Just absurd. After ONE good session, today was back to normal. Lost 8 buyins in an hour, once again as people 3bet shitloads of crap I got to 4bet my AA often. And often money went in vs flush draw or gutshot etc, and they just binked the outs. Also lost twice with flopped nut boat to runner runner quads.
And maniacs crushed me over and over again with flop and turn bluffs, and hitting 2 outer set or 4 outer gutshot on the river.
Still not turning. Played 1h session, and it started horribly. Got 15 buyins down just like that. Money went in constantly in 3bet pot turns and 4bet pot flops, where I was up against naked flush draw or straight draw. Just couldn't dodge. Every time I 4bet AKK versus aggro 3bettor, they had AA. Every time I flopped a set on Axx board vs wide 3bettor, they had AA. And then this one aggro just kept crushing me, again. He takes aggro line with strong hands and bluffs, and today every time I bluff catched him with blockers to nuts, he had them.
It turned a little and I started to win, and 50/50 flips started to turn my way. Session result was -4buyins, which once again feels like a huge win.
Losing day after day to same players is affecting my gameplay. I am starting to be really one dimensional versus this one aggro, as he seems to beat me no matter what I do. I have pretty good idea about his ranges on flop and turn, but he just crushes me on the rivers. If I bluff catch, he has the nuts or slightly better hand. If I bluff, he calls with weak hands. And if I valuebet, he rarely calls. Or if I valuebet 2nd or 3rd nuts he raises me. You know that feeling when you are sure he could see your cards? Of course he doesn't, just getting lucky. And I have been really carefull not to change sizings or lines with bluffs, but doing the same I would do with my value range. But his timing has been almost perfect for few days. And it has gotten to a point where I am just giving up on flops with hands I shouldn't. Cos today every time I tried to do something else than pure ABC equity poker, I got smashed. That means folding a ton of flops, and tightening up RFI range too much when he is yet to act. Most likely even this pure equity poker (preflop strong range, postflop continue only with strong/big draws or value hands) is +EV versus him, so I don't mind it. But it feels so stupid to give up flops, cos I am not comfortable to trust my reads and estimations on turns and rivers.
Like a situation where I have top2 on straight board and blockers to the straight on the river. Versus him, should be easy check-call as he would fire most of his air/weak hands versus check. But every time I did that today, he had the straight.
Human mind is a weird thing.
oh i know that type of villain, like yesterday the more i tried to process whats going on and kinda tried to level my way back in, the more i got crushed (not saying this is whats happening to you, just reading what you wrote reminded me in a way)....
went in with some set over set situations where just thinking about probability those plays were probably not all(but for sure some in my case,) as bad as they felt, they just always had it or got there ♦
I don't know, the more i can get let go of my ego, the better i play in terms of results - which is hard to rationalize or even describe, but yesterday at some point where i actually wanted to quit i had this type of click, ok what ever, you just go with your guts and kept playing.
Kind of telling myself of why i am sitting there, the goal i have and visulizing to just "crush" instead of actually thinking in details about hands played and specific strategy involved and all those other things that were flying around in my head "distracting" me.
Your toolbox for this i think is far better than mine and as weird as it may sounds(or perhaps its even the opposite and insanely obvious to you), the idea is to try and let your subconcious do the work and let your ego only describe the overall goal (which for me is have fun, learn more and reach my challange goal) ♦ not sure if that makes sense to you or anyone else - but it boils down again to this concept of selffullfilling prohpecy.
Also to me this is not as esoterik as it may sound... just seems very logical to me that our subconsious has the same access to all the concepts we've learned, in the same way our "ego / or maybe a nicer term is active conciousness" does - just being potentially able to process far more of them at the same time, presenting us with the best conclusion based on processing time given, like a solver would do pretty much^^. *edit - the difficulty is to actually listen to / hear it ^^
In my usual style i am drifting off, but perhaps someone else finds this just as interesting as i do, so i am letting it out o_O
also in no way it should devalue the strategic concepts we are all trying to learn, study and perfect here, quite the opposite, only way this can work logically or be true imo, if we actually understand these concepts on a deeper level instead of just applying, lets say a math formular without knowing why....
anyone can calculate a circle using Pi and the right formula, but actually knowing / being able to explain where Pi comes from is a diffrent story and once you do, you don't need to remember the formula to calculate a circle, you can come up with it yourself.
