Deep breaths and relax.
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I went on a motorcycle ride to clear my head at lunchtime, but it didn’t do anything to reset the RNG.
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And now:
out in two successive hands:
A2s, flop 4 to flush, don’t make the flush, pay off the river in advance trying to bluff, but bottom pair calls. @#@## % BOTTOM PAIR CALLS.
THEN I HIT A FLUSH ON THE NEXT HAND, AND SHOVE K-HIGH FLUSH INTO AQ FLUSH.
I’m going to make up for today by taking #2 on both of the Astral Ursa Major leaderboards for 420K, and probably still be slightly down on the day. This string is beyond beyond ridiculous.
I don’t understand why either of you is in this hand after the flop. Seriously.
He was a pushy lag and this was the second time he had taken me on like that within a couple of minutes of me taking the seat, he had a big chip lead and it was clear he was just being overly aggressive and raising almost anyone with anything…
The table including him were making jokes about how laggy he was… and i signaled that i would be delighted to take him on. I thought because of the chat he might put my put range on either suited connectors (which might include an 8 or 9…), maybe pairs (which would beat his bare ace) or Ax which by the river would draw
I put him in a spot after just telling him I would do exactly that
So the polarising bet on the river was a really fun play for both of us.
Whenever there’s a pair on the flop:
- I pair the other card for 2 pair, and there’s trips somewhere on the table, slow playing.
- I miss and no one has it and I just check until someone bets, then muck.
- I hit the pair on the board, but someone else makes a set with the other card and flopped a full house.
It was basically, for fun, and to signal to him I wouldn’t be pushed around. And it worked 
I could set the pace at the table for a while, and swallowed his chips in at least a half dozen hands
Until he took my whole 40k stack 20-30 minutes later…
edit: but that’s another story 
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That’s okay, you’ll make it back. Try again another day.
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I just won a SNG. First place. Enough tournament points to give me the Best 20 top slot.
Early on, I don’t remember what it was that set me off, I think I lost a close hand, and started grousing in the chat, as I’ve been all day long. Then I happened to get dealt AK and KK on consecutive hands.
The first time I raised 3BB, got re-raised, shoved back, and the big stack at the time called me, got killed, chopped in half. They had QJ, flopped Queens but I caught up to hit Kings to win the hand:
The very next hand, I get him and another player all-in again, and take them both out. They didn’t call me with anything that should have called a shove, completely no respect, and for once my AK and KK stood up.
After that, I had half the chips at the table, and cruised for a long time. The rest of the table clammed up tight as a vice and were folding any time I was in a hand after that. Which was good in a way, but also frustrating since I was getting cards that deserved to earn some bigger pots.
The bubble lasted forever, but eventually the #4 finisher shoved into me, I called and beat him. Then, three up, the #2 player took a big hand from me, when I played an Ace into AK and paired the Ace on the flop, called his shove, not giving him credit for having a high Ace, and gave him about 13000 chips.
I thought I’d just killed myself, and tried to hang on to win at least 2nd place, but started getting pocket pairs, and shoving them. 77, TT, didn’t get anywhere, just stole the blinds. Then got into trouble on a hand with KJ, flopping into an OESD with QT, and needing a river miracle or get busted out. The new big stack put me all in on the Turn, and I called, too far in to give up, and my miracle Ace came and won me the hand, Broadway over Queens, getting me back 15000 chips.
A few hands later the player I took that hand from went bust, and then two hands later, I get KQ, flop Queens, let my opponent bet into me all-in, call, and knock him out chasing a OESD that didn’t hit.
Today sure sucked, but at least I finally had a good game and won some chips back.
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I just tried to bluff a fishy player on a 100k SnG, I thought I represented strength well but he decided to go along with it with AQ, and just an ace on the flop when I went all in after a big 3 bet before the flop. I had A7 but was trying to play as if I had AK, queens, kings or aces. Woopsie
Did you transfer your jinx onto me? 
Congratulations on your win!
I hope not, lol. Let me know if you finish out of the money in 17 SNG tournaments in a row.
Hahaha, I will do!
