Variance or do I just suck
Posted by wdres123
Posted by
wdres123
posted in
Mental Game
Variance or do I just suck
So I've been taking poker somewhat seriously for something like a year now. I've only really been putting in any reasonable volume for the last few months and up until the last month or so it's been relatively smooth sailing. As you can guess from this post that's not the case anymore. I guess I'm just looking for some advice or guidance on how to improve from here.
When I started I knew a bit about the game but was basically just a fish. Despite that starting out tbh it has felt very...easy. I started out 2 tabling at 5nl on ignition and beat it for something like 25 ev bb/100 over a few thousand hands. Obviously not a remotely big enough sample size, but I felt pretty comfortable in the game so I took a shot at 10nl. 10nl felt pretty similar and I put in about 15k hands before shot taking 25nl. 25nl did feel like a bit of a jump but I still felt relatively confident in the games. I again ran at something like ev 11 bb/100 over around 8k hands. Obviously I ran well, but I felt relatively confident in the games and was happy working on my game a bit more before shot taking 50 once I had a bit more of a roll. I started mixing in 25 zone as well which felt a good bit harder than reg tables but was good practice and made volume a lot easier.
Then this happened
The huge downswing is over the last couple weeks. It started at 25 zone so I went back to the reg tables exclusively as I wasn't really rolled for zone...and then just kept losing. I took a week off, dropped down to 10nl for a few sessions, studied more, did lots of session review, played only when I was fresh, but all of a sudden I just can't win anymore. I've had something like 11 losing sessions in a row, and am coming off a particularly bad one today that honestly makes me feel like just giving up. At this point it just feels like I've been on a heater for 30k hands before this. I love poker and want to continue to improve and move up but these last few sessions have just been so utterly miserable and at this point I'm really struggling to tell the difference between run bad and play bad. It feels like I've just lost all sense of what is good poker, and I'm having a really hard time being objective in session reviews and while playing etc. I still have so much work to do on my game, but it's not like the games I'm playing in are very tough (at all lol), which makes it even more frustrating when I consistently lose.
I guess my question after all the rambling is what is the best way to approach this? How do I know what is just variance and what needs a lot of work? Take more time off? Work even more on the technical game? Just give up? This has definitely unearthed some mental game problems which I plan on working on as well, but I'm just feeling overwhelmed with everything at this point and where to even start, and very demoralised. If you have read all these rambling so far I really appreciate it lol and any kind of guidance would be greatly appreciated.
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You most probably are a solidly winning player at 5NL and 10NL. It's unclear if you are or aren't a winning player at 25NL just on the basis of a 15k hands sample. Assuming a standard deviation of 100BB/100, the standard deviation in total winnings is just about the same as the expected total winnings when your true win rate is 8bb/100. This means that if you are break-even at that limit, you have a 16% chance of winning more than a consistent 8bb/100 winner would, on average, and, conversely, if you are a consistent 8bb/100 winner yourself, you have a 16% chance of just breaking even or losing money after just 15,000 hands.
Might there be fundamental leaks in your strategy and/or mental game in spite of your advanced knowledge? Maybe. If you'd like to brush up on the fundamentals, and if you haven't done it already, I would recommend either one or both of (1) Peter Clarke's From the Ground Up course and (2) his newer book "Poker Therapy: Rewire your Mind for Poker" in order to put you back on a productive course.
Appreciate the insight. Yeah I think there are definitely technical things I need to work on. I have been going through FTGU which has been very helpful.
This is just part of the game. Just step down in stakes and keep improving. As long as you are learning something relevant or get in some practice you are heading the right direction. Taking time off doesn't solve anything per se, but if poker results affects other more important things in your life negatively then it could be a good idea. You'd want your hobby to make your life better overall. Have you seen Chris Pimmer's video on Running bad? Could be a good place to look for ideas for and a vision of a great mindset.
You can play against GTO sensei for postflop or preflop guru for preflop if you lack confidence to play real money poker. You can use a solver too but then you have to solve it yourself. It can be difficult to understand the why and what is going on, but most people tend to get a better grasp at ranges when they get in many repetitions of playing a certain spot.
Thanks for the advice. Didn't know GTO sensei was a thing so I'll look into that. Haven't seen that video either that looks like a good place to start
I the video is actually called results oriented thinking: https://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/chris-pimmer-results-oriented-thinking/
I've run this cycle many times and for me at least a winning run slowly leads to auto-pilot if I'm not careful. It's happened again and again. And auto-pilot is a poker player's, (or at least my) worst enemy--you absolutely have to maintain disciplined focus on every hand (by which I mean thinking through ranges) or you can easily slip into bad habits or tilt. And it only takes a handful of big mistakes that happen quickly with a lack of focus to turn an otherwise solid session into a big loser, especially as you move up in stakes and run into tougher players.
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