Also i know i have no relevant input for you when it comes to direct plo strategy, but maybe you can find something relevant in here for yourself or i just reconfirm something you apply already in some shape or form anyway.
my "ego" right now is even warning me to maybe better not press"submit" because of fear of ridicule / missunderstanding / or even being captain obvious about what i am trying to say in relation to a concept i can neither prove, dissprove or formulate better. so well, fuck it ! ^^
Yeah, ego and profitable strategy can't sit on the same table. It should be just numbers and strategy based on those numbers. Ego creates feelings, feelings narrow rational thinking down.
But with feelings the thing is that we can't control them. If someone is sad, he can't just decide not to be. He could act, or start to think happy things (a method to channel feelings). We can learn to tolerate feelings or even protect ourselves by burying them. In poker we have two things to do with feelings. First is to recognize them and understand how they build up and what causes them. If needed, we need to have a safety plan. For me it is when I find thinking that I want to win versus certain player, to get back at him. That leads to wider ranges and aggression, which is guided by a feeling. Not logical strategy.
Second thing is to work with ourselves to prevent those feelings from building up. In poker most feelings are due to variance. And our brain is built NOT to understand nor accept it. For some it's easier to accept it, for some it's a life long journey.
Ye, I did Not mean ego as this Bad term(Poor wording choice on my end), more as Our concious self vs subconsious.
To setup and allign These 2 and being able to have your subconcious as a type of ally at the table was the idea here.
And this ally can be very strong imo (I Think you call it for example muscle memory, which id consider as just one smaller Part of Our subconcious)
its really hard to describe what I am even aiming at without reaching out very far I guess, just want to point out I did Not mean it in this way, but what you write is indeed true if you consider ego as this cocky / greedy easily hurt entity within us. that Part that exists in all of us (to diffrent extends) definetly doesnt belong at the pokertable and id even go as far as making it responsible for All whats wrong on Our planet.
Its a whole Kind of diffrent beast ^^
You mean unconscious competence?
(= automation)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence
4 levels of a skill is very important topic regarding online poker and multitabling.
yes its definetly close.
what i am trying to aim at, is the factors of subconsious (or in this context "unconsious") being more than just having the skill devolped to "stage 4".
Imho, you also need to be in a certain "state of mind" to gain full advantage of that and this is a tricky one and its just an idea that crossed my mind.
This comes comes from my own observations working with/thinking about and beliving in the idea of self-fullfilling prohpecy
"A self-fulfilling prophecy is the psychological phenomenon of someone "predicting" or expecting something, and this "prediction" or expectation coming true simply because the person believes or anticipates it will[1] and the person's resulting behaviors align to fulfill the belief."
and combining it with Mindfulness
""Bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis""
So assuming we are able to apply both of these "states/ideas" together with lvl 4 "stage of competence" we are working in a at least very interesting setting, my hypothesis would be that it leads to an additional advantage at the tables and most likely in a lot of other aspects in life that go beyond the base of mastering a skill.
What i am quite sure about, is that all these 3 concepts individually have a form of merrit(truth) and it would appear logical to me, for them to interact between each other.
Difficulty being how to make the right conculsions from this to actually apply them all in a benefitial way at the same time. Like the idea of implied odds, its a great concept but easy to use horribly wrong ♦
Started a session, and just had to close tables after 10 minutes.
First hand of the session, I 3bet AAQ9ss, flop is Q95ss. Top 2 + fd. I bet, opp calls. Turn is 2r, I pot he calls. River is 8r, he has 1/20 pot behind and shoves. He had 5667, a bottom pair and gutshot. Binked it on the river.
Second hand of the session, 3betting AAQQss, flopping Q93ss, top set + fd. Money goes in, opponent has 9875. Makes runner runner straight.
Couple minutes later I 4 bet AA, flop is 833r and money goes in with SPR 0,5. Opponent had 9884. He 3bet that and called my 4bet leaving SPR 0,5.
Right after that I 4bet AA again, flop is A high monotone. SPR 0,5 and opponent donks flop. He had 7554ss that he cold called my 4bet with.
