Please tell me why I suck

[johnnylawford]

I know this is a vague question, but I truly don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I know it’s not opening ranges because I go by the ones given by this site.

Just based on how ambiguous this question is the first thing should be asking a few basic questions of yourself:

• Have I won at a buy-in game type in the past? What am I doing differently than I did when I was winning?
• If I have won in the past, am I losing because I make mistakes (get my chips in bad pre, bluff for no reason, overplay hands, call too light on rivers, etc...) or am I making correct decisions but losing?
• If I am getting in good in the short term and losing and can't afford to lose, why am I playing such high stakes? If I can afford to lose and am playing well why am I concerned with short term variance?
• If I've never been winning at the games I play what have I done to improve my game 'off the felt'?
• Have I tried to learn other formats of games (cash/mixed game/SnG/etc...)?

In general people on this forum will be better able to help if you can pinpoint what you have/haven't done to improve and more targeted questions you might have on improving your overall strategy.

 

[fundiver199]

In my opinion you have two opportunities:

1. Play by bankroll.
2. Play by budget.

For 1, you have to play the stakes according to your BR which means you might go down. If you're playing the stakes with at least a BR of 100x the buy-in, it will statistically not matter if your AA gets cracked by 88 because this will only happen 1 in 5 times.

For 2, you allow yourself to spend, like 100$ per week on poker (an amount which you can afford and accept to loose). Then you can play the stakes you like but when the money is gone, then you gotta wait for the next week/month to play again.

This is a key point, which need to be taken in not only by OP but by a lot of other people as well. Personally I have always played by bankroll, but this has only been possible, because I learned to play on play money tables, so when I started playing for real money, I was already able to beat the lowest stakes like 2-5NL cash or $1-2 SnGs.

But for people going directly to real money games the idea of having a bankroll is actually misguided, since you cant have a bankroll, unless you are able to beat at least the lowest stakes available. And the only way to know, if that is the case, is to play and try. Its very common to see questions like "I am completely new to poker, how much bankroll do I need for $1 SnGs". And people asking such questions should rather just decide on a budget and then focus on learning and improving.

Most poker sites offer the option to set daily, weekly and monthly deposit limits, and I highly recommend using this option when deciding on a budget. And then of course stick to it and dont ask for the limit to be increased, unless your financial situation has changed significantly for the better. This can also be a way to gradually build, what could eventually become a bankroll. Either because you have some winning weeks, or by simply building it up slowly from weekly or monthly deposits.