Well like the title says, it seems to me the more you learn about poker, the more complicated and difficult it gets. I can’t seem to find the post, but a while ago a member posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek stereotypical timeline of an aspiring poker player’s career, and I loved it because it was so true. It listed several “Played too loose, tightened up”, and “Played to tight, loosened up” turning points, as well as the occasional “Went on winning streak, thought he was the next Phil Ivey” and “Lost entire bankroll, decided never to play again, only to return the next week” type entries. It couldn’t have applied to my poker ‘career’ more perfectly.

After moving up to six tables in the middle of August and running at roughly %60 ROI, I’ve recently gone on a bankroll-devouring downswing. This isn’t one of those freak downswings that are mostly the result of variance or bad luck, but a slow, painful losing streak that is probably due to a leak in my game. I am running bad luck-wise as well, but I have a strong feeling I’m not playing tops. I’ve only got a ~1:2:1 finish ratio (ie 1st:2nd:3rd place), and I thought I had it figured out. I realized I was playing way too loose shorthanded - especially against the highly-observant multitabling regulars. These are the type of players, like myself, who actually note every hand you show down and can really narrow down your hand ranges.

I tightened up some, but then I watched a demonstration video from a SnG video site, and it changed my perspective once again. It was some mid-high stakes STT player who was commentating on a game in which he was the big stack on the bubble, and he absolutely went maniacal on his oppoents. He was basically taking advantage of his weak-tight opponents who obviously were trying to slip into the money, but I can’t get my head around what stakes and what type of players these guys would be. I know at the lower stakes, players tend to be less aware of bubble aggression, but at the same time they’re generally looser and will pay you off with less, so the strategy doesn’t really work. At the higher stakes players will obviously be, in general, more aware of players who would be trying to exploit weak-tight players on the bubble, and I don’t see it working too well there either. Needless to say, my return to looser play (specifically with the big chip lead on the bubble) didn’t turn out much success. It’s easy to see why when you see hands like this:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (5 handed)

Hero (t5670)
MP (t465)
Button (t1800)
SB (t3350)
BB (t2215)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 4c, Ac.
UTGA raises to t5645, 2 folds, SB calls t3225 (All-In), 1 fold.

Flop: (t8970) Qc, Ts, Th (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t8970) 4s (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t8970) 8s (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: t6575

Now obviously A4 is not a monster hand. I’d actually prefer pushing JTs and similar hands instead - the times we do get called, we’re usually against a pair or bigger ace, and we can expect to have live cards more often with smaller hands like JT or even one-gappers like 97s.

I’m pushing here because I expect to take the pot down the majority of the time. MP has a tiny stack, and mots probably won’t call without a pretty solid hand because there’s a possibility of another player going bust this very hand if someone calls me, which of course would slip him closer to the money. The button is in a similar situation, and he also knows that MP will be blinded out soon, so he can wait a little. The same applies to the BB - he’s not going to call without a very strong starting hand here, probably AJ+ and 88+. All these guys were relatively tight, if not nitty. The problem lay in the SB - a ~75/50/328432905 player. In other words an absolute maniac. I underestimated his lack of sanity, and he looked me up with A8 of all hands here. With his chip stack and the table conditions (a bunch of nitty weak-tight players), he had absolutely no reason to call here, but he decided he was ahead of my range. He could very easily have folded and stuck to blind stealing - which was very easy at this point - but he decided to call.

Now obviously I made a loose push there, and in my opinion he made a bad call, but I think I made the biggest mistake here. My push was made with the assumption that he was aware and/or afraid enough of bubbling out of the money to fold anything but AJ and better, alongside some pairs, and of course I was wrong. I think 6-tabling might be the reason for missing some of these reads, and I’ve since been playing 4 instead, which gives me a noticeable edge that greatly increases my chances of winning instead of just slipping in second or third place.

I was really pumping in a large amount of games in the later days of August because I was trying to reach silver stars, and I did, though with a very sub-par record with my games. Anyways this whole downswing is only over about 150-200 STTs, so this all could actually be just a result of variance, but I know that I’m not getting the results I want and it’s really made me take a step back and look at my game.

Until next time, when I’ll probably be gloating about an upswing (which will soon turn to a downswing again :D).

-ChuckTs