I've also done pretty well at restricting my table count. I 3-4 tabled for a long time, but do a lot more 1 and 2 tabling now, and never have 3 running at once unless I had one game running, and was regged for another one to start at both regular and turbo stakes, with the intention of just playing whatever started first, and unregging the other, but they both fired off at the same time.

Hey Travis I thought I would try and help.

One thing that always surprised me about coaching you was how quickly you picked up ideas, literally the fastest of anyone I can remember talking poker with. I would test you and you clearly understood it. Its very clear to me that you have the mental capacity to play this game on a high level.

I dont have the solution (and I dont think there is an easy one) but I think you have to work on focus and discipline. Remember too that you are inherently at a disadvantage because of your job, poker is your down time and it can be hard to really live on that edge that is required to play a high level of poker after coming home from work. Maybe look into some Zen "be in the moment" kind of stuff but I definitely think this is a performance issue rather than a knowledge issue.