Striving to break the vicious circle.

Take a break to get some emotional distance to what you are experiencing right now.

"I have no idea if I'm running bad, or I'm just a bad player"

Not using a tracker? From your post I conclude you play cash games ("it usually takes 15-20 minutes till I get coolered/sucked out only to quit the game"). Your All-In EV is a good estimate of your performance, at least after a few thousand hands. If you play on a site where tracking is not supported, I suggest you copy your biggest winning and losing hands, calculate your All-In EV and sum up later.

Dropping down one level for a while is also good for building confidence. Good luck!

I would disagree that All-in EV is a good estimate of if you are running good or bad. If you are good enough at the game you would already know.

What stakes do you play? How big is your hand sample? What is your win-rate?

Not knowing very much about you besides what you posted above I would say you have some pretty big mental game leaks. I would suggest The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler.

Also other people make the game look easy because they have played millions of hands and studyed their game for years.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Hey. Sorry, I didn't see that you replied as you did that practically at the same time I did. :D

I honestly have no idea about my winrate, and I wouldn't wanna know if I had such info, to tell you the truth.

I'm more interested in knowing how to get back on track, not worry so much about the short-term craziness and how to keep my eyes on the big picture, which is pretty blurred now, to be honest. :p

Hey. Thanks for the reply. I'm not really a big fan of taking a break at this point since I feel as though I've lost too much time already and if I keep taking breaks/cashing out/spewing-off money when I run bad, I'll never make it, I assume.

I am using a tracker, but now more about running into the nuts almost every single time. I feel like they're on top of their range like 90% of the time. It's like the purpose of whatever line I take is just to make sure he gets there, and then I'm like 'yup, got the again'. :D

Unfortunately, my computer broke down a while ago and I've lost my database, so I'm left with just some random excerpts.

Here's how I've been doing (10NL mostly, with some shots at 16/25NL): Click

And now every single line is tanking and my confidence is so low that I don't know if I'm playing well anymore (not Sauce-well, just uNL-well, of course :p).

I've already dropped down in stakes (I was in the middle of shotting 25NL, so it can wait till the doomswitch is off, I guess), but I levels of motivation in such periods are sooo low, that I can't force myself to grind ('if I'm not a winner, why bother playing' is my reasoning at those times), which really sucks, since there's no other way than to just grind through it.

And whenever I watch videos of coaches playing, I notice that they can grind - no matter how they run. And one thing that I hate more than anything is losing - I just can't stand it, which is why those periods of badrun affect my mood/play/confidence levels so much.

So I guess the question is how do you guys manage to get through such periods without all the mental rollercoaster? Those swings are just slowing me down too much, and I'd like to work on it, but I have no idea how.

Having a large bankroll helps with the rollercoaster of poker but also having a lot of experience and knowing you are a winning player in the games you are playing helps a lot.

Well, you are working on this issue right now. By sharing your experience and reflecting on your situation you are going in the right direction:

"there's no other way than to just grind through it"

^ This is the answer.

All pokerplayers must learn to accept the pain of losing, because losing is an inherent part of playing poker. We can train ourselves to continue grinding through downswings, some people need to get hammered a lot before they give in and accept that these painful periods are inevitable. You can do it!

Thanks again, guys. Yeah, I think that I am gonna take a break, but only to work on my game/mental approach. It would be quite refreshing, I suspect and would certainly increase my confidence levels at the tables.

When you start playing again post some hands in the forums and I will take a look at them.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Sure I will, thank you! I'm in the middle of moving to the other site, so I'll probably start playing tomorrow. Until then, I'll study my ass off! :D

themightyjim 10 years, 8 months ago

Why do you need/want to "make it" in poker?

You don't sound like you enjoy it, and obviously you're not so naturally gifted at the game that you're just leaving money on the table if you don't play. I mean, poker isn't exactly a good investment of your time in terms of a career plan. Going to school, getting a good job, starting your own business, etc are all much more +EV financial uses of your time long term.

Stop thinking about it as quitting or failing, and start thinking about making smart quality of life decisions.