By the way puggy, this might help for your analysis… to calculate itm% I figured out you can just count how many bank record descriptions start with “Prize”, and divide it by ((the number that start with “Register”) - (the number that start with “Unregister”))
I found a page that might help to do it in Excel:
1)499053500
2)/499054156
the above two hand you are not involved in, all you can do and observe, for me I see very bad plays and I will take notice and adjust my strategy vs them. You should not get made or tilted in hands that you are not involved LOL.
3)499054323 ]
for the above hand first of all you are not the big stack at the table and you should not be raising with AJ put of position. here lays the problem with AJ, if they just called with AK or AQ you are practically dead, and if they have a set you are pracitcally dead. Hence the proper play is check flop and check turn. If you face a double barrel, you have to fold on the turn, and some really good players who know there opponent will fold even on the flop. You created this bad scenerio by raising with AJ out of position. How your opponent played is irrelevant.
- 499055579
here A2 should be folded because you are the short stack, you will only get called by hands that beat you. I know you are down to 10 big blind, I prefer jamming under the gun, jamming on the button provided everyone folded to you, and offcourse jamming on the small blind after everyone folded to you!
5)499055965
you played hand number 5 pretty good! except you should not have bet full pot on the river, instead bet 50-60% or even under bet such as 20% because some players will think your 20% is a bluff and jam all in with a bluff!
-
499055965
again you are the observe it is irreveland how your opponent played, all you can do is adjust to how they are playing!! -
499057058
here you once again made the fundemental mistake of playing with a bad hand out of position. I would have instant folded J10 even if everyone limped to me. -
here K8 is a bad hand, does not matter even if you have the obsolute best position, which is the button. I would have had instant folded k8 no matter what position even if everyone limped to me!
-
499057269
once again you made the fundemental mistake of playing with a bad hand. 10 7 is considered garage, the only person who can get away with such play is the chip leader, and you are not the chip leader! -
499057558
here I suggest calling once on the flop with your flush draw, and fold you flush draw on the turn even if you are in position. you are also in a very dangerous situation the under the gun player limped, if he is a really good player that could only mean one thing, he have either aa or kk, and he will jam no matter what cards hit, hence standard trapping of the under gun player. Sometimes if I suspect the under gun play limped with AA, I wil mock my hand and refuse to see a flop!
11)/499057777
once again why play with weak hand out of position? j10 shoudl have been folded instantly preflop!
12)/499058102
once again why play J 10 out of position especially when you are the short stack? i would have folded it instantly preflop!
13) 499058559
there is no way to know if your 67 will turn to a straight on the flop! folding 67 is standard!
14)/499058663
good fold 10 6 is garbage hand that should never be played in turnament!
15499058787
once again A10 is a very bad hand, why even limp in out of position from the under the gun position, it should have been folded preflop!
16)/499059467
once again a2 is a very bad hand that should have been folded preflop! and does not matter the postion
17)499059618
you are making a fundemental mistake if you tighten up when you are the big stack, tighten up is reserved for when you have medium or blow every stack, when you are big stack you want to bully players that have less chips!
Ok, after observing your play. You have a fundamental lack of understanding of preflop strategy and positional play. In general, in a turnament all garbage hands are instant fold no matter your position, as a matter of fact just player 22 to AA and folding everything else is a fine strategy at your level!!!
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@Ilovecat thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to go through all the hands and offer some feedback. I will have to go through them one by one and re-watch them until I have the lessons sink in.
I think in part, what was going on is that in some of these games, I’m just getting absolutely dreadful cards, and then when I do get something that looks halfway OK, it comes to me UTG. I don’t want to say publicly what my exact opening range is, but this week I tightened up, after the previous week when I started getting called by anything and everything, and found that I could no longer bluff anymore.
Also, some of the hands I’m posting are not examples of my best play getting screwed by ridiculous calls hitting unlikely draws; sometimes I’m just giving up, and I don’t care about the chips anymore, and want to show what happens when you call anything because you want to see 57 beat your KJ on a T95 board. It’s like people watching pimple popping videos. It’s sick but you just have to watch. After the first 2 or 3 hours, you really get into it, and you don’t mind paying for more. It’s like when you’re getting spanked, but then you realize you’re so into it, and you start asking for it harder. Everyone thinks you’re a weirdo, but it doesn’t stop them from giving it to you just as hard as you’d like.