Then I have the nut straight twice on 3bet pots, where opponents had 3bet me with JT66 and 8872. Solid 3bet hands, for flopping the nuts.
And then in the end I flop top set + fd on KQJss board, money goes in 3way and they both had naked AT. But couldn't hit.
That's a bit too much for me to handle in 10 minutes, 5 buyins down.
Continued after a break, didn't change much. Another 5 buyins down. And the way I keep losing is insane. New player joined the pool today, and he is a "bit" call happy. Calling preflop raise with 9722r. I 3bet from BTN, original raiser calls and he calls. Flop is JT3ss, I pot and he calls. Turn is 2, I pot and he shoves. I had AQJTss, river was a blank. Normally wouldn't mind, but in this situation those kind of losses hurt mentally.
Luckily the rakeback is keeping me alive, and in theory it should turn at some point. And if there was supposed to be a downswing, I am happy it happened now. As for June, July and August my plan is to play for partial living. My current job contract ends at the beginning of July, and most likely it will continue at August. I have calculated that around 6h of playing per day would be enough. But when your income is dependable on poker, swings really affect harder. It would be nice to have a good buffer funding, but that was supposed to come from my current bankroll. But it's going to wrong direction. 
One example, how running bad affects mental game:
I open pre, he calls. On the flop I decided to bet, as opponent is calling VERY wide and not turning hands into bluffs. Turn is a good card, I bet again as Kxxx is a bit more unlikely. He calls, and when river comes I am like "oh my fucking god, that's the worst card in the deck. I really can't think about worse card, as everything from the flop gets there!". He checks, I click check and resist myself to throw my chips (I roll them while playing)( to the wall. And he turns that hand. You can see that my notes on that player are quite accurate.
The thing is, when the river comes I shouldn't pay any attention to it. If he bets, easy fold. If he checks, easy check. The only thing that matters is what he had on the turn. If he made his draw, the bet was still +EV and depending on hand could prove my reads even more. And if he called with hand he shouldn't, that's good for me in the long run. That's how I SHOULD think.
Had to like that post by Kyyberi. That is epic run bad start for session...
PS: And second one from good point in spoiler
For fucks sake, the millionth time. I just don't know what to do. Played for 4h, which is the happy hour time. Having breaks of course. Just kept losing a pot after a pot, and I focused on not to overplay. Just keep grinding, and I tightened up my preflop, toned down 3betting a lot but still couldn't win those all-ins.
In non-allin pots I have no problem. I keep making money. It's just every time the money goes in, opponents hit everything or I don't hit any of my outs. And then there were a LOT of pots where I get 95% of stacks in on the turn, opponent makes a horrible call and spikes something. Doesn't even show in EV line. Of course it will even out in the long run, but still...
Like I am floppin nuts on 776ss. Aggro bets, I call. Turn is 3r, he bets and I check-raise. Snap call. Turn is T, he had JTT8ss. Called turn pot raise on paired board with J high flush draw and TT. Another example is almost an all-in on the turn with nuts, opponent calls pot sized bet or raise with naked low flush draw. Mathematically horrible call, but when they hit it WAY too often it pays out. Even with those situations, I ran fucking 13 buyins under EV in this session. Again.
And it seems that no matter what I do at the tables, I lose money. Whole month has been just constant slide down. The rakeback is keeping me alive, but I am just wondering how long does it take to end this run?
And couldn't even take pics of interesting hands, as Party playback was broken too.
Welcome to my world. A bit over 100bb deep a reg decides to shove AQ84 preflop. Look at the hits on the flops, second one looked bad for a bit but one for me!
I was 72% favorite preflop.
Welcome to my world, part 2. Same opponent, single raised pot and a bit over 100bb deep again. Top set vs bottom set+fd. So he had at least the fd, 63% for me and lost both runs. If someone wonders the light preflop, it's normally a clear fold. But this opponent overplays low sets and medium strength made hands, so hitting a set has good implied odds. He would have shoved naked bottom set on the flop too. But still, very marginal and I don't like the call preflop. Hand should be a bit better.
Why do you prefer Party over Stars?
And what do you think of Unibet or GG?