There is no way anyone could read OP and think anything other than you need to stop looking at poker as more than a hobby.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Hey. Thanks for the post, Jim. I see your point, but that's not exactly what I meant (or what I think you think I ment, if that makes sense :D), as I can't really define what 'making it' in poker actually means in general.

And it's not that I don't enjoy the game. On the contrary - I truly love the game, the strategy part, especially. I just can't stand losing. I am a really competitive person, so I try to do my best at whatever activity I take up. And now I'm kind of stuck since every time I managed to build my bankroll a little bit, I either cashed it out (not always because 'I felt like it') or took a shot at higher stakes and failed. I used to have pretty good results, and now I feel like I'm doing terribly whenever I play. And my confidence suffers a lot - I don't know if I'm any good anymore.

It just seems that the more effort I put into it (playing/working on my game/diet/training etc.), the worse results I get. And as I mentioned - I don't have a big database since my computer has broken down recently and I needed to buy a new one, so having a large sample to motivate myself/keeping in mind that I'm a winning player is not really an option. I just had some excerpts from my results, and those don't really tell anything, so I deleted them.

I just get really emotional whenever I start to do badly - I lose confidence, my volume sucks, I don't really feel like playing, because I feel like I'm just burning money there anyway.

And when I'm winning, that's simply not the case - poker becomes fun again, I don't count the hours, I don't worry about my results - I just sit there and enjoy the game for as long as I can.

Whenever I watch most coaches play - I notice that they just can grind - no matter how bad they're running at the time, they just manage to grind through it, whereas I would have probably rage-quit like 5 times already, not play anymore that day, and be pissed off for the rest of the day or even longer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I just lack something that would keep me motivated and remind me that there is a purpose in what I'm doing. I don't think that looking at poker as more than a hobby is possible at this point - I think about poker most of the time - I browse forums/watch videos/read books - even if I'm involved in another activity, I tend to think about some concepts/the hands I played/hands in the forums etc, so that's why I get so affected by bad results.

Sorry for the TL;DR, but I'm not much of poster, so it's hard to me to put my perception on the situation into two sentences. :p

themightyjim 10 years, 8 months ago

taaazz,

I get where you're coming from. I'm an extremely competitive person and could give you dozens of examples that I'm sure you would get right away.

But getting back to poker. I've played professionally now for close to 7 years. I'm not going to lie and tell you I don't sometimes feel the way you describe in OP. But those are the exceptions and not the rule. If I felt that way the majority of the time I would snap quit playing full time and move on to other things. Simply put, I don't spend my time and energy on things that make me unhappy. I do have the good fortune of having gotten a college degree in civil engineering and a masters degree before I started playing pro, so quitting for me would also not be a potential financial disaster (and I'm married to a medical doctor and we have no kids yet). But there would have to be some dire financial implications to force me to keep playing if I felt like you describe in OP.

You seem like a pretty smart and self aware person, and I'm sure you would have tremendous success in another field if you applied yourself the way you seem to want to with poker. But if you put those efforts into an education or a job you're actually creating long term value for yourself. I've checked into it, but they don't give health insurance, promotions, retirement plans, etc to professional poker players ;). So beyond the fact that you're trying to force your way in a career that doesn't seem to make you happy, you're putting your time and energy into something that only gives back if you continue to put time in. You don't make money as a professional unless you're working (playing the game). Conversely, every time you work you're at risk for what you hate (what you describe in OP).

Lastly, if your primary desire to succeed in poker is the competitive side you certainly don't need to be playing as more than a hobby. You can treat poker as a hobby, earn side income, still take the game seriously, and mostly remove the possibility of the stress inducing tilt that you've come to loathe. If less is on the line you can get back to enjoying the game for the competition, and not the short term results.

I look forward to the day when I can bring myself to move on from the game and into another field mostly because I know I'll probably love playing poker more than ever then.

regardless of your decision I wish you the best on and off the felt. Just remember, regardless of what you decide to do or how your next session turns out everything is going to be fine. Life keeps going, and exciting and amazing things happen all the time.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Jim,

Thank you for such an amazing post! I've read it like 10 times already and I think you've made some great points that I realized I'd completely forgotten about, because I was so furious about 'working hard' and not getting the results that I started to miss the point of playing completely. I used the quotation marks, because maybe the truth is that I haven't worked as hard as I might think I have. And it's not like my work will automatically grant me the results within a few days. I just get so caught up in thinking about the short-term results that I tend to forget about the reason why I play poker in the first place - to enjoy it. Whenever I didn't think about the results and just played for the sake of playing, that's when I played the most (in terms of volume) and was pretty satisfied with the quality of my decisions and usually results.