And some of the hands I’m sharing are to show you that I folded garbage, rightly, and would have had the nuts, but oh well. And some of the hands are to show other players doing ridiculous things like shoving 83 for no reason and then winning with it, or worse, calling a shove with 83 and then winning with it.
When you fold for 5-6 orbits, if the table is still full, and the blinds are still small, it’s not a big deal. You’ve looked at about 45 hands and paid out 1.5BB x 5-6 for that, and it’s not negligible, 270-500 is 10-25% of the starting stack size, but it’s not a disaster. When you get nothing but 85, 62, Q2, 74, for like 30-40 hands in a row, you can’t pass up a hand like AJ, even if you’re out of position.
If I don’t play AJ from SB-UTG+1, I run the risk of never seeing another card until I’m down to my last 1000 chips, at which point any hand I play will be all-in, and either I go super loose there and shove randomly, hoping not to get called so I can steal a big pot in late position with a lot of limpers who I hope will all fold, or get real lucky if I do get called, and win the hand and stay in, OR I tighten up even more, and wait on a high pocket pair to shove, which may or may not come. Usually it comes the very next hand after I decide that A-rag suited is the best hand I’ll get to see, and lose another 2/3 of my remaining stack.
So I can play a hand like this a couple of ways early, and it’s always damned if do/damned if don’t.
- If I fold the hand, I’ll see JJA or AAA on the flop, and be like “well at least no one is going to bet an AAA board, so even though I’d have won here, it would have been all of 200 chips.” Not literally, but you know what I mean; if I don’t pay, the flop is sure to hit me, and hit pretty good. Of course, then half the time with 3 on the board, two players will try to bluff each other off, and escalate to an all-in, and I’ll be sitting with the folded quads muttering to myself.
- If I limp, the whole table limps, giving me no chance to limp-raise, and we proceed to the flop 6-9 handed, and you just know the flop is not going to do me any favors here. Maybe I’ll see KKQ, and be needing the T for Broadway, but someone else already has QK or QQ or KK here. Always. And there are no Tens in the deck this hand, they called in sick.
- If I raise small, most likely I get 3-4 callers, but that’s better than 9, and maybe I can use the early aggression to represent an even stronger hand, and take it with a c-bet, especially if there’s some paint on the flop. But if not, I’ll take a beating and have to come back with another hand.
- If I raise big, it’s guaranteed that I’ll either fold the whole table and collect 1.5BB, of which 1 or .5 came from me originally 2/3 of the time, OR I’ll get called by AK KK AA, and as you say, will be at a dire disadvantage. That happens way less than you’d probably think, because those hands are pretty rare, however they always happen to me, or at least I’m losing a lot more chips here than I’m winning (2/3 stack lost vs 0.5-1.5BB won, not good).
So it would seem like a good idea to fold most of the time, I guess, but then we’re back to waiting for premium cards + position in order to get into any pots, and I just can’t wait 54 minutes into an hour-long SNG and have any chips left. I have to play something.
Meanwhile, I’m watching fool plays like 75 hitting a straight, or flopping full house.
I do get in trouble playing some garbage hands that I shouldn’t play, but it’s invariably because:
- I’ve waited a long time for better hands to show up, and they haven’t.
- I’ve been watching players playing wider ranges than me winning more and playing more then me.
- I need to occasionally play some garbage because if I don’t, they know I’m a nit and will never call any open because they can safely assume it’s QQ+/AK. Isn’t this what “balance” is? Or if not, then what is it?
- I’m the BB, and the table limped. I guess I could fold, but maybe 1/3 of the time, I flop nice, and it’s a shame to just throw the chips away if I can see the flop for free. And aren’t we told we need to defend the blinds? But about 1/2 the time I flop nice, it’s a mirage and someone else rivers nicer.
- I’m in late position and enough of the table limped that I’m effectively HU or close to it before I bet.
