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On The Biggest Downswing Of My Career


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I was cruising along about 2-3 weeks ago, BR at all time high and was going to cash out at the end of May, wanted to keep playing to finish my Ironman bonus. Since that point, it doesn't matter what I play...NL cash, FL cash, SNG, MTT...I've been crashing into the ground. And I have no freaking clue what's going on.Part of it is stupid variance and luck. Just read the FOUR entries I posted in the Bad Beat Forum TODAY, after having never posted there before. And that's the kind of shit that's been going on for the better part of a month. Losing to 2 outer after 3 outer after gutshot, having villains call my shoves with middle pair no kicker and my combo draw whiffs, when I make moves as a short stack in the BTN/CO, the blinds wake up with QQ/AK/AA. I've dropped down - several levels actually - and nothing seems to be working. I have no idea what to do, and I'm turning to the forum for help.

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ummmmm, ummmmmm....nope, can't find any strategy in this topic.Either you are running bad or playing bad. Look over some stuff you played a month ago and see if you can decide which it is.

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ummmmm, ummmmmm....nope, can't find any strategy in this topic.Either you are running bad or playing bad. Look over some stuff you played a month ago and see if you can decide which it is.
Asking how to correct oneself in the midst of a massive downswing isn't "general poker strategy"?Cmon, it's not like I posted this in the hands analysis forums.
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ummmmm, ummmmmm....nope, can't find any strategy in this topic.Either you are running bad or playing bad. Look over some stuff you played a month ago and see if you can decide which it is.
not to come off as a jerk but this is actually huge
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I'm on a hige downswing too! i was at $3/$6 LHE which i grinded up to after about 5 months of play from 25c/50c LHE. Been on the worst downswing of my poker career (3 years). i think the worst of mine is over now but heres some things i have learnt during this downswing of mine....Drop down limits early, i didn't do this,but as soon as you feel things are not going your way or have a few losing sessions,just drop down a level,maybe 2 if it makes you less worried about losing your monies, just drop down low enough so you can play your A game and make clear decisions without thinking about your roll.Dont play as much,im a total freak and play a ton,atleast 500 hands a day! take a break,and play shorter sessions,booking a short winning session is better than having a long break even or long losing session.play less tables,if you play 4,play 2 or even 1,just make sure you follow the action at all times and stay concentrated.It's hard to admit you are playing bad on a downswing, its easy to blame the variance,but don't blame it right away. analyze your game after your sessions,play back the hands,see if you are doing something you wouldn't normally do. it can be the small things that make the variance even worse,a lot of small things can make it disasterous! don't let it get that way!1 last thing i noticed i always did. i gave people too much credit. its easy to think your opponent always has the nuts,dont do it,it will cost you a lot of money.also remember that the games will always be there so its okay to take a break once in a while.poker is supposed to be fun :club: downsings are frustrating,but they do come to an end,just grind it out and keep the faith, GL

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There is nothing much to do and all I can give you is boring answers: 1)move down to a ridicoulus low level and beat the crap out of it. If you happen to lose, so what? It's just a few dollars. 2) Learn another game and start from the lowest levels. Play stud, razz whatever game you do not know and learn how to beat it from the lowest level. That'll keep you off your regular game. 3) Take a break - completely. Go out and buy yourself a pie. Eat it. Then go outside and ride your bike for a very long time until you cant find your way back home. Do some other random non-poker related stuff for whatever time you need to get of tilt. 4) Go through hands. Perhaps you are getting 2-outed everytime and running very bad, but you are probably losing more than you should because of not playing as good as you normally do since your on tilt. 5) youtube tuff-fish and laugh your ass off when he's bitching about his bad beats at the tables. Usually works for me. Hope this helps

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Go out and buy yourself a pie. Eat it.
Please specify best type of pie for OPs situation.
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You also have to put it in perspective - 2-3 weeks is not exactly a long downswing. If you have to drop down several levels after a 2-3 week downswing, then you're probably playing too high to begin with.

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I was cruising along about 2-3 weeks ago, BR at all time high and was going to cash out at the end of May, wanted to keep playing to finish my Ironman bonus. Since that point, it doesn't matter what I play...NL cash, FL cash, SNG, MTT...I've been crashing into the ground. And I have no freaking clue what's going on.Part of it is stupid variance and luck. Just read the FOUR entries I posted in the Bad Beat Forum TODAY, after having never posted there before. And that's the kind of shit that's been going on for the better part of a month. Losing to 2 outer after 3 outer after gutshot, having villains call my shoves with middle pair no kicker and my combo draw whiffs, when I make moves as a short stack in the BTN/CO, the blinds wake up with QQ/AK/AA. I've dropped down - several levels actually - and nothing seems to be working. I have no idea what to do, and I'm turning to the forum for help.
We've all been on the same kind of run. There was a couple of weeks where Jokerstars was eating my lunch with bad beat after bad beat. I would definitely take a little time off. I wouldnt recommend dropping too many levels lower, if the bad beats continue at that level sometime it messes with your head. When im running bad at one I switch over another site for a few days. Sometimes all you need is a fresh setup to get you back to your natural game. Helps me get to a positive mindset, where I can concentrate on my game a little better and look for leaks before I get back to my regular setup. I know alot of people may disagree, all im saying is thats what I did and it helped.
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It's been a long time since I posted to a strat forum... feels kind of weird.The main thing I would recommend is to determine if you are actually running bad or if you are playing poorly. The easiest way to do this is with Pokertracker. If you normally play for 2 hours, instead play for an hour and then spend an hour going over your hand history with a fine tooth comb. Ask yourself the following questions: are you getting your money in when you are ahead? If not, why not? Is there some way you should've known, for any given hand, that you were behind? Is this going to be the case in the long run? What did you put your opponent on? Why were you right or wrong about it? Are your bet sizes correct? How would a different bet size have changed this hand? What was your opponent thinking? Were they thinking at all, or just reacting to their own cards? There are so many decisions and factors to consider each time you have to act, unless you are DN or Gus or Doyle, it's very difficult to do it all in real time. Hand histories allow you to make all those decisions in leisure.So many people think they can just play their way out of a slump, or take a break to get out of a slump. Sometimes it works, but the hard work of hand analysis will be the thing that pays long-term dividends.

