when things are not going your way

Amanda A · Jun 2, 2017

Ok so you are playing a tourney your KK got cracked when someone flop a flush, your AA got busted by someone who hit mid pair on the flop and called your 2/3 pot size bets all the way and then got lucky and spiked their 2nd pair on the river. Then you went card dead for a long time. What do you think about doing here to try and reverse course before things get too desperate? Target certain weaker players, play position more? Take a deep breath?

titiduru · Jun 2, 2017

Amanda A said:
Ok so you are playing a tourney your KK got cracked when someone flop a flush, your AA got busted by someone who hit mid pair on the flop and called your 2/3 pot size bets all the way and then got lucky and spiked their 2nd pair on the river. Then you went card dead for a long time. What do you think about doing here to try and reverse course before things get too desperate? Target certain weaker players, play position more? Take a deep breath?

If you went all in before the flop with KK and AA, you probably would have avoided the two above mentioned situations.

Amanda A · Jun 2, 2017

Yes you are right, but it was the start of the tourney so I raised 5Bigs before flop. Maybe I should have raised more or gone all in, but then you probably just pick up the small blinds. Ahhh

mbrenneman0 · Jun 2, 2017

titiduru said:
If you went all in before the flop with KK and AA, you probably would have avoided the two above mentioned situations.

Amanda A said:
Yes you are right

no, he is not right... making people fold worse hands to avoid unlucky situations is going to cost you a lot of money in the long run. you should never base your raise sizing on the strength of your hand. In a game of deception, youre just telling your opponent what you have. sometimes you have to fold aces postflop and it sucks, but thats poker... most of the time though, aces will hold up and when you play your aces for maximum value (meaning getting worse hands to showdown with as much money in the middle as possible) and the times they hold up will outweigh the times the get cracked.

When these things happen, you have to ask yourself, did I get unlucky or did I play it wrong, thats what the Hand Analysis section of this forum is for. If you got unlucky, keep playing the same way. If you played it incorrectly, only then should you adjust your strategy. If you adjust your strategy based on short term results every time you get unlucky for fear of getting unlucky again, then you will never get better at poker and you will have a hard time making consistent profit.

TCashMoney19 · Jun 3, 2017

mbrenneman0 said:
no, he is not right... making people fold worse hands to avoid unlucky situations is going to cost you a lot of money in the long run. you should never base your raise sizing on the strength of your hand. In a game of deception, youre just telling your opponent what you have. sometimes you have to fold aces postflop and it sucks, but thats poker... most of the time though, aces will hold up and when you play your aces for maximum value (meaning getting worse hands to showdown with as much money in the middle as possible) and the times they hold up will outweigh the times the get cracked.

When these things happen, you have to ask yourself, did I get unlucky or did I play it wrong, thats what the Hand Analysis section of this forum is for. If you got unlucky, keep playing the same way. If you played it incorrectly, only then should you adjust your strategy. If you adjust your strategy based on short term results every time you get unlucky for fear of getting unlucky again, then you will never get better at poker and you will have a hard time making consistent profit.

+1. He makes a lot of good points here. Tournaments have a ton of variance and you WILL get sucked out on from time to time with the best hand. That's just the sick nature of tournament poker. However, we cannot be results oriented and raise to 5x the BB when we have solid hands to avoid suck outs. You WANT people to call with worse hands. If they get there, then so what? The other 80% of the time, you will win the pot through their mistakes. The beautiful thing about poker is that the fish or donkeys that make terrible calls or terrible shoves and get there, that's the reason why we can still make money off of them! If the best hand won all the time, then we'd only be stuck playing against a bunch of sharks and all the fish would be gone...and who wants to live in a poker world filled with sharks?

Bottom line - don't be results oriented. Just play a solid game that will win in the long term and you will see the results. Suck outs will happen, we just gotta move past them and keep playing our game of solid, winning poker.

Amanda A · Jun 3, 2017

This was the kind of table where I was getting called with a raise of 5B by a few people, that's why I did that raise that amount with KK rather than a more standard 3. I did want some callers just not 5-6.

