Card Dead and Off Timing

Hi all,

New to the forums, great site and lots of great threads.

I've been playing poker for only a couple of years now and mostly play in small home games and micro stakes online tourneys (NLHE). Not aspirations to play professionally, but I do very much enjoy the game and the challenges it brings.

Note that I realize there is significantly more variance at the micro stakes tourneys online, but I am in no way comfortable moving up. For the last 120 days I've been about 12% ITM.

Early 2% (10%)

EM 16% (20%)

Mid. 46% (40%)

ML 24% (20%)

Late 12% (10%)


This post is definitely not about complaining about variance and bad beats, etc.

On the other hand, I'd like to hear how others deal with it because sometimes I go through swings that are pretty frustrating, like everyone else I'm sure. Card dead and flopless I call it. Crap cards most of the time and hardly hitting the flop when I'm not dealt 8/4os. Watching closely the board and player patterns online helps some as I can often manage to steal enough pots here and there to still survive for a while in tourneys when its like this, but eventually I figure you need to get some hands that connect eventually.

Particularly, I'm interested in ways that others find useful to mitigate the effects of down swings. Take a break? Just grind through and do you best to get in good with good odds?

Thanks,

Ah, my apologies. I just noticed a very similar thread already in progress.

Thanks,