A year in...

9

9HighLikeABoss

Rising Star
Bronze Level
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Nov 7, 2016
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Hi All,

I'm new to the forum :)

Just after some thoughts and advice - I started playing poker round about a year ago now (totally by accident, I was playing in a chess tournament and ended up in a game of holdem for pennys, to kill time in the lunch break) I was pretty terrible but quickly hooked and started to watch poker tournament coverage on Youtube to try and learn. I then took the plunge and opened an online account to start playing.

I've had a year of ups and downs, I focused mainly on S&G's and then later MTTs (I found I didn't enjoy cash at all and quickly abandoned playing that).

After the obvious initial bad start, I did start to win a few S&G's and increase the bank roll. Then starting to make the mistakes we've all done - getting ****y, playing games that were too big for me, winning the odd one, but going out early in 5 others, having to redeposit and start again.

Then after watching some poker streamers online, I decided to have a go at MTTs - I was pretty terrible to start with (thinking the object was to get a huge stack early, shoving 30 BB's in with pocket 5s - again I'm sure we've all been there).

But from studying videos I gradually got better to the point where now if I fire 4 MTT's up on a Sunday I can pretty much guarantee a deep run in one of them (at the low stakes that means making about $17 dollars for 5 hours work) I've reached a quite lot of final tables and shipped 1st in 3 big field tournaments worth about $300 each.

I'm not going to lie to myself though, I've also donked it up a lot, I haven't kept precise records, but I know I'll be down on the year. I have several times considered that poker just isn't for me and quitting, but its hard to ignore the occasional good results, the potential must be there (very deep down granted!).

I've also developed a great passion for the game - in down time I pretty much don't watch TV anymore, when its not the wsop coverage on YouTube, its Jamie Staples or Kevin Martin on Twitch.

Last week I decided I just needed to focus and develop some discipline, because of the high variance of MTTs I decided to go back to grinding S&G's. I stuck in 50 buy-in's to play exclusively the $3.50's on Stars, got off to a great start and added $80.00 to the BR, then this weekend (decided to pretty much not leave the house and grind none stop) the cards just seemed to laugh at me and all my profit went up in smoke. I got home from work tonight and tried again, but I think I was still tilted from yesterday, I got big chip leads in all 4 of the tables I fired up then donked every single one off making idiot plays - Hero calling with A K when I hadn't hit the flop, just because this guy had check raised me a few times. Shoving into the other aggressive big stack after he had stole my BB 4 times, when there was absolutely no need to.

Then - mega tilted - I jumped in a single $15.00 S&G to try and get my BR back to square one (I've won lots of these ones in the past, but obviously its way outside the BR) I played too tight in that and bubbled it, reduced to shoving my 8 BBs into the 3 big stacks until I eventually got called. Suffice to say that hasn't done my emotional state a lot of good - Luckily I managed to drag myself off the computer so only down about $30.00 on last weeks deposit - it could have been worse if I'd decided spin and go's seemed like a good idea.

Has anyone else been in this spot before? I'm basically getting ahead but not been able to keep ahead, and then loosing, any advice would be welcome.

I've found a S&G training website at lunch time today, so I'm thinking about just calling all-stop for a month, investing in some of the training videos (quite a hefty price, but hopefully worth it) and just studying game theory. Aside from reading the odd book I haven't done too much of this in the past and I've always been playing at the same time.

When I come back I'm thinking of investing a bigger chunk of money so I can start off in the $7.00 tourneys, I just find too many people play like idiots in the lower stakes and by hand 5, 2 people are out and 2 have doubled up. I've had more overall success in the slightly higher stakes.

I don't have massive goals in poker, I just want to enjoy the game and be profitable - I have a full time job and can afford to loose the money I'm using to play, but I don't make a fortune so obviously it hurts, I really want to turn this around. Obviously it's in the back of my mind that one day poker will be a second income and I might be able to cut back a little bit in a few years, but I think that's a ways off.

Sorry if this has been a bit of a novel by the way! :rolleyes:
 
C

crdalchemy93

Rising Star
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Joined
Oct 20, 2016
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Its like reading my story. Ya I had the same problem and let me tell you moving up is not the answer. As you yourself have said, people play like idiots at the lower limits. this is a good spot to practice exploiting players as well as tilt control. I know how tilting it can be to see those bad players make stupid playes and get reworded. So practice your tilt control. Also a program like poker tracker or mzone may help.
 
K

karl coakley

Visionary
Silver Level
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Sep 6, 2016
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It seems like you were moving along fine till you tilted. Yes, we've all been there. To me its a bank roll management problem. You always hear about a certain amount of buy-ins to play at a level. That is true, you need enough to survive the swings. The part you don't hear about is a day that you just keep losing because of mistakes, or variance (ie. Yesterday I kept losing AK vs A5, K10 vs K9, ect..) The way I handle that is not have enough buy-ins to keep playing, but structure. This is an important part of bankroll management. I break up my play into sessions. If I was going to play SNGs, I would play 10, then take at least an hour break. After that I could start another session or not, depending on how I feel. You can structure things how ever you like. At first you may say I can only play 5 SNGs and regardless of the results I have to take an hour+ break, then start a second session fresh. This will help not losing all your profits on a bad day. If you are winning at a level, this will help control your bankroll, and limit bad days.
 
H

Haanski

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Sep 5, 2016
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It comes down to bankroll management and tilt. If you can't exploit the worse players and end up tilting off to them then slightly better players doesn't mean it will work out better for you. You move up after you beat the lower games.
 
B

benjustben

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Dec 5, 2015
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take the month off like u said.. and maybe try some freerollls?..
(if you think the peeps at 3$ are bad, u aint seen nothing yet!)
 
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