Playing great NLH online is a destiny to lose money!?

I have played poker online for the last 9 months and live the last 3 months, and feel i need to express my utter disbelief at my statistics(in cash games online), and i guess i just feel i need reassurance that solid poker will in the end yield great results.

Let me first point out that while being no pro, i consistently play great poker, as is in my eyes anyway, and most, if not 90% of the time i play winning poker!!

Its that other 10% that bothers me, and that 10% is usually when im all in for every penny with the best of it, usually with the other guy drawing to 6outs or less.

Even with a correct "bankroll management" how can you tackle losing all in to a complete and utter bad beat, more often than not..... and its the more often than not that gets me.


To be a god in low limit cash games no less you'd have to get lucky on a larger amount of your money(all ins) than skill, which means playing badly!? or i suppose being lucky that you haven't gotten unlucky.

there are however many variables in this argument that im sure you will all pick up on and rant back about,eg playing against maniacs takes a different playing style: playing against fish takes a different playing style: playing against etc etc etc, but my stress is totally upon having the best hand preflop/ having the best hand on the flop/ having the best hand on the turn all in, and the other guy sucking on a 5 outer river card, and thus overall you come out loser bigtime, even if you are a great poker player, what are you supposed to do fold the nuts?

also i suppose id mention the limits i am talking about:

$0.05/$0.10
$0.10/$0.20

i have occasionally played higher limits but they are definitely beyond my depth, and if i win any money there its totally down to luck/skill on some really stupid ppl(which i love and loath).

On the other hand however i have won/made the money in a serious amount of tournaments online (sngs/freerolls/etc). but i feel thats because you have to use skill/strategy to beat those games, and my point is there is no skill strategy to losing all of your well earned poker moves to a lucky punk. not that im excluding luck from all tournaments.

wow ive covered alot of bases here!!!!!!!!!



IS there anyone out there can feel my pain!"""? or at least understand what im trying my hardest to get at? that cash games are indeed only worth it if you get lucky and play badly/ on occasion.

Here's the thing though - if you're really getting your money in on a regular basis against inferior hands with five outs... 10% of the time they'll hit, and 90% of the time you'll hold up and win. Those are fantastic odds, especially in NLHE where you're more used to looking at 60:40 type situations.

If you're showing a profit the rest of the time, don't sweat these 10% situations - bad beats are just part of the game. If you're not making a profit the rest of the time... then you've got to look at your broader game, not just how you're playing these 10% situations.

Great first post, though. Welcome to Cardschat!

thats the thing im talking about those hands, statistically they should hold up 90% of the time, but its like theres a curse or something looking back id say even with those exact odds, my "Actual" odds of the best hand holding up is id say under 40%, the guy who is bad beating me will usually lose all his winnings in the next few hands some times back to me but thats only if i havent steamed out or have no more to deposit/play with etc, and that is not the point really.

point is i only lose these situations when i have ALL my money in, so Overall it makes me look like a bad player, i do make profit outside of these hands, and only lose to bad beats, yes i understand they're part of the game but, i feel like there is no hope for a great player in online poker as over 60% of the time you rely on luck!

I think you think you're a better player than you are if you're telling us you only lose money from bad beats.

post hands in the hand analysis section. there's about a 99% chance you don't play nearly as well as you think

Sample size?

oops didnt realize how cocky that sounded,

you know what i meant(you do) (ie meaning i lose alot on bad beats and say not very much on a bad desicion)

maybe you were making a cocky remark?

Your thinking makes me wonder why you view yourself as a great player. Great players know there's no such things as curses and that skills > luck in poker. If you were to play in a game where you had only .01% of an edge over the competition, you'd come out a winner.

Now, this doesn't mean that swings don't happen, but it doesn mean that in the long run (multiple thousands, if not millions of hands) you'll come out on top. Poker is a marathon, both in mastering the game and at evaluating your play. Nobody gets rich fast.

I think it's worth also noting that when you're playing those micro-level games online, you're bound to run into more situations and instances where you will have the best-of-it and then get 1-6 outed on the river. You'll probably have noticed that people will still chase their cards to the end if you do play it properly and don't give them proper odds to stay in the hand such as betting equal-to or over the pot just to scare everyone away.