I know that I don't sound as I enjoy the game all that much, if at all, which is true at the moment. But now that I took some time to actually sit and think about it, I've come to realize the exact reasons why I ended up feeling like this. This mostly has to do with my competitive nature, but not entirely. I need to become more humble in my approach and accept the fact that it's a skill game where people might play some hands differently than I expect them to play, be patient and not look at the time I've already put into my game as being 'wasted', but rather invested, and use the experience I have to start over. And the fact that I used to win with a certain gameplan doesn't mean that it has to work anymore. And the fact that most of my focus is on short-term results, I don't get any satisfaction from actually playing the game from the strategic point.

Also, I feel as though I'm not fully focused whenever I'm either studying or playing. It's more like putting in time, but not quality hours by any means, which is something I need to work on as well. It seems that there's just too much chaos in my game right now and that I need to approach the whole situation differently. After all, I can't expect to be doing the same thing and hoping to get other results, can I? And there are so many great coaches/people in the forums here at RIO that I just feel like I'm not taking full advantage from what this community has to offer, which is about to change.

Additionally, one thing that I've noticed as well is that the things that seem to be motivating at first, are really just distractions in the process. I'm sure it would feel amazing to play at the nosebleeds one day or travel the world to play live tournaments, but day-to-day, they are not what I should be thinking about.

After all, we should be all playing the game we enjoy, have sufficient bankroll and skill level for - there's no need to compare yourself to other people, is there? I mean, sure, you can look up to someone, but not in a 'I feel like a failure, because I'm not at that point' kind of way. Also, my results-oriented goals probably didn't help, since I have no direct influence on those, so it's something I need to reevaluate.

Again, thank you so much for finding the time to write this post, it has helped me tremendously. I already know what I need to do, so it's high time I put it into action.

themightyjim 10 years, 8 months ago

you're very welcome and I'm glad it could be of any help. I think if you can you should keep updating this thread with your thoughts and evolutions as a poker player, and hopefully the same process and progress that you experience can help others in the future.

All the best on and off the felt.

ViperJohnB 10 years, 8 months ago

What's the root of your emotions when you lose? Do you feel that it is because you have played bad? Or do you feel like you were unlucky? Realistically, you should be making correct decisions based on the information you have at the time of the decision. If you were wrong then make the needed adjustments. If you were correct but lost then you move on to the next decision. Your reactions that lead you to quit seem like you might be playing at levels that make you uncomfortable if you lose. If your opponents are observant then they will be able to exploit your tendencies. I know I have personally used this against specific opponents in the past so I'm sure it is common for other players to do this also.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

I can't really tell at this point, really. I mean, I've always been pretty critical about my game, but the way I'm currently running just took it to another level ;). Which I think is great, to be honest with you, guys, as it requires me to think really in-depth about some spots. And I'm not going to whine about how I got coolered again or that he got there with his runner-runner - I've wasted way too much time on that already, and now that I think about it, it really doesn't help me all that much, if at all.

About the rage-quitting - it's more like an anti-tilt quit. I just know the feeling when I'm about to spew (more than usually, mind you :p), so I prefer just to quit until I feel like playing again instead of sitting there hoping my C-game will do me any good. It's not that I do it whenever I lose a flip or something, just when I feel it is going really terribly, which is, well, whenever I play. :D

Insilicio 10 years, 8 months ago

Considered a coach? Like coaches are not only for strategy, but also for giving advice when times are tough. I helped some guys at your limit and find they like it a lot, and also the other way around I did hire multiple coaches in my life and I am glad I did.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

I did! But then I realized I can't afford one, so I need to figure it out on my own. And I don't really have any poker friends to talk about the game with, so I just post here in the forums and ask the guys if I have any questions - and I really appreciate the fact that they are always willing to explain everything in more detail - it's been of great help, thanks, people!

