Losing confidence

The last 2 days it's been one suckout after another. Played pkt 5's, flopped a set and bet it hard, Villian called and hit trip J's on the turn... Played pkt AA's, bet it hard PF and afterwards, Villian was playing 99 and hit a set on the turn... You get the idea.


Any suggestions on how to not lose confidence. I've been sticking to my BR management, not playing more than 5% and leaving if I get destacked. Really fighting the urge to go play some more atm, think I'll go for a walk outside instead. Probably a fresh perspective will be a big help.

I really lost confidence a week or so ago when i was on a big losing streak...
i think the best thing to do is to actually not play for a week or so until you forget about your losses...oftentimes you come back playing twice as good as you were playing before.
Good luck

just keep getting your money in with the best of it. screw the results (hard as they are to swallow)

I've been there, too. 2 things help me:

1) Try to remember your nice wins. By just memory or, if you have any saved hand histories, look through them. Remember what you did right. Remember that you are capable of a comeback.

2) Change something. Not necessarily your technique, but anything else. Read a poker book/magazine or play a poker video game. Play the play-money tables of your fave site or watch your fave poker show on TV. More drastically, you could change the site you play or the game you play. (I recently started playing PL Omaha and it helps my Hold 'Em game.) Just change something.

Good luck!

Sets are tough because you will fool a lot of opponents with a set, but you can still lose a lot on a set with draws. More times than not, you are going to win the hand when you flop a set. Just keep everything in perspective and remember that you win more hands like this than you lose. Then keep it moving.

I bought the Sklansky book "hold'em for advanced players" so started reading through that.

It's funny, I had been doing so well that I should have expected the odds to catch up to me at some time.

I deposited $100 last wednesday and got it to $170 (at the 0.05/0.10 HE NL ring games) before the little $20 slide here the past day. I found myself getting gun-shy and blinded out, and thought to myself why am I acting allergic to the pot. Trying to not be result oriented is difficult I'm finding.

I'm trying to learn to play "correct" poker and play the long term odds, I should expect these swings I was just surprised at my reaction to losing a couple big hands.

You will run into periods of cold cards. It happens to everyone. How you handle it is very important. Just remember that you will get back to winning if you keep at it. I like the idea of reading a new poker book. It may give you a different outlook.