- The way some tables run, it almost seems as if they’ve engineered a Dealer’s Special into the RNG, so that rag hands are favored, and I’ll see a statistically improbable march of baby flushes, straights, and boats for 20-30 minutes, often that would have hit the cards that I folded.
So, shrug I dunno what I’m supposed to do. Apparently I should fold any hand until I’m sitting in the CO or Hijack seat or later, and then only if I’m sitting on QQ+AQ+. I guess some players play like that, literally exactly like that, but I dunno how. You can’t get into a hand often enough to stay ahead of the blinds bleeding you dry. And people know exactly what you’re playing if you’re raising 600 once every 70 hands. And anyway when you do play in this situation, it’s sometimes beat too.
This @#$#$ luck streak runs its course and after a day of getting reaped for a half million chips, I can come back to the site, play the exact same way, and win 100-200K/night in SNG for the next 5-6 days. Maybe my game is fine. My bankroll graph mostly goes up, and then I hit a day like this, it’s like a stock market correction, and then it starts going up again.
It almost sounds as thought his is just variance catching up with me, and I have nothing wrong with my game. But these runs of bad luck are pretty unbelievable. After they end, I’ll go days and play fine, winning and losing, but generally finishing each day with more chips than I started. I guess I could always try not playing for the rest of the day if I lose 3 in a row.
Right, I wasn’t involved; I wasn’t mad at all; these are merely examples of ridiculous hands.
I folded 53 in the first hand, after flopping middle pair, 5s, because that’s what you do; I could have just folded it preflop, but there was no pressure to do so, and I didn’t need any to tank it when the SB bet pot at me.
I posted the hand here to show how the table opened up to start a horrendous run of horrible beats and utterly bad luck.
Immediately we have donk-eat-donk, doubling up, and now donk has a dangerous stack, they’ve demonstrated a willingness to shove or call with no hand at all, and while theoretically that should be easy to exploit, when you get into these hands with them, it always ends up being a coin toss somehow, and they have the chips to lose 2 in a row and still be healthy, even if they eventually go bust, it’ll probably be to someone else at the table, someone better and then they’ll have the big stack advantage. Shoving 52 because you hit 2 pair with it and a player raised you is fairly ridiculous, I’m certain he expected to induce a fold there. But then calling with QJ unmade nothing is even more ridiculous. And how about tripping out the Jacks?
Then we have A4s betting pot with air, doubling down on it all-in and getting run out of town by a lucky 28 who happened to flop trips. Why are either of these two players even in this hand? Why does A4s think it can raise about 9BB? Why would 82o EVER call? It’s ridiculous.
There’s no rationality at this table, so you can play an ABC game, and get killed by errant donk hitting improbable outs when they had no business being in the hand in the first place. That’s the lesson. At a table like this, rules and strategy mean less than blind luck.
I did talk about this a lot already in my previous response, but looking at the hand again: yes, I’m in the SB seat, but this table has 3 seated at it. I play a fair amount of 3-Max SNG, and if you aren’t opening with AJo in a 3-Max game, I don’t think you’re winning too many of them. On top of that, I flopped top pair and, what, am I not suppose to bet it? If I check the flop and the turn, they’re betting with air, seeing as how I’m representing NO HAND, and then on this hand, I’ve let them river a set for free. If anything, I didn’t bet AAJ hard enough, thinking that it’d be nice if they called for one street so I could get a little more value out of them. Sure, it occurs to me that AQ AK AA are all beating me here, but there’s only 2 other players at the table right now, and I am not going to play that scared of everyone, or I just won’t play in any hand at all.
You’re obviously a very good player, so you’re probably right about how to play AJo from the SB in general, but I still think I’m right about this specific hand. Probably if I play another 10 years I’ll understand why you’re right, but I’ll probably need to lose another hundred hands with AJo in early position for it to sink in.
And yet… I won the hand. Board flushed me with my Ace. Is this a good play? No, obviously not. Near dead, I wasn’t sure I’d get to see anything better than A2o, and was looking for a hail mary double-up to keep going, position is irrelevant here. I’m getting called by at least one player no matter what with a stack this short, and that’s what I want, because a blind steal will not bring me to health. I want to double (or triple) up here, or bust out. Blinds are only 20/40 here, so I do have a bit of time, but as it’s this early in the game, I might as well bail out on it since whatever I had played previously went so badly, and see if I do better with a fresh stack at a new table.
