What loses you more chips on average?

Poker Discussion
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I may be in a negative feedback loop, but I don’t think it’s like what you’re saying. It’s a good guess, though. It sounds very typical. But what actually happens to me is stuff like this:

  • Early, blinds at 15/30 or 30/60. I get a nice starting hand to open with, in position. Not a monster, but something you should open. KJ, AT, JT, QJ, KQ, something that if you hit a pair on the flop, it’s going to hold up a lot of the time. I raise to 200-270. Flop misses me, I dump the hand when my one caller bets. Or I c-bet and take the hand. Or I c-bet and I lose a big pot when my opponent lies in wait and raises me.
  • Say I win the hand above. I play another hand. Same thing. A few of these happen, and if I’m lucky, I’ve won a few small pots, and maybe I’m up 1000 cihps. Or maybe I got someone all-in and now I’m up to 6000-7000 from a 3000 start. Maybe I’m even up to 8000-9000. 1-3 players have busted, the rest are mostly healthy stacks. Blinds get up to 150/300, 200/400 or so. I want to hold onto that stack. I can bully from position, and do so when I have the opportunity – with decent cards, with position, open raises don’t get many calls. Finally, I’ll do it and someone will raise me when I have AJ, and it turns out they have AK, they double up from 2500 to 5000, or 4000 to 8000, and I drop from 8-9k down to 6.5k or 3k. Back to square one, still three more players need to bust before I’m in the money, blinds are still rising, and now someone else has the bully stack, and now no one will fold to me, whether preflop or post, and annoyingly they “never” lose a hand against me. I either get lucky and double back up, maybe about 1-in-10 of the time, or I bust trying, getting 5th or 6th when at one point I had the lead and should have expected to easily finish ITM.
  • If I’m lucky, I go card-dead during the midgame, and can’t play anything, getting a steady diet of 62, 53, 74, 83, and instead of me throwing away all my chips trying to win another hand with starting cards I feel obligated to play because if you don’t, you’re playing scared, I can legitimately fold hand after hand after hand, and if I’m super lucky, the rest of the table cleans itself out for me, people playing for big pots KO each other, and soon it’s bubble time, and I’m still on a big enough stack. When this happens, I have a better than 3/4 chance of surviving the bubble, simply by not playing any hands and waiting it out. Or maybe my ice dead period will end and I’ll land a premium pair, finally, just as some desperate player is ready to shove, and I’ll be able to call and take them. These are the games I tend to win.
  • When I don’t win, after about the 5th or 6th game in a row, I’ve usually had enough ridiculous beats that I no longer believe in strategy, and just want to throw away chips on the theory that if I pay off the poker gods to the tune of 1M-2M chips, they’ll smile on me and I’ll win a game or two again. I play horrible, not caring because after all, outcomes will be the same regardless, and people can exploit it easily, avoiding every hand I have good cards, waiting until they have good cards, it doesn’t usually take very long, they just wait because I’m always there with a lot of chips in the middle, trying to win a big pot, and instead I give them a big pot. AK hitting top pair giving it away to a small set or weak suited Ace hitting two pair or a flush, etc. That’s the negative feedback loop.

The thing you suggest, that I bet smaller to try to limit my losses, and thus allow opponents to hit draws, doesn’t happen. They either flop ridiculous, or they “give up” and shove junk that hits a magic flop, or they river something after they went all-in, and there’s no folding them. A lot of the time, they are not ahead when they shove, or they were ahead all along, having flopped a set, usually 333s or 555s or 666s, and they disguise it well, inducing me to bluff, or maybe I hit top pair nice kicker and try to close the hand but can’t for some reason, and that reason is that I’m trapped.

