[Closed] Opinion needed.

play better, dont pay attention to results, improve your game!

Originally posted by Destrux
Now, why am i breaking my fingers here typing all this ? Must have been a story told 100's of times before. Well...i moved up to 2/5c's again, and had another sick beat tonight, and its starting to piss me off, and frankly...as weird as it sounds, im becoming suspicious ( paranoid? ). I dont know how to convert a hand into forum format, so i'll take some time to type one of them, just to show you what im talking about...

Villain : UTG+1 : Ac Ad - raises to 4BB
Hero : CO : 9d 7d - calls
Heads up
Pot: 48c
Flop: 9c 9s Kc
Villain bets 40c

Now, at this point, i know im only beaten by KK, and judging the size of he's bet, it seemed like he's protecting, not value betting, or semi buffing with AcQc. Anyways, i raised to 1.20$, he shoved, i called...then the miracle happens

Turn : 2c
River : 6c
And voila, nut flush

While it's a crappy way to lose, I really wonder what you're even doing in this hand with 97.

9,7s is my favourite hand.....

Although, I wouldn't be calling with it - 3-bet or fold

A pattern on poker forums I have seen is that many players are complaining about how bad they run when moving up stakes, when in all cases they are winning on the previous stake played.

Since you are seeing this now, I want to ask you. How sure are you that its not rigged?

1st of all, It's normal to find it more difficult when going up the stakes as the chance of running into better players is higher (even if not all players will be better).

2nd, as to the hand you posted, nothing special. It can hardly be called a miracle (as you called it): backdoor flushes like these have an about 4% chance of occurring. You encounter events that have the same chance in poker once every 25 hands or so.

That basically means you see such things several times in each session.
You probably have many more of these, and even worse, and that's ok and normal.

You're SUPPOSED to run into 1 in a 1000 and even 1 in a million events every now and then too... The problem is that they can't be predicted accurately, not that they won't happen. They will happen. From time to time.

As to my opinion of the hand you posted:
Other than the luck factor, the play seems strange to me.

UTG raises... now, the button has the best position, so it's normal to play all sorts of suited connectors and these kinds of cards for implied odds. you can handle the various draws you may get more efficiently with position.

However, you're facing two problems here:

1) You're the CO, and calling gives the button, who has position on you, better odds to call, if his hand is marginal in this spot, putting you in a tough situation.
I wouldn't know if 3-betting is wise here, because you did not post the stack sizes, so I do not know the implied odds... and that's pretty much the only thing you play such hands for.

so, either 3-bet (if the stacks are deep enough in comparison to the 3-bet size), or fold.

Also, the button is an interesting position to squeeze from, if the UTG is not too tight, and, while UTG would love that in this case, you won't...

2) Your hand is even harder to play than suited connectors. Suited one gapper. That means even most cases where you hit a draw, so many of these are gutshots, which makes it a much harder hand to play. playing this from the CO is very difficult.

Finally, you don't need to put yourself in such marginal spots against these stakes. Too risky if you're not a really good player and these guys will happily pay you off with more normal play.

I hope you're using Hold'em Manager of PokerTracker to track all your hand histories. You need these programs to find your leaks. Find hands you overplay or play incorrectly, find spots you're bad at, study how you do with different positions, against different preflop actions, and with different holecards etc.

overtime, you'll close enough holes to move up.
It does require learning and self analysis

NoOneSpcl - some great insight thoughts you post around here ... really, helps me a lot, since I am also not running well atm and it´s good to see that this is just common.

Sorry for the late reply, post was dead for a while so i stopped checking.

@EasyOnEAS : Rigged...i dont know, thats why i said i was getting suspicious. But, since my original post, i FINALY managed to beat those limits, and get my BR past 300$, so i'm now moving up to 5/10...wish me luck

@NoOneSpcl: I really apreciate your toughts on this, and i'm going to respect your opinion, even though i disagree with 3bet or fold statement. But, given that i dont consider my self to be a poker god reincarnate, im gonna take the hand to hand evaluation forums and see what i get there. I'd really apreciate if you would elaborate on it there again. My reason against 3bet are : i allready have position on him, with only button to act behind me, and if i raise, and the original raiser shoves, which he could with decent part of hes range, i would have to fold without even seeing a flop, which i would really like to with a hand like 97s. But, then again, both you and MrMardyBum ( gold ) have said that i should 3bet or fold with, so im now questioning my tactics. So, if it aint too much t as, check out hand EV forums, i'll try to convert the hand properly.

Hey there,

I wont offer any insight on the hand cos im a fish, especialy and cash games just gonna give you a couple of tips on how you can improve if you're not doing them already that is.

Make as many poker playing friends as you can always great to get lots of different opinions on hands and strategies and stuff helps you build up more knowledge, see each other grow as players and help each other find leaks etc start a skype group with them where you can all post hands or have sweat sessions another great way to improve.

I assume you've already read the bronze strategy articles? Watched the bronze cash game vids?

Get to the free coachings too if you're not already

And of course post some hands in the hand evaluation forums for professional opinions

There are lots of good ways to learn here so get stuck in and start crushing NL5 soon