One thing I’ve noticed on Replay, however fair I believe the RNG to be, but damn if short stacks don’t have special immunity, like divine intervention sometimes. Now, I don’t believe in divine intervention, but that’s irrelevant. Any time there’s an all-in, the most improbable things happen when it’s a Twilight Zone day. This time it actually worked in my favor.
But actually, in this last week, I have started fighting to stay in as long as I possibly can, rather than exit early if I get crippled. And I did it for two reasons: One, I was focusing on doing better in my First 20 leaderboard standings, and mission accomplished there. Two, I’ve decided that resiliency with my back against the wall is something I need to work on, and boy, it’s really worth it to not give up just because you take a bad loss. You really can come back from them, if you grit your teeth hard enough.
But, I dunno, sometimes I have to do a drastic change in my strategy in order to disrupt the game. If I’m too predictably tight, then at some point I need to do something screwball in order to exploit the table. This might have been such a situation. Still a very low percentage move, and the fact that it worked in this case does not in any way justify it. But it is an example of yet another ridiculous hand.
I think this one is right on. My river game is still poor and I am trying different things. Sometimes it’s the right thing, but often as not, it’s not. I believe at the time I thought to myself that I should have tried a min-bet to induce a big raise that I could then shove into, and that might have worked better. Or as you suggest, a 20-30% pot bet might have gotten a call.
On the other hand, sometimes when you shove in a place like this, some players take it like it’s a dare, and will assume that you’re bluffing and call you. I think a good 50% or more calls that come from nothing-junk garbage hands are calling because they read the shove as bluff, yet are too dumb for it to occur to them that their own holding isn’t good enough to call with. But then they suck out 50% of the time anyway. So whatever. The pot-size bet was close enough to shoving that I should have just shoved if I was going this big, and that probably would have made it more likely that I’d get the call. Oh well.
I don’t think it was wrong to try to limp here, and I might have sustained a smaller raise, 2-.2.5BB keeps me in here, but I wasn’t going to 6BB. I did get out of the way of it, after all, which alright, getting out of the way with it losing zero would be better than losing the 1BB that I did lose. And if I stay in, it’s more likely that I lose 6BB than that I win any for my trouble.
What makes this hand “ridiculous” is the psychological effect watching it has on me. The taunting flop that could have been, nice nutty straight for me if I stay in. I know I made the right play laying down to the big open from the BB, but there’s the flop telling me that I could have had a straight. and probably knocked out Mr AK-nothing who won the hand because of his big scary preflop open bet. Which that’s what you need to do with AK, and congratulations to him. But when you’re at 1800 chips, and you see a straight that you could have won 2400 with, it fairly grinds at you. It’s like a counterfactual telling you your sound play is wrong, tempting you to play looser, take more chances. Of course, when you do that, you just end up losing more. It’s a damned if do/damned if don’t thing, and on a long, bad day that’s what every hand feels like.
My point in showing this hand isn’t to suggest that I was right to try to limp K8o from the CO. The point here isn’t how I played, it’s what I witnessed. WTF is 23o doing, here, playing this hand this way, and then actually winning?!? The player ahead raised over 12BB, and they CALLED? and then the player behind them SHOVES, and they call again? And beat AQ and 99, by hitting trip 3s. Do you not call that a ridiculous hand? You can’t lecture 99 and say “See what happens when you let them limpers in?” They freaking opened 12BB.
You can revert back to saying that I’m not involved, and I can’t change what the other players do, so I shouldn’t let it bother me. But tell that to me when I’m playing AQ and get mauled by 23o playing stupid/lucky. Bad luck runs are chock full of hands just like this. You see one, you figure “ah, variance”. Then 3 of them happen, and you’re like “MFer, why?” then 5 of them happen, and you’re like “This can’t be happening”. Then 10, and you want to see how long you can keep flipping the coin and have it come up heads, even if you have to pay a hundred dollars per flip, you want the world to go back to sanity and see a tails happen, just one time, to make you believe again that the outcome can go either way.