I’m lifetime 34% ITM in SNG + MTT play, according to the site stats, so I’m not playing poorly, I generally win more than I lose, but when I have a good week, I’m more like 50-60% ITM, and when I’m running bad it’s more like 25-30% BUT my finishes are mostly 3rd and my profit % is like breakeven, and when I go on a real slide, I’ll drop 7-8-10 games in a row before I can win a game or two and regain the losses. Maybe it’s just natural variance, and maybe I’m making it worse than it really is by rage tilting. When I don’t go on tilt I tend to not have such bad streaks. I do think there’s a negative feedback loop kind of thing going on, but it’s more me throwing away chips when I get angry because playing “good” poker didn’t work, and now nothing works, until it starts working again.

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Your open is too big at these blinds. You open for 270 and are called by the BB, so now there is 570 chips in the pot with stacks around 3000 chips, so pot is almost 20% of your stack.

These hands are OK to open in position, but in position you can open with almost any hand.

In the early rounds of a tournament many players will call from the blinds with almost any two cards, hoping to get off to a flying start. However with four out of five of those hands, any hand that holds an ace will start ahead of you, which is the most likely hand to call you.

It is often best to completely sit out the first 10 minutes of a tournament to avoid getting sucked into these hands. If you have to play them, it is better to play small ball poker.

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The only thing i have to say about all that is… you will never be a successful poker player unless you go into each hand with a positive and confident attitude thinking you will win each hand you play, regardless of the outcome. This mentality allows you to take control of the table more often resulting in more hands won and larger pots won. Going into each hand thinking a monster hand is coming after you to take you down not only will beat you but you will also beat yourself from an emotional standpoint. Would be nice to change this topic to " what WINS you more chips on average " Turn the negative attitude and topic into a POSITIVE attitude and topic, Can you imagine if any player in any sport would start the game thinking they wont win and a miracle shot or play is gonna beat them for the buzzer beater, why even start or play in the game then because they will lose almost every game just from that attitude alone. Your better off sitting out as a spectator. Turn the negative attitude and topic into a positive attitude and topic then come show us your MONSTER WINS or any wins for that matter, instead of all the losses.

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I agree a 9BB open is excessive, but if I do a 3-4BB open, I end up with a 5-way flop and lose to rags hitting a straight draw because no one seems afraid to play for an early pot at 120 chips.

Really, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t + a little bit of “the only winning move is not to play”. But sometimes it works out, and I end up with the early win, and build from it to take it all the way.

Really, what I think it means is that community card poker is a very well balanced game, and there are so many ways to lose a given hand, and I’m good at finding them.

I’m not a bad player at all. I’ve taken a stack of 1.2M up to 23.7M in 16 months. Others have done better over the same time, but I’m not bad at this.

What I most need to work on is emotional stability through swings. This week I’ll probably win back the 1.5M I’ve lost over the last week, and the week after that I’ll lose it again in an evening and be angry about it again, not that it ever helps. And then the week after that I’ll have a nice steady week and go up 1-2M. That’s been the cycle.

And really, this thread is not meant to be all about me. Everyone loses chips from time to time. If you want to, you can create categories of situations where you are losing chips. If you watch the different piles grow over time, you can identify weaknesses in your game, and then you can focus on doing something about the biggest ones. If you want to play winning poker, figuring out where your holes are, where you’re being exploited, and figuring out how to fix that will go a long way. This has never been a pity party thread for poor puggywug.

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Pugg, no one is directing any of this specifically at you but you are a part of the pool of players that lets your emotions get involved in the game and then it changes the way you play all around and takes control over your game instead of your skill taking over. I know you keep talking about specific hands and cards and bad beats, etc but before you can even learn how to play those cards and hands better you have to work on separating your emotions from the game as hard as that might be for you. Thats much more important than any 2 cards you get. The confident player with a positive attitude leaving their emotions aside playing any 2 hole cards will win more often than the player that gets your so called monster hole cards but they have a negative attitude, lack of confidence, and let emotions in every decision they make because the other players that are good will pick up on that asap and eat you up by capitalizing on weaknesses and frustrations they see in you. Just like golf or tennis, in poker you dont have team mates to feed off of to generate positive energy in you or to reinforce your confidence level like you get in team sports so its all up to you as a solo poker player to learn that if you dont already have it ( which you clearly dont and you really need to work on that more than any cards you get, and i know you realize it too ) Once you get that somewhat under control from learning,balancing it,and utilizing it in your game then you will see a huge difference in your play and the decisions you make to get to those next levels that will make you shine rather than let all of the other things constantly bother and frustrate you.