If you do well and profit a good portion on your 90% of hands that are played and work out then you should be accumulating your bankroll/account to move up a level and work there - see how it goes and then hopefully move on up again. It'll take some time...I myself have taken a break from the online scene just because I've got a lot of time ahead of me to learn, tune, tweak and fine-tune my game over and over.

As long as you're overall playing winning poker in the grand scheme of things, as opposed to a small portion of your hands played, then you shouldn't fret, roll with those other hands as part of the game and be ready for the next hand. Remember, it is gambling - some people like to do it more so than others, but everyone does it to some extent.

yup no limit all the time endless you got 15+ years under your belt

I have actually found that these situations only beat me if they make the first move, ie, i have trapped them... they move all in on the turn, i call with the top nuts on the turn, they always hit a bogus 'only card in the deck' that could possibly make them win. i know this is totally situational depended to make a judgment from your end, but i assure you they are called bad beats.

Especially when i dont give them proper pot odds to call, thats what tops off the cherry in my opinion, oh and another thing, they always become very chatty from that point! which really hits the spot when i have nothing left to play with!

as for level moving, i do well up to the point of a bad beat(edit)which doesnt come from a level change merely off the chance of running into a gambler who is "lucky"(edit), this is why ive come full frontal about this topic on a forum like this one!!

..Plus i have read similar things on this site alone...

ah well, i suppose your point about the gambling really sums up this topic up! just wish the best odds would be better for me than the statistics make out!!

Bluffmaster, I once thought I was like you. A good, but unlucky player. But then I got PokerTracker and found some leaks. I posted some hand histories in the Analysis section here and found more leaks. I talked with my poker friends about poker and discovered even more problems I had. And then there's the books I've read. I started getting deeper into poker math and started learning to adapt my play to the current table instead of playing by the book all the time.

Anyway, it might be possible that you are just remembering your losses more than your wins. This is easy to do online since you play way more hands per hour than live. Try taking a good look at your play. You might be able to discover that there are still ways to improve. Good luck and welcome.

as soon as i posted that first post i figured hmm, im acting like the almighty god of poker.. and since that post i have taken a huge step back at my game, and realized i play "good" poker most of the time(questionable hehe), and surprise surprise the "bad beats" come at a time where i may becoming impatient so "statistically" yes im playing good poker and yes im getting unlucky 10% of the millions of hands i play, usually losing 100% of my bankroll, depending on how much i have at that point.

But of course i am getting impatient 10% of the time also, impatient/unlucky, or maybe i should just let go of the unlucky part?. so thats something to look at, thanks for the constructive advice anyway.

only thing is i cant seem to find a poker tracker for betfred poker

only option is to go back to good old pokerstars / jokerriverstars as many call it.

http://www.cardschat.com/f50/nlh-bad...ad-beat-92632/ (http://www.cardschat.com/f50/nlh-bad-play-bad-beat-92632/) heres an example.

It`s part of poker. I also came to believe online poker was rigged etc.. Not long ago I had a 50K hands breakeven stretch on pokerstars. It was driving me totaly nuts. After each session I checked the biggest pots I have lost and won and most of it seemed played ok. In one session I had 3 of a kind 23 times and lost 16 times with them, un.****.ingbelievable I said. Yesterday I got AI with AA vs KK lost, vs QQ lost, vs 66 lost. But I also got in with QQ vs a shortstacks AA and won. upswings/downswing happen, and over a lot of hands. Just hang in there and you eventualy will be back. GL

thanks for the good feedback, especially from thecleaner and stlchris79, im glad someone else has had a similar experience, well, i am sorry to hear someone else has had a similar experience but yea i agree that quiting from low limit cash games is a positive idea!!!!!!!

There's a good reason why it's called gambling.

Betfred is on the Ipoker network. I`m sure you`ll find that the current version of Poker Tracker works just fine. I use it myself on other Ipoker sites such as Titan.

thanks just installed v2, interesting...