I’m not sure, but maybe/probably because it was the first halfway decent hand I had seen in 3-4 orbits, and being shortstacked I couldn’t be overly choosy about waiting on the perfect hand… I dunno. After getting 74, 75, 62, eventually you have to play something. At times I do admit that I’m playing poorly due to impatience; this could be such a time. Over the last week I buckled down and played with much stronger discipline, and was rewarded Sunday through Friday with mostly good results; this Saturday basically undid all of that, but I think I did learn something.
In that first hand, I have no idea wtf that even is. I limped, then timed out to no pressure, where I would never have bet, and would only have folded. Did I post this? I’m not sure why I would have? Or did you just go dig it up?
In the second, I managed to win with 2nd pair, in a not-quite desperate short stack situation, but a situation where I didn’t feel I could pass up playing JT, which is a sign that I’d probably seen nothing higher than an 8 in my hole cards for an extended period. It’s not like I thought I was winning that hand; I just hit any pair, and was desperate enough to not lay it down. Influencing me around this time would have been the quadrillion hands where some clown had called me to the river on bottom pair, while I was bluff-betting a draw, hoping that it would hit, or that they’d think that it had hit already and I could close the hand. Players were doing that to me uncannily, and laying down the times when I did hit, as though they could see my cards. I could be suffering from “why can’t I play bad and win too?” tilt.
Of course. This is just the way the game messes with my head when I’m running bad, it starts dealing me hands I shouldn’t play, then showing me that I could have won. I know better than to play them, but when you see a half dozen or more of them between the two or three hands that you actually could play, and you add up all the chips that you could have had, if you’d somehow known which ones were going to be the good ones, it gets to you after a while. And then sometimes you get that little voice that says “No, play the 86 this time.” and you ignore the hunch, but it was right and you would have flopped a full house. Then you start wondering if maybe science and math and rational thinking aren’t everything there is, and maybe there’s something to “psychic powers”… And of course you’re wrong, but still sometimes the hunches turn out to be right…
I’m not quite clear what to make of the hand numbers you’re posting as they don’t seem to match up with what you’re describing/critiquing.
I do bully with the big stack, quite a bit. This is actually what got me into trouble; after winning so many tournaments this way, I forgot that in order to bully with the big stack, first you have to get a big stack, and I started playing the opening of a 9-seater with the same range as I was using when things had gotten to 4-up with the blinds at 200/400, and it was a disaster.
I took a beating for the better part of a day until I figured it out, a couple weeks ago, and in the course of doing so, created this thread as I was working my way through it and venting my frustration.
I came back the next week, with a revised SNG strategy, and did much better with it. In fact, I did tighten up my range much more than I had ever played before, and did quite well with it. In my first 20 games this week, I was ITM in 12 of them, and easily could have been in 4 others that went south on me due to suckouts on hands that I had played well and was ahead on when I got all-in, or just plain got beat in a hand where we had both made monsters.
Then, somehow the wheels feel off again this Saturday, only my opening range wasn’t the problem, and I wasn’t running into ridiculous players; it was just a long streak of ice cold cards, combined with the occasional bad beat disaster, and it went on and on and on for about 18 hours.
I’m certainly not perfect, and can stand to learn a lot more, really about all aspects of the game, and I would love to learn what you know. That said, you’re drawing your observation by reviewing carefully selected hands that I’ve chosen to post to illustrate a principle of “ridiculousness”. I’m not necessarily asking for advice with every hand. Partly, and at times, yes, but sometimes it’s just me saying “Can you believe this @#%#@?” or “Look at what this moron got away with!” And quite a bit of “Woe is me, these looked like decent cards to start out with, and look what happened!”
Like, I don’t know if there’s an example of it above somewhere, but getting AA and then flopping a solid flush board for the other player, which you cannot benefit from, so you’ve put in about 1/5 your stack on the Aces, get to the flop, and have to abort, and it’s just as likely that they’re bluffing you off of it as there is that they actually have it. But what can you do then? Raise them off? Put 2/3 of your stack in? Just asking to lose more chips if you do that. Or the hand I had earlier today where I made A-high flush and got beat by a full house, or the other where I had K-high flush and beat by the nuts. And these were my one or two hands that I’d get to play after folding through half a tournament just to play the one non-garbage hand that I got dealt the entire game.
