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Posted Thu May 10, 2007 9:59 pm GMT by chadderton
Hello...
I'm questioning myself: Is this just a bad run oder am I a bad player?
Really, this is bothering me.
I've been hosting a home (cash) game for my friends for almost 18 months now. In average we play around 2-3 times a week. There are eight regulars including me with maybe one or two other players joining in occasionally.
What I'm describing now is my personal view. So this might not be very objective. But this is the way I see it. Maybe you can give me a few hints later on.
Now enjoy...
I would describe myself as a very tight player. And this is the style that fits me best. I don't like to gamble that much. So I don't have a lot of starting hands. Just to give you an idea... I don't play KTo unless it is folded to me, I don't play K9s only because this could give me a straight or even the second best flush, I don't play A3o if there are limpers in front of me and so on... (of course, this can vary depending on the situation). I guess normally I play around 15-25% of my hands.
Well... If I look at last year I've definitely been one of the winning players at our table. There are players that made more money than I did. But compared to others I lost all my chips only a very few times. Which adds up to my tight image: I'm pretty consistent. Unless I'm taking a player from the table my stack doesn't change that fast.
In turn, the rest of the table is pretty loose. At least it seems to me that way. Pot odds don't matter that much to most of the guys. Yes, they do make up their mind before either chasing or folding their draw, but there is no mathematical explanation for their behaviour. But I'm drifting away... let's get back to my problem.
I can't tell exactly, and I might still be a winning player. But something has definitely changed.
I've been watching this for months now. Sometimes I ask myself if I play too tight. One of my friends recently told me, after I was complaining about running cold, that I should loosen up.
By the way: This guy has cashed in big time over the last weeks. Easily increasing his stack to five or six times the original size. I - and others - can see that he feels very, very confident about his play. Well, what can I say: He LOVES betting Nut-Flush-Draws and calling with them no matter how bad his odds are (he used to call three All-Ins recently and won all of them). I DON'T want to complain about him. I just think he's on a hot streak and kind of overestimating his play a bit right now. He is a good player, no doubt. But hitting around 40% of the flops big time (which means he will win 80% of them) is a bit too much in terms of skill for me.
Nevermind. Back to my play: I play decent starting hands, I'm not chasing crazy draws and I bet in a way that players who are chasing draws will (hopefully) pay me off in the long run. The problem is:
I'M GETTING ABSOLUTELY **NO CARDS** WHATSOEVER!
Take last night for example... my best starting hands were pocket eights, AKo, AQs - all of them a single time. Besides that I couldn't play a lot of hands. When I rarely entered a pot, I took it down except one time where I got outdrawn by a player who is usually quite skilled but was on tilt that time - so he called two pot-sized bets with his backdoor Flush and he finally hit it.
I have to admit I flopped a set once but couldn't extract a lot of money. Besides... No Straight. No Flush. Yeah, a Full House where the board paired twice. You can imagine I didn't take down a lot of pots...
Bluffing didn't work that well either. There is always one guy in the pot calling with nothing but a draw until he finally hits either his draw or a big pair to just stay in the hand no matter how big a bet they face.
Believe me, I'm not trying to blame others for my play. I'm just asking... am I so bad or is it really possible to not be able to hit ANYTHING for more than two or three sessions in a row and see others walk away with huge pots?
As a side note... I just lost half of my stack last night. I didn't even need a rebuy where others had two of them. So all in all... I cannot complain that much. I just think I could (should?) do better.
After all, is my friend right? Do I have to FORCE my play? Like being more aggressive and just gambling? He thinks he can even win without cards. But I can tell you... in 80% of the showdowns he takes it down. Sometimes with nothing more than a pair of sixes, but he still takes it down.
All this bothers me a lot, so I'd really appreciate any kind of discussion in this thread.
And if this all leads back to the fact that a Poker player always remebers his bad beats/streaks better than his wins, then I apologize for this thread. 
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Posted Thu May 10, 2007 10:56 pm GMT by Ensano
this sounds more like just a bad swing...
i can say from experience when in a downswing there doesn't seem to be any hope... but just keep pushing foreward...
the worst thing you can do is "open up" you game... that's just an excuse to start playing bad cards which means you'll be playing bad...
just stick to your starting requirements... play solid poker and you'll see you'll start hitting those flops again...
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 8:03 am GMT by chadderton
| Ensano wrote: | | this sounds more like just a bad swing... |
I hope you are right... but maybe there are other opnions...
| Ensano wrote: | the worst thing you can do is "open up" you game... that's just an excuse to start playing bad cards which means you'll be playing bad...
just stick to your starting requirements... play solid poker and you'll see you'll start hitting those flops again... |
This is what I've been telling myself almost every night. But when you're getting pushed out of almost every hand because you can't shove it up you opponents ass because you simply get nothing at all... this hurts. And then I start to question mysef...
I know you're probably right. At some point luck has to turn into my favour. But still... I can't stand playing solid Poker and still end up losing while others just gamble and act as if they're Negreanu next door.
