New to online poker- early success but now losing ALOT?

How do you get over a long string of bad beats?
I have had a long string of bad beats. It's actually making me lose confindence in myself.
Even though I started with 20 bucks at Bodog less than a month ago and had 90 until recently. My in the money percentage for the $1 sit n gos was 60% with my win percentage around 20%. My last week of playing my in the money percentage has dropped to 10%. Needless to say I am losing money fast.
Most of my beats have been bad beats by loose aggressive players calling with nothing because they are pot committed and sucking out on the turn or river.

Any ways to handle this? BTW I am a tight aggresive player

Thanks

how many buyins has your bad streak run for and how much have you dropped. I'm guessing these are single table, only a week seems like it could be just an avg bad run and you have to trust good plays will equal good results again.

They are 45 player multitable sitngos. My losing streak has run about a week.

a week but how many buyins.... if its 45s 20% winning is ridiculously high to maintain. Avg ITM is 15% so no big deal, you were doing great, now ok.

ya, in 45 man multi table tournies, you are going to have some dry spells. a week is not that bad depending on how many your playing a day. If bad beats are starting to effect your play at all though, i would take a day or two off. You will come back re-energized and probably play much better.

play something at lower stakes perhaps? $90 is a great br, brm should help; You'll prob. hear it 20 more times but I've not had to deposit in 1.5 yrs because of it

60% ITM 20% winning you had to be playing well and getting lucky if you avg it with bad runs you're still doing very well, no worries, just poker. $1 sitngos are well within BRM.

First of all it has made me feel alot better. My husband says all the same things. I looked back at my buyins and I clearly lost so many because I played them back to back after bad beats (or sometimes just regular beats).

My new theory will be to force myself to play freerolls in between the beats. Maybe I get so frustrated that i play needlessly aggressive on the flop which makes the dumb suckouts hurt worse and thats why I have been losing.

I need to think this out more and see if it is something I am doing. You guys are right though, I was doing ridiculously well in the beginning, which had to end. My losing streak has been 25 buyins. I about fainted when I saw the number. How can someone do so well and then suck so bad?

I've tried loosening up. I waste chips to see flops i don't hit. I've tried tightening up but I really can't do that till I have a ton of chips.

I will give you my formula and maybe you can make sense of it:

Early play: A-10 or better A-rags only sometimes if suited,
pocket pairs (bet preflop with 10s or higher)
kq, kj, qj and sometime j10
sometimes my lucky hand 4-10 and 8-9

Mid Play: with above avg chip stack i will play face card-rag suited and Ace-rag suited, some suited connecters in addition to normal hands
I will also buy pots when i sense weakness, and am in position

Late play: Super tight pocket pairs above 9s and a-10 or better. Basically not anything I wouldn't go all in on. Unless i'm bb of course.

Bad strategy? Is there a way to modify my play for loose aggressives?

First of all it has made me feel alot better. My husband says all the same things. I looked back at my buyins and I clearly lost so many because I played them back to back after bad beats (or sometimes just regular beats).

My new theory will be to force myself to play freerolls in between the beats. Maybe I get so frustrated that i play needlessly aggressive on the flop which makes the dumb suckouts hurt worse and thats why I have been losing.

I need to think this out more and see if it is something I am doing. You guys are right though, I was doing ridiculously well in the beginning, which had to end. My losing streak has been 25 buyins. I about fainted when I saw the number. How can someone do so well and then suck so bad?

I've tried loosening up. I waste chips to see flops i don't hit. I've tried tightening up but I really can't do that till I have a ton of chips.

I will give you my formula and maybe you can make sense of it:

Early play: A-10 or better A-rags only sometimes if suited,
pocket pairs (bet preflop with 10s or higher)
kq, kj, qj and sometime j10
sometimes my lucky hand 4-10 and 8-9

Mid Play: with above avg chip stack i will play face card-rag suited and Ace-rag suited, some suited connecters in addition to normal hands
I will also buy pots when i sense weakness, and am in position

Late play: Super tight pocket pairs above 9s and a-10 or better. Basically not anything I wouldn't go all in on. Unless i'm bb of course.

Bad strategy? Is there a way to modify my play for loose aggressives?

I've only played turbo 45s where most of the game is push/fold and position plays at the end (can't really play tight late). Someone else could answer your questions better than me.

i would forget about lucky hands, they are bound to get you into trouble.
Also, as far as the starting hands you list, you could think about which of those hands you can raise with, and which you can call (a shove) with.

Like AJ suited early stage of game. you may raise with it, but are you gonna call if someone puts you all in?
Face card/rag suited or whatever should not be played by a beginner at all really.

Your system in my opinion is a bit backwards. You should really be playing tighter early stages than later stages in SNG's, but calling hands are still strong after the blinds get high.

search 'Chuckts' posts. He has some very very good ones that will help you immensely. I think I saw one recently about starting hands, but don't confuse it with the post on ring game (cash) starting hands. sounds like this could help you a ton. It was def. my biggest problem when I first started playing, and I too had 'lucky' hands.
GL missus

your early play 4-10 has got to be losing u money lucky junk always loses long term

Not really on topic for this, but I really hope that's not really your email address. If it is get ready for a shitload of spam.

