Recently I have rediscovered my inner tilt. After years of trying not to let this crazy, volatile game get to me, I seem to be asking myself “Why Do I Play this Game?” too often for comfort.
The major source of my decline in poker morale is the result of a once a month, 10 session tournament vying for a seat at the WSOP Main Event (plus a couple grand for expenses). The winner gets 55% if they make it to the money, and the other 9 players get a 5% share. After session 8 of 10, I was in a tight battle for first with one other player and no one else in sight.
In session 9, my dream scenario unfolded not once, but twice. With a full 10 players left, I had cut my rival’s chip stack in half. He went all-in with QQ against another player who showed AA. Sure enough, Q came on the flop, and he was back to starting stack. An hour later we’re still 9 handed when he got deep into a hand, calling every street against the most solid player at the table with a 9 high board. She pushed all-in after the turn against his now very small stack and he felt forced to call even though he knew he was well behind. My rival showed JJ to her KK. One card remaining, two outs. I was already picking out my outfit for Day 1 in Vegas.
Of course, given the theme of this post, you already know the river card.
It was all downhill from there, he ended up outlasting me in Session 9, and I needed a miracle in Session 10 to get to Vegas. Let’s just say my play in the final session was not the stuff of miracles.
My results elsewhere have also been modest in the last 2-3 months. Perhaps this is merely due to the swings of tournament poker. Although I can recognize some tentativeness in my play and a persistent failure to trust my own reads. I keep asking myself:
“Why do I play this game?”
Well the answers, of course, are: I love playing, I would desperately miss poker if I did not play, and I would probably find myself bingeing on crappy series on Netflix instead. If history is any indication, my vow to abstain from the tables would not last past Father’s Day anyway.
Clearly I need to shake things up a bit to try to bring my mojo out of cardiac arrest. Here’s the plan:
- Try out some new card rooms and tournament structures. My favorite tournament, has experienced a recent decline in quality of play with players raising 20x in the first blind level, under the gun, without looking at their hand. Intolerable. I’ve started looking at tournaments in different venues with more favorable structures that may produce saner play. Maybe a different venue will give me some perspective. I tried one a couple of weeks ago and chopped top 5 in a small tournament. The play was much more to my liking. I went back to the same venue for a shorter blind, multi-rebuy format and the crazy play was epic. Mixed results so far.
- Plan weekends off to clear my head and pursue other interests. I keep saying this will happen: I’ll enjoy the good weather….oh wait this is spring in New England there is no such thing! I did revive my bar trivia team Sunday night and we swept to victory after several months off. I may mix in some more of this in coming months.
- Exercise. Ha! Next.
- Improve my game. I know I need to get back to evaluating my game and try to fix what is not working. That means re-reading some of the authors that have been a positive influence in the past, taking notes on keys hands, and discussing them with my poker buddies. I also need to spend my time on AdvancedPokerTraing.com, do my weekly training plans, and take on some Beat the Pro challenges to sharpen my game. When you’re struggling, it’s time to get back to work on your fundamentals.
- One hand at a time. I need to refocus when I am playing, forget what has happened recently, and assess situations at hand to achieve optimal play. Everyone knows this, but my recent drift has also seen an uptick in distraction at the table with too much rear view mirror thinking.
So those are my initial thoughts on righting the ship. I’m open to your ideas as well. No suggestion will go unconsidered. I’m a desperate man!
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When I have a long losing streak (more often than I want to admit) it tend to be because, I either play too tight and bleed out or play too many hands and bleed out, or play too many marginal hands, without considering my opponents holdings, as in There’s no way he could of have called a 3x bet preflop with J7, but yes he did, ah now I see, they were sooooted,. and bust out
When I find myself ether a. playing too loose or b. calling bad bets, I try several different tactics. One of ours I really like is just a change of venue.
Another is playing PLO. This really gets you thinking about the nuts and made hands, so two pair, a straight , and donk end of a flush start to take on a whole new meaning, ah they suck.
Another is no so much to work on my game, as to work on myself discipline. For this I play two tournaments one in the FOLD TO THE GOLD STYLE and one in the SKLANSKY STYLE.
Of course I do this with very cheap tournaments.or play money.
Fold to the gold is exactly what it says, I force myself to fold EVERY HAND, YES EVERY HAND, YES KK, YES AA, ESPECALLY theseh ands and all others, GOTTA, GOTTA GOTTA get the allure of these undefeatable impossible to fold post flop hands out of my system. It’s just a sinking pair.
Then I play one Sklansky style, I ONLY play these hand, ie top 10 hands, and I play them push or fold.
I land were I land, but it clears the mind and reminds me , the winner is NOT the one who wins the most pots, but the one who wins the most money,
Hugoism #11, What keeps us from playing as good as we think we are? Not being as good as we think we are.
Hugoism #1, Everyone is somebody’s fish.
Hugo X
Interesting stuff Hugo. I think my problem lately has been playing too tight, letting myself get down to a short stack too often for the sake of survival. But the marginal calls also can be a problem that I particularly identified while playing some training games at APT. Interesting that I think our keys leaks are so similar.
Shaking it up however you do it definitely had merit. I wonder if I could bring myself to play more extreme styles for a tournament or two. Certainly will consider it if the current streak goes on much longer!
Well said, guys. My problem, or so I thought, was not getting enough playable hands. I have sat there 20, 30, 45 minutes without so much as a sniff of a decent hand. Again, so I thought. I went back through my hand histories and, using a very critical eye, found a number of hands where I should have played that low/medium pair OOP, or fed the pot with that suited 2 gapper. Using equity software, I found out I was folding hands that had somewhat decent equity, enough to see a flop with anyway. So, I recommend looking though your hand histories and try to zero in on the thin margin hands. I feel it helps you with most of your other plays too.