Anyway, I am strongly considering transitioning to PLO (finally) and these kind of runs would kill me. But I guess it is inevitable, right?
glgl
Played a short 15min session while placing couple sport bets. Started badly, this is the second hand of the session:
3bet pot, opponent shoves the flop. 75% for me, not enough. Look at how his full house outs were blocked!
Puke:
I 3bet pre, 3ways bet flop and pot turn. Opp calls turn, leaving me 14bb behind on 200bb pot. And river is Tc. Opponent shoves. And I know he is call happy. Makes you wanna puke. And I really thought about just folding and saving my 14bb, but then got rid of that thought. As the outcome is the same if he had put it allin on the turn.
This is what he had. Opened pre, and called 3bet for 3way pot. And called flop, when I bet and BTN called too. And then called pot on the turn, shoved river. Well played.
Nothing new, played a session and can't book a winning one. 5 buyins down.
There were at least 6 this kind of situations in the session:
I have a good read on opponent, and every time my reads were right. This was one of the two opponents, other one did this thing five times versus me. A situation where opponent goes for turn bluff in paired board, and always barrells the river if I just call on blank river. And in each of those he had 2 outs, and just kept spiking the rivers. I mean yeah, he will hit it 1/20 times. But 6/6? Not a single time I won a pot in that situation today.
My life, part N. 3bet pot, opponent is aggro and the same one as in last hand. Crushed me today. He would pot any fd or 2p+ on the flop, I have 2nd nuts and fd. Easy shove vs aggro, but of course he has the nuts with nfd.
Today it was easy to be aggro. Money goes in on the flop and he has the worst equity. But wins both runs. He cbets flop, SB calls and I pot. He instashoves. Not the best line with 3rd nut flush draw and a gutter versus a pot raise and cold caller.
Originally posted by Axif1
Why do you prefer Party over Stars?And what do you think of Unibet or GG?
Stars Zoom is nitty as hell, and versus tight pool beating rake is hard. Although at Party the rake is high, but rakeback is decent. I like the games, and EV wise it's good. Resultwise last weeks have been horrible.
GG has shitty rakeback, as they have the PVI that drops the promised rakeback down to about 10% for those who play a bit more. Their leaderboards and Care flipament helps a little, but the Rush&Cash is also very tight and there are too many short stacks for me.
Daily update, nothing has changed. Day ended -4 buyins. Was down a lot more at some point, but climbed at least a bit up. Had +EV equity for few BIG multiway allins, but couldn't hold. Couple of those to my way and day would be up a lot.
My life, another part:
Money goes in on the turn. He has 4 outs, wins both runs.
One where I ran well:
Preflop was a bit weird. BB is 50bb short. I open pre, SB calls (AAQT, probably had reads that BB likes to 3bet, which I didn't have), BB 3bets, I call and SB 4bets. BB calls, and I call. Didn't really realize that on the flop I would have $3 behind to $63 pot, could have just shoved pre. On the flop I need 5% equity, lol.
One of the weirdest stack offs:
I open pre, BB 3bets and I call. Flop he bets small, and I raise. He calls. Turn he checks and I bet, he calls. On the river he checks, I shove and he calls. And I was very sure he has AA, maybe AA5. But KJJT, lol. Someone might say that his flop call to my raise is a bit optimistic. Along with river call. Or he didn't know the rules and thought he had a flush with 3 hole cards?
I am now back on what I was at the start of last week, thanks to rakeback.
Some interesting hands from today and yesterday:
Opponent opens pre, bets flop and checks back turn. On the river I check and he pots. I call. For some, there's nothing that interesting in this hand. For some, they wonder the river call. Explanation is for the later ones.
When he bets flop and checks back turn, it removes quite a lot of sets/2pairs from his range. Even 98 that bets the flop would often bet on the turn for protection. Any set would barrel. And on the river he is saying with pot bet that "I have boat". He could bet with trips, or even dry AA for value. I've seen it, and AA pot on the river is a nasty bet. But the opponent is unknown, no reads. We are blocking some straight draws and lightly flush draw too. But still, quick pot bet seems to be weighted heavily towards bluffs, as even trips would probably think for a bit if they are good often enough and for what sizing. Reason why I marked the hand is that these kind of bluffs are not good ones. The story he tries to tell is very unlikely. He is repping really narrow part of his range on the river and at the same time he has a lot of possible bluffing hands in his range. If he had bet the turn and THEN bets the river, it would be a different story.
