The grind is so frustrating, even if you win "a little" everyday.

HAMC81

HAMC81

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The long winding road of gambling, in my case online poker can get so freaking frustrating. I'm one of those guys guys usually dominate the competition, when I play SNGs I usually cash in 3/4 and usually win 4-5 per hour. I multitable 4-6 tables, usually 4 sngs and 2 mtts. I harvest the mtts buy ins with my immediate sng profits and so on, I also satellite a lot to higher buy in mtts... I probably hit 6 sattys a day.

My point is... no matter what I do lately, even if I hit a small profit everyday, I cannot get to that 1st place on the MTT that wil ultimately do 1 of 2 things... exponentially boost my bankroll, or give me a nice roll to spend in my daily life. No matter how good I play always something unfortunate happens... running KK vs AA, QQ vs KK, Straight vs Flush, Flush vs Higher Flush or simply disconnection problems in the middle of a hand in which I have 80% of my stack compromised against my direct opponent chip wise at the table and so I time out. This happened to me last saturday when I was chipleading a nice MTT with 20 people left.

What can you do when it seems you are drowning im mediocrity eventho you are playing your best? I agree a 2 week break its ideal but ive been so close of hitting it big the last few days I just think is due and shouldnt rest until I do.

Is there such a thing as being cursed? Is it possible to have so much bad karma or bad "luck" that no matter how good you play, how you always "get it in" ahead you fall short? I'm starting to think I'm cursed poker wise and I think I need a cleansing to start hitting the results I need.

In the meanwhile... I keep cashing out small but its insignificant and thus I feel the grind is not worth it stress/stamina wise... Ive been cashing out every week 3 or 4 times a week during the last month, yet I feel exhausted and unrewarded.

I realize in sports betting this is VERY common, with the added problem that you have to beat the juice, which is harder to beat than the "rake".
 
OzExorcist

OzExorcist

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Be realistic and stick at it I guess - but recognise if you're in poker to run up a huge bankroll quickly then you're in the wrong game. It's a game where you need huge amounts of patience and an even temperament.

A few thoughts otherwise. For starters, cashing in 75% of your STTs is very high and it makes me think a few things: either you're not accurately remembering how many times you cash, or if you are you're possibly putting too much emphasis on sneaking into the money as opposed to winning.

In either case, raw ROI is a much better metric than just the amount of time you get in the money for those games. For an extreme example, cashing 25% of the time, all first places, is better than cashing 55% of the time with all third places. The first has an ROI of 12.5% (assuming a 9-player 50-30-20 payout structure), while the second has an ROI of -1%. Even though its cash rate is 30% higher.

Extreme and unrealistic example, but hopefully it highlights the point.

One other thought, on withdrawing your winnings regularly. On one hand it's great because it means you're pulling in regular winnings. But on the flipside, it also means the bankroll you're playing with isn't growing. If you want to stand a chance of growing your bankroll faster, you probably need to leave some more in there so you can move up to higher stakes - beating those higher stakes games (assuming you can do it) will be what makes that graph tick upwards faster.
 
HAMC81

HAMC81

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Current ROI is 17.7%

I appreciate your input and yeah Im being lazy on the actual figures but is just to give an idea... or at least that was my session today... started with x amount on my bankroll and ended with 10x the amount of the starting BR... cashed out half of that

Session for today is over as I am exhausted and ran out of weed, cant handle the mood swings without weed so tomorrow it will be another day
 
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MMarshall89

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Session for today is over as I am exhausted and ran out of weed, cant handle the mood swings without weed so tomorrow it will be another day

Frustrating is an understatement my friend! Poker is like riding a roller coster for the very first time...your nervous, excited, anxious, hopeful, and happy when it is all said and done...cause in the end weather you loose, which nobody enjoys, you have gained wisdom and experience with EVERY hand you play you find a better way to play.

420 friendly, awesome, something else I agree on and enjoy. I had to stop because I am probation and trying to do the right thing and not end up in jail...can't play online poker in jail right! Not sure if that helps though, I might have to try that and see if it helps with my mood swings but hey if it keeps ya sane, tok tok tok ===

Your success is high you have a 75% cash out in your SNG's ( i think that's what you said ) but either way man keep that shit up, don't beat yourself up and there is no such thing as a poker curse, that's just superstitious. Find your game plan and stick to that till you feel like you need to change strategy. You could try taking the number of tables you are playing down some, I can't focus on more than just a couple tables but maybe that's just me and maybe I'm ADD or something but I normally just stick to 2 tables or tournaments at a time and if I get knocked out of one or want to leave a table I still got one table, or tournament going to play on. Keeping your table count down might allow you to relax some and enjoy the game more, cause your going to have to wait out that hated phase of not getting good hands every so often, it happens a lot to me, but I have won tournaments and placed in money not by winning more hands more often but just by winning big hands and big pots when they count. Just try that, play one big tournament with a big payout maybe not such a big buy in, you might have to go through a lot of people and a lot of trials to win that but when you do, it is worth that big pay out.

Other than that I really don't have any good advice, but I would like to commend you on your success and your persistence to grind it out... patience is key my friend cause good things DO come to those who wait.
 
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Jarod1231

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Your cashing percentage in SNG seems waaaay too high to me... If you are trying to win MTTs by playing them like SNG that is a mistake... you need to play MTTs like your only goal is to survive until the final table... and then once you're at the final table, you treat it like a SNG... until you are at the final table, don't make questionable calls in attempts to knock short stacks out... don't try to run your table and bully people if you have a lot of chips... dont call all in PF with KK against the only guy at your table who can knock you out when you have plenty of chips... I know that one is hard to do... but sometimes you just have to fold KK.... you can do all those things once you're in the final nine
 
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