Maybe this is more of a problem of how I mentally react to cold cards. While I almost never go on tilt (which I think is a good sign), others play total junk and - just because a donk plays even more crap - end up winning monster pots on and on.
To add some more in this regard... we have constant losing players at our table. Yeah, every once in a while they go home having doubled up. But the majority of the time they're desperately leaving my place after having lost two or three or even more buyins.
Of course, I don't lose a lot. But the money keeps getting stacked up in the front of other players who then start bullying others around. And when you have certain starting requirements and every pot gets raised huge with money that was thrown after those players by complete donks, yeah, that makes it kind of tough.
Well, thanks for the discussion so far. I hope there's more to come...
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 8:41 am GMT by tame_deuces
Its pretty much impossible to tell if you play bad or run bad from your post. The first thing you need to do is to stop comparing winnings with other players and instead just learn your game so well that you'll know if you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Being results oriented in poker is the cardinal sin.
And if you want to play abit looser, then just try it out. It doesn't kill poker if you play abit more hands, there is no need to be all rigid and go 'tight is right ' all the time in poker, you can be just as profitable with a little looser playstyle. Esp in our regular homegames I find that a tight approach is incredibly dull...playing 15% of my hands in a livegame would bore me to death.
Just don't overthink your hands too much, which is the typical thing to do when starting to play abit more funky hands.
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 9:01 am GMT by UrAteUp
Stick to playing plan ABC poker. Let those friends who hit that miracle card keep playing that way. They will stop hitting those cards. The odds tell us that will happen. Luck is one thing but skill is another. With ABC poker your not always going to win but your always going to come out ahead in the long run.
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 9:05 am GMT by chadderton
| tame_deuces wrote: | | Its pretty much impossible to tell if you play bad or run bad from your post. The first thing you need to do is to stop comparing winnings with other players and instead just learn your game so well that you'll know if you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Being results oriented in poker is the cardinal sin. |
Valid point. But I'm in no way results oriented. And I can take a couple of bad nights, no doubt. What just struck yesterday night was my friend's comment about me playing bad while I get literally nothing and he keeps winning 80% of his showdowns. He seems to deny the fact that without hitting anything on the flop you simply can't win the showdown.
And regarding me doing the right thing: If I look at last night I'd say I played every hand correctly except maybe two or three hands where I should have been a bit more relentless. But hey... I can be wrong, that's why I'm here.
| tame_deuces wrote: | And if you want to play abit looser, then just try it out. It doesn't kill poker if you play abit more hands, there is no need to be all rigid and go 'tight is right ' all the time in poker, you can be just as profitable with a little looser playstyle. Esp in our regular homegames I find that a tight approach is incredibly dull...playing 15% of my hands in a livegame would bore me to death.
Just don't overthink your hands too much, which is the typical thing to do when starting to play abit more funky hands. |
Trust me, there are times where I play more aggressively. Especially when I have the feel others get crap most of the time (you know what I'm talking about). I then try to play position basically with nothing and sometimes this works. But recently there is ALWAYS at least someone hitting the flop big. What this does is decrease my stack gradually, and this makes it hard making a stand against overly aggressive players.
Really, I want to find the holes in my game... but there are times where you can't win shit without the nuts. And I don't remember having them had in quite a while...
--- SNAP ---
If I look at all this now... it makes me laugh!
When I wrote the inital post last night I was pretty disappointed. Right now I don't feel bad. Basically... I know I can play. It's just that I ran out of luck totally. We'll see how tonight works out. At some point I just have to hit the flops again...
Sorry for acting like a four-year-old...
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 9:07 am GMT by chadderton
| UrAteUp wrote: | | Stick to playing plan ABC poker. Let those friends who hit that miracle card keep playing that way. They will stop hitting those cards. The odds tell us that will happen. Luck is one thing but skill is another. With ABC poker your not always going to win but your always going to come out ahead in the long run. |
I keep telling this myself over an over again. And at least this is keeping me from going on tilt.
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 9:07 am GMT by tame_deuces
Well, nomatter what you do. When you play cash games it is pretty much a waiting game/patience game more than anything else, but it seems like you know this. Just remember it when playing also and enjoy yourself to kill the time. 
Posted Fri May 11, 2007 12:03 pm GMT by Ensano
| tame_deuces wrote: | | Well, nomatter what you do. When you play cash games it is pretty much a waiting game... |
I forget who said it but someone with skill once said, "If you don't get bored waiting for a good hand then you're playing too loose..."
dunno... sounds like a not too bad thought...
as for what you said about the donks starting to get agressive, sometimes you have to just pick your spots and push...
one game I played in sounds pretty close to what you mentioned... it was a 20$ buyin with blinds .25/.50... I showed up once and the min stack was at least 60$... i bought in for 20 and waited for my bb... my hand was A10spades... UTG raised to 6.5 (yeah 13xBB) and EVERYONE called...
just think of the long run and these games will pump more money into your BR than you'd ever expect it..
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