I am not losing them all! 3bet pot, money goes in on the flop. Set vs set vs fd that is blocking boat outs. And neither of us set-men have any flush blockers. And zero hearts on the runout!
How to overplay AA: Open pre, cbet flop and re-raise versus check-raise. Dry AA on that flop. And this time I didn't even have to sweat for the river!
SICK hold! I 3bet and money goes in on the flop. I was so sure that someone has the flushdraw, that when the turn came I was looking that "what the hell, no hearts?". And on the river the board looked so bad for me that I was sure someone has 2pairs or straight.
I had 46% on the flop, so not the greatest hold of all time...
Update, it almost turned. Managed to have couple profitable sessions. And then today it was back to misery. Played for 1,5h and lost 10 buyins, while EV was +3 buyins. This is so frustrating, as I make constant profit on non-allin spots. And in allins I often have the highest equity or it's a mandatory stack off on low SPR spot. And those are the spots where I just keep losing. For my 4bets today, opponents hit their pocket pairs for set a lot. Calling 4bets with J994 etc. Twice I got money in in 3bet pot where opponent had runner runner, and lost. Like top set + nfd, opponent had only runner runner straight draw. 2% on the flop, BOOM! Aggros woke up with AA quite often when I 4bet ds KK or AKK. Those guys who 3bet with K855, TT42 etc.
I would get it if I lost money constantly and people would just outplay me. But the only spot where I lose is those damn 3bet and 4bet pots, where my opponents make their draws with high rate and I don't. It's very paradoxal, as on the other hand I know that they can't keep hitting bad hands forever and on the other hand I am thinking should I just drop 3betting from my strategy for a while as I get sick feeling every time I hit the flop in 3bet pots. Just like Pavlov's dog, I have learned to hate 3betting. I know I shouldn't, but being butchered for over a month now in 3bet pots has created this situation. I can't decide my feelings (none of us can), so I either live with them or remove the cause for a while. It would lower the EV but it would lower the variance too.
Full week without bad beats!
Reason is I played 0 hands this week. Was a bit busy with other stuff. Main reason was my 2.dan promotion I had yesterday. Took a while, as I had my 1st dan back at 99 in taekwondo. Took 23 years to have this second. ♦
Few hands that I had marked last week:
I call this justice. I 3bet, BTN calls and I bet flop 1/3. He has 55 and weak backdoors.
For math part, to call 7bb bet on the flop with 2 outs he would need to get over 150bb as value for it (excluding his own chips). If we were 200bb deep and I would always stack off on 5 (and I didn't have J or 88) it would be slightly +EV. But people do this all the time. They think that maybe I don't have AA, which still doesn't really make sense with a small pocket pair. Like if I had AKQ7, I would have still 40% equity. So if he calls flop cos I might be bluffing, the plan relies on me checking turn and river, as he can't call another bet with naked 55. So mathematically calling flop bet with 55 without a plan to turn it into a bluff is horrible. Good thing is that most players don't care for math or EV.
Another weird thing I see all the time. I open, SB 3bets and I 4bet. He is left with small amount of stack for the flop. And he check-calls my flop shove. Note that we are short, I can't remember how much he had on the flop but it was few bucks.
The thing is that versus AAxx he has almost 8% equity. Vs AA,KK he has almost 11%. So the stack off on the flop is not that bad. But if he is willing to stack off on that flop, then what flops is he folding? If he is going to stack off on any flop, why not just shove it in pre? In theorywise, IF he is folding trips flops (like 555), it would be theorywise better to call pre and stack off on non-trips flops.
What I think is that he is not thinking this at all. He calls pre, as folding would be not cool. And on the flop he thinks that the pot is so big that he must call, as I might be bluffing or what ever. Classic example of a chess player, who never thinks ahead.
Reading board is hard. Not sure about the action, but I think I called pre. 3bet is an option, but there are 2 good customers yet to act. On the flop I bet and preflop raiser called. Turn went check-check and on the river he bet big. For some reason I didn't realize the board was paired, and I thought I have the nuts. Raised, and then saw pairing 3's and he went for the tank. :f_eek::f_eek::f_eek:
He did fold eventually, but gave me a sweat for a moment.
