Every showdown I have fails

I am a patient person. I have now played for over a month. Played quite a few of hours of play money and then went to micro-stakes. Got cleaned out a couple of times in 2 dollar buy-in but then worked out how to play and actually made money. Moved on to $5... made money.

Now after several tens of hours of play. I will fail (practically) every showdown regardless of what it is. I wait for good hole cards (more or less what PokerStrategy dot com suggests ). In the very rare circumstance that everyone does not fold before I get to play high pocket pairs mostly nothing will come up to make the hand better. If I go all in with a pair of aces it is guaranteed to fail. Best failure was someone holding 72 offsuit; they had a full house by the time it got to the river, and yes... 7 full of 2s.

This is what I have found:

1. 95% of my bluffs work if I am below the buy-in amount
2. 100% of my bluffs fail if I am near or above buy-in amount
3. I fail practically every showdown (I have a tendency to find that I usually win a showdown if I am holding a rubbish hand)
4. If I have a king high flush - they will have an ace high flush
5. If I have ace high - they will have full house
6. If I have full house they will have 4 of a kind
7. The only money I make is through bluffs

I can now recognize the really bad players quite easily. They can be scared off easily. I can bluff them most of the time. If it comes to a showdown I can be 100% certain that regardless of how strong my hand is - they will win... every time. That is why I bluff so often - it is the only money I can make.

What the hell is going on? Why is it that the more I play, and the better I get, the worse my luck gets? I used to make money when I was playing bad - now I just get poorer and poorer. Is the poker site (pokerstars) just trying to get rid of me?

...and on it goes

...wait wait wait wait...

KING KING...

raise! One person LIMPS in... a person who pretty much plays most times REGARDLESS of what he has.

...raise on flop even though it is pretty useless... just attempting to get him to leave because if it gets to a showdown I will FAIL!

He limps in again... after I try to re-raise - he seems to have nothing much:

https://ibb.co/5TR6zfX


Could it be anything else?? Would it be anything else?? OF COURSE NOT! (AA if you don't want to look at image (but I think you could probably guess what it was anyway because it could not possibly be anything else.))

As a man thinketh so is he...

You've got to change your attitude towards your play and what will come. Hit the books. If your running into scenarios where you always have second best it's probably because you are having difficulty defending or recognizing opponents ranges.

I have a ridiculous amount of hours now... I wait for good hands. I wait for hours. I see people's hands - they suck. I see people's play and most people play really bad.

It is easy to scare lots of people so I make lots of money bluffing - that is because I spend most of my time below buy in. If I bluff while I am above buy in amount then it will fail (I just recently managed to pull off a bluff while above which is unusual).

If I get a good hand it will be trumped - every time without fail. That is why I am always below buy in amount. Same game I am playing now: I get qq - as per usual one of my opponents have AA. If I get any high pocket pairs I may just as well fold them... because 100% of the time if I get a high pocket pair someone always has a higher one. It defies all probability.

If I play good hole cards 99.99% of the time there will be low cards on the table all the way to the river. If it reaches showdown they will win with their 8 and 2 offsuit because an 8 and 2 went down. I have just watched a guy playing practically all of his dealt cards. He went up to 10 dollars on a 2 dollar table because he kept going all-in pre-flop with worthless hole cards. Of course he keeps winning. People were playing against him with good cards quite often. Idiots get all the luck. Not the first time I have seen it.

texasfoldem said:

I have a ridiculous amount of hours now... I wait for good hands. I wait for hours. I see people's hands - they suck. I see people's play and most people play really bad.

It is easy to scare lots of people so I make lots of money bluffing - that is because I spend most of my time below buy in. If I bluff while I am above buy in amount then it will fail (I just recently managed to pull off a bluff while above which is unusual).

If I get a good hand it will be trumped - every time without fail. That is why I am always below buy in amount. Same game I am playing now: I get qq - as per usual one of my opponents have AA. If I get any high pocket pairs I may just as well fold them... because 100% of the time if I get a high pocket pair someone always has a higher one. It defies all probability.

blah blah blah blh.

Click to expand...

A) You've been playing poker for a month.

B) Put $100 on pstars and utilize bankroll management. Learn from your mistakes and rewatch hands. Half of what you've written in this thread is terrible strategy, the other is just bad..

C) Buy some poker books (super system etc.).

D) You've been playing poker for a month.

E) Good luck, and quit whining. Maybe pokers not for you

Inuitinnuendo said:

A) You've been playing poker for a month.

B) Put $100 on pstars and utilize bankroll management. Learn from your mistakes and rewatch hands. Half of what you've written in this thread is terrible strategy, the other is just bad..

C) Buy some poker books (super system etc.).

D) You've been playing poker for a month.

E) Good luck, and quit whining. Maybe pokers not for you

Click to expand...

Thank you for your insight. Could you please point out the parts where I have expressed or indicated that I am using poor strategy?

I do indeed read and have done enough to be able to identify bad players. I see lots of them. I am aware that there is a probability that if there are 2 same number cards on the table when you have a flush there is SUPPOSED to be a small probability that the player may have a full house or 4 of a kind.

I am not betting silly - I am simply losing because my hand, regardless of how good it is will always be beaten. These odds just do not make any sense at all. In 6 hours today I played (i.e. everyone didn't fold before I got a chance to play them) about 3 high pairs pre-flop. All times someone had AA. I either knew they had AA because it got to showdown or I folded and they had a showdown with someone else.

That is just in the 6 hours I played today. I actually won with a full house today which is one of the fairly good wins I have had in days (I didn't get much because I believed that he was almost certain to have a better hand than me - turns out his wild betting was due to pair of jacks). I lost much of what I won on that a few minutes later because someone had ONE card better than my king high straight because of the river card.

Just as a side note - I may have my calculations wrong but: someone having AA every time 3 times consecutively when I have high pair (QQ or KK) is about 250 million to 1 odds. That is indeed what happened to me last time I played though.

It may need to be divided by 6 (hands at the table) but, either way - someone in the UK has a greater chance of winning the lottery than for that to happen - and yet it happened to me (and I don't mean I won the lottery).

Get Hand2Note and track your W$SD. You need to play 120k hands for luck to decant....also you need to do 1/219 to 1/219 to 1/219 i do not think it is 250 million to 1 dog as those odds seem insane for poker. Read cards cardschats strategy guide...also realistically bots infest the micros, the edge in online is non exisistant, the plateau in NLH is harmless, micros have high rake frequency ,high rake and revenue not profit based rake. Watch donk play on youtube and consider switching to Omaha for profit.

If you did not alter your play from the way when you were winning, you probably just have a down swing. Just wait it out, even the best players will face a time, when you get the feeling you always end up second best.

Maybe you are playing too loose and bluff more? Which in turn makes your opponents call with marginal hands and recently they have had better luck than you turn and river? You gotta look at statistics on how loose you currently are perhaps?

You sound like a huge fish

what kind of sample size do you have for all these findings?