On topic, downswings are part of poker. It's tough, but try to do your best to continue to play well, resist the urge to start playing bad hands. Even though everyone else seems to win with them, you still need to play the best you can to maximize your earnings. Poker is about the long-term and hopefully in another week or two this downswing will just be a memory.

You need to work on your starting hand selection. In most games, Ace Ten is a rag ace. Also you appear to overvalue hands like KQ, KT, KJ, those hands are very easily dominated and if you do play them you'd better hope the opponents didn't hit the flop with you, or that nobody hit the flop so you can c-bet. Also you talk about playing stuff like Q2 suited or J6 suited. Well thats OK but if you're going to play that in late position you might as well play every hand, and then you're going to get resteals preflop from the big blind left right and centre if he has a clue.

You should try to avoid playing small pairs and suited connectors with a view to outdraw your opponent in most tournament situations since you rarely are receiving the correct express odds to hit the right kind of hand on the flop (you want to make more than one pair), and even more rarely are you receiving the implied odds. That is, your opponent and yourself are not deep stacked enough to pay you off sufficiently when you hit your hand to soften the blow of not having the correct express odds to hit your hand. Generally you need to both have a stack size an amount at least 20 times the bet you called to make a good profit in the long run, so you're better off making these kind of plays in a cash game where everyone is deep, and preferably where the opponent often overvalues top pair or a 'small hand'.

Also your preflop strategy of raising with the very strong hands and calling with reasonable hands is not good either - you should try to raise - and the same amount - whether you have 32 off suit and decide to steal the blinds or if you have those Aces. Then it'll be harder to put you on a hand. Otherwise people will know when it comes 732 and you start putting in a lot of action but limped preflop, that you probably have a set.

Also your range of hands should widen the closer you are to the button. For example, I would never play A6 off suit in 80% of the positions at the table unless it was really shorthanded. But when its all folds to me on the cut off, I'm going to raise with that A6 off suit, chances are its better than the 3 hands that the button and blinds have and your raise wins you position if the blinds decide to call. Mostly the blinds will just check and you can take it down with a decent bet, even though mostly you flop nothing. And if the button calls then you can c-bet and take it down, or maybe checkraise bluff the turn if he thinks he can float you (standard play when being floated, not many people know that, and they haven't tried refloating yet). Also don't make minimum bets or raises, these are really bad plays with only a few strategic exceptions, like you have two Tens and want to isolate an early raiser but don't want to overly pump up the pot size, so then you make the minimum raise preflop so when the early raiser calls you can C-bet it an amount that would've pot committed you had you 3-bet a proper amount preflop.

You said you're losing confidence in yourself when you get bad beats. Just go to any poker calculator, run the hands against each other and then you know what the score is. You know whether you got your money in good or not, and then you know to do it again and again and again in the future.

I followed Un-diluted's advice and played even tighter in the beginning and once i won a few monster hands, I played looser hands more aggressively. It was really outside my comfort zone, but I became chip leader at the final table. Went in with even chips to Heads Up. Lost at heads up with AK suited, but the important part is I placed in the money!

A few more times and my bankroll will be back to snuff. Thanks to everyone for the advice.

Regarding my username, that was some weird mess up. I emailed admin to fix it. Hopefully I will get a response soon. If I am able to change it, I will still be Katharine.

Thanks again!

Sounds like you're getting on the right track. If you're playing scared money or on tilt or drunk or depressed or whatever, you'll generally play badly, and that's a quick way to lose money. Sometimes a freeroll or something can be good for playing just for the fun of it, where it doesn't really matter if you win or not, until you're calmed down enough.
Most of the regular players here have have disasterous sessions or periods. It's just a case of learning to look for what you did right or wrong in a hand, but not to get hung up on whether you were in the money or not, and to keep your cool when you get outdrawn.

Try playing Omaha or Omaha High/Low - at a full table you'll regularly see outdraws on the Turn or River, so you'll get used to it - it's just something you have to factor into your odds calculations. While the down-swings are nasty sometimes, if you keep playing a decent game the upswings should ultimately bring you back up again.

And another thing, spotting tilt in yourself is one thing... spotting it in another is also a good idea... if you can get someone steaming over a perceived bad beat or whatever, you can often take them to the cleaners... they're the best source of easy money, chasing their own lucky draws and steals and so on, pushing in money when they have no business being in the hand. Decent players will spot the change in play and punish them for it.

One thing I try to do is separate how I played and the how I did financially. They are two completely different things.

If I feel that I played well and still lost, that's OK because it means that I will still come out ahead in the long run.

Sometimes, I play really well and get impatient/bored/stupid near the end and blow it. That's what happened to me in last Thursday's Cardschat PS $3.30 PS tournament. I made a risky play that didn't pass the "Do I have to do this?" test. No, I didn't need to push heads up against the chip leader with my KT. My stack was short but not that short.

Sometimes, usually if I'm just playing for just something to do (and usually at the lower limits), I'll play badly and cash anyway. Yes, I made money but there's nothing to learn from that experience.

The point here is to put your emphasis on how well you played. Don't worry about the results until it puts your bankroll at risk.

And, if you are letting the results get to you, take some time off to clear your head.