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Here’s an ultra typical “this happens EVERY TIME” hand for me:

3-way. I get AJo, my very favorite “loses every time hand”. I’m even with the bottom stack, big stack has a big lead on both of us. I decide to play for a big pot here, because why not. Every other hand, these guys are folding to a min raise, so naturally, when I raise from 400 to 2000, I get a huge call. Big stack wisely bows out and decides to let the small stacks KO each other.

Flop pairs my Ace, but it’s a flush board. Lol, what do you think the odds are that my opponent just flopped a flush? I shove. He’s got two clubs. Called a 5BB raise for nearly half his @#%#%ing stack with J9 suited and flopped a flush. PEOPLE. CALL. ME. WITH. JUNK. AND. WIN. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Why did this happen? I’ll tell you why. The ONLY reason this happens is because I raise preflop with a hand like AJ, and the site has been programmed to **** me every time I play for a big pot. If I raise 2BB, this gets a fold, guaranteed. If I raise 2BB, the flop is a disaster, I can lay it down and walk away from it. If I raise 2BB, the flop misses both of us and I can bully bet it down if he checks. If I raise 2BB, I hit my flop on a non-scary board and win a showdown.

I’m left with a few hundred chips and shove on JJ, big stack crushes it with A8 hitting two pair, but only coming ahead on… you guessed it the river.

3rd place, whee. I should be happy I placed for money.

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(shouts in lowercase): Every time!

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PuggyWug,
FloridaJetSki is correct , in that you are beating yourself before the fact. You are part of the problem, but you can fix that. What you cannot fix is the fact its free poker, possible crappy shuffles, no burn cards, or the fact most tournies are turbos. If anyone has the mentallity that they’re gonna lose, they usually find a way to lose.

Replay Poker is NOT … is not Fix’d.

Puggy you have allowed this thread, to mirror your rediculious hands thread. Your original premise of what holes do players have, and how can they plug those holes was a good one.

Take a 3-way pot where the 3 ppl that stay to see the flop are AK, AQ, AJ. When the flop hits the Ace on a semi-dry board, its down to a kicker war, where all 3 players have equity to continue. Its 1 reason I balance out my play by opening hands that are connectors, suited, both, or perhaps pocket pairs. The trick to winning any hand is usually post flop play that follows good pre flop play. I personally hate JJ, but it has equity to play and should be played.

If as FloridaJetSki has said, if other ppl are playing an exploitative game … they will play on your fears and tendancies. Just like Judo, many players play off other ppls agression. When it comes to SnG/MTT, I don’t wanna play short stacked the whole game and take more risk early on, but when you’re playing for a Leaderboard, you have to play with the LB in mind. Rings are totally different. Its also why FloridaJetSki’s accomplishments are even that much more impressive ( SnG LBs ).

I refuse to write the book, how to beat Sassy. My play has been adjusted, to the stakes and players playing there. Take the player that has 3x thier buyin, thats just as worrysome as a big bankroll behind. They are now playing off profits and can open up thier game a bit. If its a SnG/MTT, and you get an early lead chipwise, you can litterallly run the table. So there is incentive to win that big pot early. Its also why I see ppl on Hagia Sophia open shoving AA, like thats a good play. Its NOT. Thats taking too big of a risk on what basically is just a PocketPair.

When you lead with agression, you are telling the table you are representing strength or you have strength. That leaves you wide open to being exploited on a crappy flop. Those people that can afford to lose a few bigger hands will try because long term its a winning strategy against players who let themselves be exploited. Same goes for those ppl that play or rep weakness, ppl try and exploit them too. Its also why when you get to HU, its usually players playing players, not playing cards.