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wtf i wrote another post after that other one and i guess i didnt hit add reply or something. that post was well written and organized. this is gonna be a ramble but i hope it helps.anyway, what i was gonna say is that once you get into one of these slumps its kind of like a spiral. you didn't say how much you lost, but i can guess its to the point by now where its no longer a bad run just because you made the post you did. what seems to happen to most people is that they hit a nasty string of cards and it messes them up. so now they are still in that nasty string and they are playing poorly and they have already lost more than they needed to. that sucks but thats not the real problem.the real problem is that once the cards turn around you are still going to be playing poorly. and it is going to keep feeling like all bad beats to you. poker tracker is can be a great help in noticing this, but lets face it, its a tough thing not to get yourself into denial about. you need two things, and you need them at the same time, but you can't get them at the same time. you need your confidence back but you also need to stop playing until you get it back. ive went through this a couple of times and it was never easy to snap back into playing my best. i used to just keep chugging along until i hit a run well streak and then everything would be ok. that was when could expect a downswing to last three months of full time playing. now ive gotten it down to where if i lose for a few days in a row i can expect it to last maybe a week.i sort of used a trick to train myself for exactly this. i like started out fresh on the 1st of a month with a new database (i know its not really starting fresh but mentally i felt like it was, and thats what this is, psychological warfare with yourself). then i set some criteria for when i could play. i had to really want to. i had to feel a certain way (vicious might be the best word). and i had to sit down and play to win and only to win. but you sound already past all that and deep into the slumps of a downward trend which reinforces itself pretty damn well (see, my aces got cracked again damnit, but i forgot about those two bluffs i made for stacks where if i had just stoped to think about his hand a second longer....). i found myself here once not that long ago. somebody whose advice i very much respect but name i wont mention (i hate name dropping) told me "if you can't win doing whatever your doing now go play a game where you do win". so take some time off, wait until you feel ready to sit down and fuck some shit up (not just beat but annihilate your opponents), and play your best game at a limit you are very comfortable at because youve kicked the shit out of it in the past. the other good piece of advice is to try to accept every loss as your fault. while you won't always win there is always something you could have done different, a hand you could have lost less on, a hand you could have gotten more value on. stop with the "variance" kind of thinking and remember that there is no such thing as luck in poker. all of this will take time and practice. every time you fall off the horse pick yourself back up and use it as a learning experience.

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We've all been on the same kind of run. There was a couple of weeks where Jokerstars was eating my lunch with bad beat after bad beat. I would definitely take a little time off. I wouldnt recommend dropping too many levels lower, if the bad beats continue at that level sometime it messes with your head. When im running bad at one I switch over another site for a few days. Sometimes all you need is a fresh setup to get you back to your natural game. Helps me get to a positive mindset, where I can concentrate on my game a little better and look for leaks before I get back to my regular setup. I know alot of people may disagree, all im saying is thats what I did and it helped.
this is actually a good step in the right direction. instituting change helps no matter how you're running. play in a different room in the house, change your desktop wallpaper (the word HALT in big letter is a good idea for a background when you are in a slump, its an acronym for when you should absolutly never be playing. Hungry Angry Lonely Tired. Its such a good acronym i told my girlfriend about it so if she notices me breaking it she says something to me.) rearrange your furniture. beat your dog with a different metal pipe. while i dont understand exactly why, change seems to help, and im not the first person to say this.i do disagree with the stepping down thing. not being flexible with limit is a huge mistake that can easily break you. you should not play at a certain limit just because you have the "proper roll" to do so. i play anywhere from micros to 1/2 in big bet games and 3/6 in limit games. and i take .05/.10 as seriously as i do 3/6.
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Thank you for all the responses so far guys. I'm sorry that I didn't post it in the proper forum - I really thought this would fall under general strat, as it's about mindset and not specific hands.