Thanks for responding to the first part of my post, any ideas on the second part? ie what to do when things are not going your way and you have to make some moves before things get desparate. What moves do you look to make? Steal blinds, target weaker players, any thoughts?

HennieP · Jun 3, 2017

Tournament poker has a lot of variance and a bad run can last for a short time of a very long time. Variance is just a fancy way of saying "Sometimes you lose no matter how good you play and sometimes nothing can go wrong".

The key is knowing what to do in either situation. If you're losing a lot of tournaments simply because of bad luck and not because of dodgy play then take a break, move down to smaller tournaments or go play some $0.01/$0.02 cash games until it passes. In the middle of a tourney, if you're having a bad day, just keep playing your A game. Your game will either swing back up or it wont.

When things are going your way don't make the mistake of playing higher stake tournaments. It's a quick way to go broke.

Unfortunately there's no cure for a bad day/week/month. You just have to weather it.

reggie_g · Jun 3, 2017

take a deep breathe and play your usual solid game,keep punching,as long as you play the right way good things are bound to happen

Alphamuddle · Jun 3, 2017

https://www.boomplayer.com/24124970_B4B04D7424
I am so unlucky with AA in the past few days, I honestly am considering not playing them ever again :/

twizzybop · Jun 3, 2017

Alphamuddle said:
https://www.boomplayer.com/24124970_B4B04D7424
I am so unlucky with AA in the past few days, I honestly am considering not playing them ever again :/

Nothing unlucky there, but you didn't read the board. 3 callers and you came out firing on the flop and 2 callers. The 9 comes and I would have thought the possibility of someone hitting that straight.

You were apparently going to call all-in no matter what with no decision on what hands you may be behind.

Syltan · Jun 3, 2017

Putting the nerves in a box trying not to go on tilt in the end, we ever have to play with good hands, let it happened in the moment is the main thing that I took the right decision but I was just unlucky.

Pinokio_385 · Jun 3, 2017

When I get tilt in my head then I usually take a pill and go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day....🤓

feecg · Jun 3, 2017

Man, bad beats will always be in our minds cause they are something that can happen but it's not usual, so our brain memorizes it easier, but we don't stop to think that in most cases our Kings will win the showdown, so it's something we have to remeber, because if bad players didn't do the mistakes they do and win with the worst hand, they wouldn't play poker never more in their lifez and they wouldn't give any more money to us.
I was playing 4 SNG's half and hour ago, I lost 3 of them, and got 3th place in 1, so it was a very bad session, knowing that i fell down with hands like AKo or 77, but with these mistakes i have to really STOP AND THINK about what i just have done, in most cases i did a very wrong call or raise and put my entire stack doing wrong things. The main thing about it is that you need to have the power of will to stay playing it, cause you will learn with your mistakes and even when you lose with the best hand, or doing the right thing, you have to be with your consciousness clear, cause you did your best

Bellik · Jun 4, 2017

Amanda A said:
What moves do you look to make? Steal blinds, target weaker players, any thoughts?

It depends on size of blinds and your stake after bad beat. If your stake is less than 10 big blinds you should wait a strong hand and make all-in. In this situation you have a good chance to double your chips. Considering the first situation: your stake is about 20 big blinds after all-in. With this size you have more variants how to play. Steal the blinds, play against weaker players, but if they have a biger stake than yours be careful. Gain your chips, play with good cards, bluffing against tight players and etс. Second situation: you were unlucky and you left the tournament. In that case don't worry about that. Take a break and when tilt disappears( tomorrow for example) continue to play another tournaments.

marakhovskii · Jun 4, 2017

You promised that the older couple will be better direct or flush Who and when? Learn the rules and 4x-5x

Amanda A · Jun 4, 2017

Thanks Bellik! Good advice. Say you have 20 BB. How much do you raise for a blind steal, from which positions will you do this and do you only do this when everyone folds to you or if there are some callers? How many callers before it gets to you are ok?