And I hope that one day I would be able to give back what I keep getting from the poker community - you guys are amazing, truly.

Numbers 10 years, 8 months ago

Make sure you have your bankroll rules set. Cashing out is killing on micro's ,so avoid that by all means. Then just play when you feel like it, spend some time away from the tables to watch vids etc and try out some new things in your game. Look were your weakspots are and work on them, make them the object of the game. gl!

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Thanks, Numbers. See, the problem is that if I continue to play whenever I feel like it, I won't get anywhere - if I hadn't done all that, combined with (count/point)less cashouts, I wouldn't have made this thread. I suppose all the cashouts were a recipe for disaster on itself, because if I'd decided not to make any cashouts untill I move up to stakes where I can comfortably play for a living, I wouldn't have been stuck at such point, feeling like this. I believe that I did make progress, I just can't see it because I basically got rid of my results (or any signs of them).

So the plan now is to let go of the past, and start again, but do it right this time. If I want significant results, I need to make significant changes to my approach. And I hope to look back at some point and tell a proud tale of yet another one uNL player, who decided not to give up, no matter how tough the journey got.

Again, I cannot say how grateful I am that you guys didn't view it as just some newbie complaining about what probably most of you went through, like, many times. Or you did, but decided to help me anyway. Thank you for that.

blackpuma 10 years, 8 months ago

taaazzz,

To me it seems that you are very intense about your game. To piggy bank on what mightyjim said, I would advise that you get some other interests and get a well rounded life. Join a gym where you go 4-5 times a week, get a girlfriend, a good social circle and find some interests. The reason I suggest this is that then poker shouldn't come to be everything. When you put all your eggs in one basket and it breaks it becomes a tragedy and when there is no one to lean on its even more frustrating..

Many of the best poker players devote time to other interests to keep them sane. You will burn out and if you have no where else to go or nothing else to do then what? Its essential that you have something which can take your mind off and which u can be passionate about doing while taking a break from poker.

Just like when your rich, you have multiple sources of income, to be successfull at poker i believe you need multiple sources of outlet. Don't just take a break. Go see a football match, go out on a date with a girl u haven't seen in ages. Its summer go out to a lake for a weekend. I guarantee if you find an outlet that will make you LOVE LIFE. There is no way you don't come back and crush.

To be healthy individuals we all need releases, and I advise you to find yours.

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Sorry, man, I didn't see you've posted. That's some great advice. I guess you're right that I am intense about the game - but that's only because I want it bad to succeed, and I won't stop until I do so.

I'm not much of a social person, but I go out every now and then. Besides, I go to the gym 3x/week (which is about to go up to 5x - new plan), do cardio 3x/week, I walk every day, have some daily routines that help me work on my discipline. Also, I have some non poker-related hobbies that I enjoy (which I've sort of forsaken in those last couple of weeks, but that's about to change), so it's all good. ; )

Hey guys. Soooo, I took a couple days off only get a -7BI beatdown today. Well, what can you do, right? ;)

But despite that, I feel much better (maybe not now, but in general) and I'm going to keep working hard. I mean, there's not much else to say at this point. I'd like to look back at this thread _when_ I get through it and post my results so that when I arrive at a similar situation in the future, I'd know that I can make it.

Anyway, I'm really excited nonetheless as I want to play ~250k hands in two months, so it would be an interesting challenge, especially that my volume always sucked.

I'll probably start posting my results if I start doing less terribly (I don't suppose anyone would want to look at my current graph :D). Until then, I'll keep working.

Good luck at the tables, guys. :)

Hello everyone! Just wanted to drop a quick update. Still a long way to go, but I managed to grind through the downswing, so that's always nice.

I don't have a sample from the previous site, but here is how I've been doing the last 4 days.

Nothing exciting, but it's satisfying to see the progress, so I thought I'd share with you guys to show you that your advice didn't go to waste. ; ) I'll try to update this thread every now and then, provided that I don't go busto, ofc. Until then, I'll keep working. Cheers!

Nice rebound!

taaazz 10 years, 8 months ago

Thank you, sir! Managed to win another 5bi today. I only need to learn how to control my inner spewtard and it will be all good. :D Any tips on that?