Ppl who play GTO, eliminate to a certain extent exploitative play. Long term GTO overcomes being exploited. Thats why I refuse to play long term poker with those ppl. GTO cannot as easily thwart the hit/run players in a Ring game setting. In Tournaments you have to play the long game. Thats why I have always described Tournies as a “maximize profit over all hands” vs Rings where its “maximize profit on a per hand” basis.

By now Puggy, we know you are playing scared. That is exploitable. Some ppl actually play and count on playing, scare cards. You game is not balanced enuff and your reputation costs you alot of chips. Take -BlackWidow-, if I see her across the table, I’m saying ohh crap there’s BW. If I see Puggywug across the table, I’m lick’n my chops, saying ohh kewl there’s Puggywug. Trust me Puggy, my current reputation around here isn’t much better than yours is, but Im working on it.

Yesterday, in a MTT, I played 2-3off like I had something, hit the flop, then that board didn’t scare me. ( this was level 2, and I had 55% profit to start the hand ). I fired all 3 streets, including a 700 chip bet on the river, leaving me my starting stack. I got re-raised on the river and had to fold. After the hand I got told they had 2pr, and I told them I had a stone cold bluff of 2-3 ( I didn’t even have 1 pr ). The next 2-3 times I had something I got paid off or ppl correctly folded outta the hand. Sure, it didn’t hurt that the next hand I played, I limped AA hit an A on the flop, got bet into, and busted the player off the table. They played 2 pr on the flop, when the board paired up they lost thier stack.

I count on ppl being overly agressive, and I count on ppl trying to exploit me. You have to bluff just enuff , so you get paid when you have it. You have to keep them guessing. You also have to play enuff hands so ppl won’t think you’re just nut-busting the table.

What a tangled web we weave, when @ 1st we do deceive !!

Puggy you had initial success, till ppl learned how you play… now you hit the perverbial wall. Happens to all of us, but the better your opponents are, the faster they learn how you play. Untill you start beating the ppl you normally lose to, you might as well be Rodney Dangerfield… You will get no respect.
Sassy

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58

It’s fair to say that my biggest hole is tilt/rage, and I think I know my triggers for going on tilt pretty well by now. I need to get a grip on my emotions and not let those triggers upset me. Floridajetski gives good advice on this.

I would disagree that I play scared. If that’s your read on me, well, go on thinking that then. I’m clearly not afraid to lose chips. I’m more than happy to give away my stack whenever I get tilted. I’m not losing hands because I’m timidly allowing opponents the right odds to connect with their draws, or bluff me off my hands.

Rather, I’m getting enraged as a result of my range failing to connect with the flop too often for probability, making my opens waste chips. I’m getting enraged because 90% of the time I raise AJ, either the flop comes in 7-high, and someone who called an 8BB open with 52o hit middle pair but has no problem calling a pot size bet with it. Or I pair the Jack on a KQJ flop, still can’t fill the straight draw, and lose to Q3. Or I pair the Ace, but I’m up against AK. Or A4, but they hit two pair on the river after i fire two huge bets into them on 3rd and 4th street. And any single one of these beats would be fine, but when they happen 5+ in a row, at a rate that defies probability, I have a hard time not getting angry. I stick with math and I continue to see small odds hit for my opponent hand after hand. Pretty soon it seems like no matter what decisions I make, it’ll “always” blow up, so I give up and start throwing away chips because it’s entirely random whether or not I will win the hand, except that I will lose about 80% of the time if it goes to showdown, and 99% if it ends up being a big pot. It becomes a perverse amusement to watch the odds defy me again and again.

My last game last night, I was ready to give up when I limped J3o from the BB position, and flopped top pair. Not a great place to be, and then an opponent with a smaller stack overbets, about 2.5X pot, and I get triggered, so I jam, expecting to be beaten yet again. He flipped up JT, and I knew it was a bad call. But I rivered him with two pair, knocked him out. I went from slightly down to healthy. After that hand, nearly everything I played hit for me, and for maybe 10 orbits in a row every time I was in for the BB, I not only got dealt good cards, but I hit top pair with them on the flop, and chewed through the SB’s stack like a wood chipper. I get past the bubble having built a dominant stack, and continued to get lucky hand after hand, and now players are folding to my open, magnifying my advantage. Heads up, my opponent plays well and pulls ahead of me after winning about 5-6 hands in a row, when I shoved A4 into KQ, and won the hand with a pair of 44s, and then finish him off on the following hand.