There’s no doubt that you’re far and away one of the best players on the site, and you’re probably right about everything you said about the hands that you offered criticism on. There’s a substantial difference between how I play now vs. how I played a couple of weeks ago when I created this thread, though, too, and you wouldn’t really know about that, because those hands aren’t posted here. If I posted all the hands where I look like a genius, you’d probably have a different assessment of my skill level. Hopefully, this works to my advantage, in that people reading here coming away from this thread thinking that this is how I play all the time are going to get messed up when they run into how I actually play most of the time.
That said, I certainly do make mistakes from time to time, and even once a game can be enough to tank what was otherwise a solid performance. I’m sure this will come off as an empty boast, but I truly believe that if/when I figure out how to avoid those mistakes, I’ll win another 4-5 games/week above what I’m already doing, which has been good enough for the past few months to grow my bankroll about 300% and put me toward the top end of the Astral Ursa Major leaderboards consistently. I don’t think that means I’m an elite player, but I do think I’m doing more right than wrong. Except possibly when everything falls apart in every way that it possibly can. But even then I’m cherrypicking the worst examples.
Holy crap, this post though o_O
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Hello puggywug, when I say fold garbage hand even when you are in position. Thats a poker fundamental that every top player, understand. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you play your aces, such as moving all in prefliop
With AA and your opponent call with 67, then bust you with a miracle straight on the river!! Those are just standard coolers. This kind of scenario or the so called bad beat, which happens a lot in poker and sometimes you get bust out of the tournament even if you played perfect poker. If you were to ask Doyle Brunson what it means to be a good poker player? He will tell you poker is really not about winning this hand or that, poker is about playing your hand correctly. Hence it does matter if you bluffed off all your chips or gets cooler with made hands, if you played correctly then you will come out victorious in the long run. Also from my observation most turny players brings a personal token of charm to help them get on lady lucks good .side, for example they bring picture of their girl, Doyle Brunson will play 10 2 no matter what position he is at, Phil Ivey will be listening to hip hop etc etc!! And famous Johnny Chan always brings a lemon!!!
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Of course; but we don’t seem agree on the definition of “garbage hand”. Let’s assume you’re right, and my range is too wide, and I have a tendency to play hands I shouldn’t. You’re the more experienced player, with way more chips won on this site than I can even imagine winning. So I think it’s reasonable to say that you know what you’re talking about, and that you’re probably right, and I’ve probably been playing wrong.
Ok, then why do I win playing like this for weeks at a time, and then have one day where no matter what I do or how many games I play, my win rate drops to near zero? Why do I rightly fold AJo whenever I get it, but I can watch orbit after orbit where A7 beats A3, and 65 wins, or King-rag wins because the rag card happened to flop a straight draw that landed, or any of the myriad of things I’ll see in the course of a day?
Are you saying absolutely never play “garbage” hands, ever? What does the concept of “balance” mean, then? What adjustments should I be making to my range, depending on the number of players left at the table, the size of the blinds relative to my stack, and the style of play at my table? Are certain garbage hands borderline acceptable? Is J7 as bad as AT? Is 43s worse than JTs? I would never argue that 43 is anything but garbage, JT can be fine if the flop comes up AKQ or 789, or TJT. Of course this doesn’t mean you should count on those hands happening, and it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll get a perfect flop for your hole cards, which is why it makes sense to have a tight range and only (or mainly, I’d say) play hands that can be played well even without hitting a flop.
On the other hand, I’ll play any two cards from the BB if no one opens, and I’ll open my range somewhat wider than my standard if the table is short-handed, or most of the table folds around to me in late position.
This goes way beyond a single bad beat. Believe me, I can handle getting beat. If someone holds a better hand than me, and I don’t win the hand because they had a higher kicker, I don’t complain about it. If someone’s holding Ace-suited, and decides to chase a flush draw to the river even though I’ve given them terrible pot odds to try for it, and they manage to suck out, and ruin a high pocket pair that I flopped trips with it, I can handle that.
