Let em eat felt...

I hate-hate-hate beginner's luck. I don't mean honest mistakes like failing to spot a semi-hidden straight while holding a set or flush draw. I mean holding the sort of hand where only one card in the deck can save you and it lands on the river!

How's this a strategy question? I wanna know what to do when fighting fire with water doesn't work, and fighting fire with fire doesn't work. I can't afford an asbestos track suit. So what gives?

PS does anyone know of a voodoo or hoodoo that really works? I gotta do something about the lucky imbeciles. On top of that I just gotta get my mojo back.

Try re-setting your expectations.

Let's say we're playing w our cards face up, and I have Jc8c and you have Ac2c, and the board is QcTc4c7c on the turn. You act first and shove all your money in - after all, you can see I only have one out to win, the 9c. I have you covered, and I can also see that I only have 1 out.

Do you want me to call your all in or not? I have exactly 1 out from 44 remaining cards to beat you - if your answer is anything other than a halleleujah-double-fist-pump-dancing-jig "YES!!!", give up playing poker immediately.

The catch is, one out of every 44 times we do this (on average) I will win your stack. That's not much of a catch when you consider that the other 43 out of 44 times you will double up through me.

If you're playing for the long run, this is the only way to think about fishy suckouts (obv I biased this to be a one outer, but do the same w 8 outs, 9 outs, whatever). It's frustrating when you know the fish doesn't even grasp the possibility that he's behind when the money goes in, but your double fist pump jig should be more vigorous when you know he doesn't even recognize he only has one out (3 outs, 4 outs, 8 outs, whatever) because he's more likely to make the mistake of calling without odds.

If you're not playing for the long run, that's fine too - but then remember that luck is part of the game.

So what can you do to fight this? Don't fight it, welcome it, it's how you're going to be profitable over the long run.

I know it's just that it's happened to me twice this week alone. I reckon if I had my long term br in place it wouldn't bug me so much. It's a lot easier when you have 100 or more stacks set to go. Then it doesn't burn as much or send you into maximum tilt as easily. Then it's easier to celebrate.

Switching gears tho. Playing in more sng's. Two things happened. FTP lowered rake on regular sng's, and I noticed that I can play in $1 TD satellites for 30c. 9 players and if I finish in 3rd I only lose a nickel so it's not much of a ding. I'm trying to get on a good schedule so I can play as many of these satellites as possible. That way I can buy into sng's and MTT's with as little cash shelled out as possible.

I don't mean to be results oriented, it's just that short term funds gives you short term vision, ya know?

Anyway I'm trying to build up to something that I can play from for a good long while. I did notice that when I burn out from too many ring games I play better in tournaments and when I burn out from too many tournaments I play better in ring games. When I burn out from it all I usually just take a break.

One thing's keeping my spirits up most of the time. A friend who I've played with on lots of sites and who has run up tiny amounts into the thousands(then he cashes some out and distributes it so it's not all on any one site), well anyway, he says he's sure I can hold my own at $5, and probably even $10. I just have to get enough loot together to go that far.

I know $5 & $10's nothing to some people, but to me it's a lot. Also if I can get that high then at least I'll have a down to go to . Good thing about the bottom, you're always looking to the top .

Believe me, I tilt when this happens to me as well, but I can shake it off after a bit of muttered swearing and a couple of deep breaths...

You're absolutely correct that a short br is going to affect your ability to shake these off - sounds like you're not really getting out of line, but that your br just is small relative to general br recommendations. Keep in mind that a short br will also start to affect your +Ev moves (i.e., not taking advantage of a small edge cuz we're worried about the variance).

GL on the felt, and hope you get your br to a point soon where this is easier to take!

Thanks and you too.

I actually know what you're saying about a short br affecting +Ev moves. I also know it happens to me, and I'm conscious of it, but not always capable of shaking it. It mainly happens when I'm short on dough and a couple of big hands fall apart back to back or just a few hands apart.

I found a thread via websearch from a different forum. It features big stacks griping about short stacks. Apparently they just don't care about what's really going through our minds when short stacked. I'm just going to keep reading it because it's very dense with an absolute ton of math. Still, I figure that if I understand where they're coming from, but they don't understand where I'm coming from, then I have my own little edge.

Actually, we have our very own thread here (very long, dry, vocal, argumentative, bleah - but extremely good at describing the strategy of ss'ing) about the same topic. I forget if it's in the strategy forum or the learning poker forum.

You're not the type of ss that's being discussed in this thread, nor the thread on the other forum - they're referring to professional players who intentionally buy in short (even though their br's are plenty big enough to buy in full) in order to exploit being short. You're playing short because your br is short - what you will be doing on the table is not what the pro ss's do on the table.

So if you see some of the nasty comments about ss's in one of those threads (or in other places on this or any other forum), don't take them to heart, they're not about you.