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I'm not trying to be a jerk but there is a huge misuse of the word 'career' in this thread.It sounds cliché but try not to worry about the things you can't control. Everyone goes through downswings, I just do my best to play myself through it. If you get results oriented when you're making the correct plays you're going to do yourself no good. Just do your best to stay on the path of good play and let the variance play out the way it's going to.

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Thank you for all the responses so far guys. I'm sorry that I didn't post it in the proper forum - I really thought this would fall under general strat, as it's about mindset and not specific hands.
you absolutly posted this in the right forum, ignore the haters.
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I'm not trying to be a jerk but there is a huge misuse of the word 'career' in this thread.It sounds cliché but try not to worry about the things you can't control. Everyone goes through downswings, I just do my best to play myself through it. If you get results oriented when you're making the correct plays you're going to do yourself no good. Just do your best to stay on the path of good play and let the variance play out the way it's going to.
nobody plays well through a downswing. you need to get a little results oriented because if your results say you are losing after enough time or too much too fast you are in fact losing in poker mathland also. for most people trying to play through a downswing seriously compounds the problem.
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I was cruising along about 2-3 weeks ago, BR at all time high and was going to cash out at the end of May, wanted to keep playing to finish my Ironman bonus. Since that point, it doesn't matter what I play...NL cash, FL cash, SNG, MTT...I've been crashing into the ground. And I have no freaking clue what's going on.Part of it is stupid variance and luck. Just read the FOUR entries I posted in the Bad Beat Forum TODAY, after having never posted there before. And that's the kind of shit that's been going on for the better part of a month. Losing to 2 outer after 3 outer after gutshot, having villains call my shoves with middle pair no kicker and my combo draw whiffs, when I make moves as a short stack in the BTN/CO, the blinds wake up with QQ/AK/AA. I've dropped down - several levels actually - and nothing seems to be working. I have no idea what to do, and I'm turning to the forum for help.
There's your trouble. Well, one of the problems. F*^k the bonuses and stuff, just focus on playing the game when you're ready and able to play well. If the bonus comes, it comes.Go outside. Go fishing one night and don't even think about poker.
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I'm on a downswing too. It started when i started playing online.
your signature is a little off. go do a search for jfarell.get ready to laugh for like a very long time.
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Take a break.
+2Do the voluntary ban from pokerstars for one week. I do it when I feel I'm playing bad. Going through that week thinking about poker makes me really want to play again. When the week is over and I'm back on, I'm feeling hungry for stacks.
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"Confidence" is probably the most overused word in sports and games, but in poker it really does matter. The reason why is because, like baseball, there's a wide disparity between what you attempt and what you achieve, and you're only measured BY your results. With sufficient confidence and knowledge of poker you're able to lose money unwaveringly. You know you're making +EV plays - the cards just aren't falling correctly. But on a downswing you start to doubt all of that. So when I'm on a downswing I think, "I'm a long-term winner at poker, I know I can beat this game." Pull up your cashier, your PT database or whatever you can to put hard evidence in your face that you have and can beat the game. So while I agree w/anti that you should be evaluating your hands all of the time, I don't think you should go about it with the mentality that you're always doing something wrong. That's the type of attitude you should have when you're winning and on a hot-streak - most players run well and never stop and think about how to maximize their gains. When you're winning you don't mind self-reflection and criticism. You don't mind if someone says, "you have a bunch of leaks," because you can always fall back on the knowledge that, while you're not perfect, you're consistently winning. For now, though, you need to regain confidence by convincing yourself that you're a winning poker player.What you should not focus on, though, are bad beats. Bad beats are empirical evidence that you got your 'money in good' Once you don't get bad beats anymore, and they get rarer and rarer as you climb the ladder, you will come to realize that you are probably the one being outplayed, the fish. Focusing on them - and I mean other than venting - is counterproductive. Focus on YOUR bad beats, instead, spots where you got the money in bad. In the end you cannot control the cards; you cannot even control your state of mind when playing, to be honest; you can only control the way in which poker affects and influences your life, the perspective which you present and maintain. This all goes well-beyond what you can find on a strategy forum. If you view poker as a game over which you have absolute or even partial control, or a game which is designed to dole out cosmic justice, then you will forever be upset, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled. Most people do this, those especially who do not understand the game's fundamentals. If, on the other hand, you view poker as a complex system of probability and psychology, and you begin to truly appreciate the term "sample size," then you will fee calmer and more at ease. We, being humans, aren't programmed to think this way. We'll look at say a best of 7 series in baseball and crown the winning team champions of the universe. We're forever dominated by short-term variance and results. If two computers could match their baseball simulations against each other, they'd simply play one million games in three nanoseconds and whichever simulation had a winning percentage greater than 50 would be termed "superior." So the best advice that I can give is to have the right perspective - poker's an amoral game that doesn't care about you or the other players; you have it mastered enough to make money in your usual games; so get out there and play and win. Whatever you do to get there is up to you. One thing I do is try to see what great players go through. There's a member of this forum - well, before he went to that other forum - whose blog I read, and he confessed to having like an 80k breakeven stretch. He's a mid-stakes grinder whose game I really respect and admire, and HE went through almost one hundred thousand hands of breakeven poker. So how the hell can I complain about like a 5k stretch? Really?

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