That whole game felt just as improbable as the games I’ve been losing, only this time I was on the right side of it. I would not expect to win a lot of games this way. I played a bad beat into a cakewalk. Usually games are more challenging than that, and I can expect to lose a few hands on the way to a table win, and have to outplay my opponents rather than having the dealer hand the game to me. Or I can at least get ITM, and feel satisfied with that.

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The point of this video is to reinforce the idea that 5 hands or 5 games or 500 games is an insignificant sample size. Variance is wild over such small samples and smooths out as the sample size grows into the thousands and 10’s of thousands.

When I 1st started to play online cash, I spent about 6 months grinding SnG’s and working on the strategies involved. I had 1 month of epic rungood where I topped the field in ROI and took an extra $9700 in bonusses. “Easy game”, I thought to myself. The next month I came back down to earth and had mediocre returns. It ticked me off in a big way because I felt entitled to win. Only once my coach told me to stop whining and start working harder did I get back into the proper frame of mind. We looked at my entire month’s worth of hand histories and in fact I played better technical poker in my mediocre month than I did in my crushing the hell out of it month. If I paid attention just to the results over the short term, I would have missed the point - to improve my play, control what I can control and ignore the things I can’t.

Also, stop throwing games away. Even if you get crippled by a bad beat, use that as an opportunity to improve your short-stack play. Everything can be a positive experience if you don’t squander the chance.

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61

Tournament poker… cry me a river! Just stop playing them.

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Better yet, why don’t you come to my tournaments and get all my chips since it’s so easy.

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I couldn’t play your table without trolling you and it seems you’ve already got enough of that going on. If I could vote to have your post submitted for review before they went up I would for that. I would even volunteer to review them so I could save everyone else in the forum the pain. Your post are redundant, they’re ridiculous, they’re tilting, they’re tiresome, nobody wants to hear it anymore. You’re beating these SnG’s because they’re super easy to beat, why in Christ name are you always on here whining. Get over yourself bruh!

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@dayman, you really should get all my chips. You deserve them! What do I care if you troll me. You’re so good, it’ll be very easy. But it’ll be too small for it to be worth your time to stoop to my stakes. Yawn

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I’m done bruh! You should quit poker before you have a heart attack. Oh, and I know you’ve posted asking about real money games… never, ever, EVER play for real money!

Unless you can afford to lose :slight_smile:

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Maybe you should buy the company with your big stack of play chips, and then you can make the forum rules and ban me.

There’s plenty of other forum threads to read, so why come here and pick on me? All I’ve done since the topic turned into an analysis of my play is try to get everyone to not talk about it here, and instead talk about holes. But for some reason everyone seems to be interested in drawing it out.

I get some nice advice from @floridajetski and @1Warlock about tilt , and then you come over and act like you’re more annoyed by this thread than I am. That is very unlikely.

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I’ve tried to help you but you just keep banging your head… you’ve been posting this kind of crap for months since I’ve been on the forums… you derail threads that could be good… you derail any kind of constructive strategy talk…

but have made no progress in dealing with the leak

THE GAME DOESN’T OWE YOU ANYTHING… THE GAME DOESN’T EVEN KNOW YOUR NAME KID

I can give you thousands of these! Literally! THOUSANDS!

Cheers… I will not comment on anymore of your post. Have a nice day.

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Well, @dayman, I sincerely thank you for not posting anymore. But if you ever feel up for a challenge, write up a complete manual on how to beat yourself, over 10 months, post it here, and let me read it, and then we’ll play on even terms. You know who will win.

Not me. That’s for sure.

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This topic is becoming derailed. Please get it back on track or I will have to close it.

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