What gets me riled is when this happens repeatedly for hours on end, in defiance of reasonable expectations of variance. I get that a fair coin can flip heads 3 time in a row, sometimes 5 or 6 times in a row, but when it gets up to like 20 or so, that strains credulity to the point where you start thinking the universe is out to get you. I don’t start posting hands to this thread until I’m approaching hour 3 or 4 of going out early due to various improbable hands beating me. This Saturday, it was a combination of lengthy periods of ice cold cards dealt to me, then getting my only half-way playable cards in early position only, and then when I eventually made a powerful draw, getting beat by something better, resulting in about a 16 hour period in which I went about 2-for-20 ITM, when in the previous 6 days I had gone 12-for-19 ITM, playing the exact same way.
Sometimes, it’s just been that enough players have seen me make the same play enough times that they’ve figured out what I’m doing, and they’ve figured out an effective play against it. That’s fine, too. We have to adjust and we can’t be too predictable, playing the same way every time. When a tactic stops working, you have to switch it up. Sometimes that might mean playing a hand outside your usual range, or making an unorthodox play that goes against what had been working for you for the longest time.
I agree with this.
I will say though that against weaker opposition you need not necessarily play perfect poker, and that perfect poker may not be optimal against weaker opponents. If for example you’re at a table of meek players who fold to raises unless they’re holding the nuts, then it’s more profitable to bluff raise more hands than it is to play ABC or GTO or a style of play that would do better against elite professionals.
Absolutely I believe that making correct choices will win you more chips in the long run, and it doesn’t matter if you get beat on any one specific hand. I’ve never once suggested that I should win every hand that I play. I don’t complain about every single hand that I have to lay down because the Turn or River brought up possible completed draws that my opponent seems likely to have, or when I run KK into AA, or when I run AA into KK and they flop another K to suck out. Isolated incidents where I lose but I had the odds in favor of me before the flop, that’s just life. It’s when I get 12 hours straight of it and can’t place third in 20 games in a row that I start to go a bit bonkers after, say the 6th or 7th consecutive 5th place or worse finish.
And I don’t complain when due to some reason I make a bad choice and get punished for it, ruining a solid run in a tournament with one poorly chosen bully bluff, or misreading a hand, or a lapse of attention costing me big. I hold myself accountable for those, and let that experience reinforce the lessons I’ve already learned. Sometimes it takes me a few times before they fully sink in.
Nothing wrong with having a little personality, or having a favorite hand that you always play, even though it goes against conventional wisdom.
So here we go again…just got off the 50k tourney and the same old story and saga continues …absolute brainless poker player being rewarded chips…I dont want to sound like a broken record but i keep sayiing this over and over again…the more you bet brainlessly the more you are rewarded…
Every single tourney this happens…
I was fortunate to finish 2nd place…finally heads up i went all in with A10 and this luckbox who was winning with any crap hand just justified his idiotic calling,calling my all in with k3 off…ofcourse he hit the 3…
Prior to the that another donkey calls 1400 chips with stacks at 4500 chips as thats what i bet as i flopped the straight…(45678) .he had nothing but AK and continued to bet and hit a 4 card flush.
Probably the best hand was player B had AK or it was A10 and raised preflop and our luck box called insta with 56…and flop had A56 and river was another 6…Boat lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Of course i folded great hands on his BB or whenever he called as it doesnt matter what i had he would win the pot as thats how it goes…he won hands on 26,Q4 and probably a few more donkey hands…
Today was my last day of playing the 20k buy in tourney as somehow i seem to do well there as manage to dodge the donks and had some good luck over the past few months in this tourney…and have successfully topped the Emerald league several times…but now truly have come to terms that its a total bingo feast and getting worse day by day The pay out is good for top 3 thereafter it pays practically nothing…its just that the timing is perfect for me for this tourney but i rather go bingo in the omaha tables…
Its not the rank of the players but the respect these donkeys dont give…even a value bet will be raised with garbage and rewarded…
This i have not seen on any site nor in reality(would never happen with money)…