Thenightrain · Jun 4, 2017

Aces will get cracked, the key is to understand how you react to a bad beat and develop a strategy to identify when you are tilting and how to deal with it so it doesn't affect your game. Even if that means walking away for 5 minutes and missing an orbit - better that than make a silly mistake next hand.

darthdimsky · Jun 4, 2017

Alphamuddle said:
https://www.boomplayer.com/24124970_B4B04D7424
I am so unlucky with AA in the past few days, I honestly am considering not playing them ever again :/

May I ask why a 3bb 3 bet with 2 limpers in? Don't they get a good price to call considering there are a total of 4 players in the pot? A 5-6x raise is standard yes? Or even a pot sized bet considering the short stack followed by a shove on the flop. Plus a 1/3 C bet with 4 players in the pot? Can you explain the logic? Plus the shove on the turn would've atleast indicated a 2 pair?

Not being judgemental and honestly asking.

Yoo · Jun 4, 2017

I got screwed manny times with monster cards cuz o low preflop raisse so ye here is the trick to raisse preflop 4+blinds to defend your hand better to not be called and win something than loose 2/3 of your stack when 4 ppl are in hand.My opinion so better go ALL in with thosse and win 1.5B and here you hope to catch some AK AQ to get called way behind you.Or do regular 3BB raise and TT will call you for sure and make a set prety easy.
Decisions...decisions.

Alphamuddle · Jun 4, 2017

darthdimsky said:
May I ask why a 3bb 3 bet with 2 limpers in? Don't they get a good price to call considering there are a total of 4 players in the pot? A 5-6x raise is standard yes? Or even a pot sized bet considering the short stack followed by a shove on the flop. Plus a 1/3 C bet with 4 players in the pot? Can you explain the logic? Plus the shove on the turn would've atleast indicated a 2 pair?

Not being judgemental and honestly asking.

I think that 3bb bet pre-flop was a good one; I had the best possible cards and wanted to get as much in the pot as I could, I didn't want to scare others betting too high. C-bet probably should have been higher, but I still thought I had the best hand, so I thought I was making a value bet.

twizzybop said:
Nothing unlucky there, but you didn't read the board. 3 callers and you came out firing on the flop and 2 callers. The 9 comes and I would have thought the possibility of someone hitting that straight.

You were apparently going to call all-in no matter what with no decision on what hands you may be behind.

Yes, I guess you are right, just couldn't get myself to fold that hand.
I am only starting my adventure with poker, so I guess I have yet to learn that lesson :deal:

VizziVizo · Jun 4, 2017

This is the question of self control. If you can't deal with all the stress you go through playing poker, you got nothing else to do than just to become cold hearted and disciplined player.This is poker, awful things happen at the poker tables regularly and you got to be ready to beat it.

B1BOMBER · Jun 4, 2017

When things are not going my way I figure it's life as usual! LOL!!! You have to realize that any pocket pair can be beat even AA or KK. I hate it when it happens, but it happens a lot. I don't like to risk more than 10% of my stack unless I go all in pre-flop to try and drive them all out! I can't get over how many people think if they have an ace or even AK they think they should win. If they don't they start complaining about the rigged sites or how bad the players that beat them play. I just remind myself that even a really good hand can be beat by a better hand!!!!

feecg · Jun 5, 2017

Unfortunetly bad beats happen, especially with good players, cause you will only lose if you are winning, or if you know you will win (making the right play). The recipe is to take a deep breath, forget everything you are doing, just understand that you were sitting there holding some cards and throwing some chips, and focus on another thing like your sensations or your breath.

bbiase · Jun 5, 2017

Just try to keep your head cool and play your best game. Don't try to fight variance by making worse plays EV wise. The sacred goblet of equity giveth and taketh it away. Make sure your strategy is good so you can come out of the swings on top.

bablovod · Jun 6, 2017

very rare luck but it helped me to reach the prizes
https://www.boomplayer.com/24153344_110C775FF5

when things are not going your way

Amanda A

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titiduru

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