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constant bad running
today i was only multi tabling 3 cash tables, yet somehow lost 250 bb in less than an hour overall. i always look back at each signifiacnt hand at the end of a session and looked through them, and every all in i ether get it in good and get outdrawn or get it in with straight when they have flush coolers etc i played yesterday as well and lost 150bb overall with the same things occuring and 2 days before that also etc
im by no means the best player, but apart from a few leaks here and there im good yet somehow play correctly and keep getting outdrawn and out straighted/fluished/bigger full house. its difficult not to join the bandwagon of the site being "rigged" when things like this seem to happen a lot, although i know that has been addressed before. any comments much appreciated
Comments
You will never eradicate variance, but doing a few small things might help keep you on the right side of it more often than not....
-play more tables. As many as you can, ideally, but obviously whilst remaining within bankroll/laptop constraints.
-play as tight as a ducks ar$se initially. I struggle with this, cos you sit down and are excited to load up a few tables and hit the felt. Chances are you'll have people on your table you don't know, so perhaps consider folding hands you otherwise wouldn't (nothing premium! But maybe pass AJo UTG etc), even if only for a couple of orbits, until you get a feel for the table flow and dynamic, and have had chance to observe the other players.
-Understand that variance works both ways. You get a set in vs a flush draw and they get there on the river. It sucks, but it's poker. Positive variance works in a more subtle way. You raise AK, and get 3 streets of value on a K high board from someone who peeled KJ in the BB, just things like that that are easy to forget or gloss over but they all add up.
-If it can happen, it can happen. Unless you have your opponent all in and drawing dead, there is always a chance, no matter how small, that your hand won't hold up. I've never won the lottery, but if I buy a ticket on Saturday I have chance. If you have AA on an A72 flop, and villain with KK goes all in, they can still win. The chance of them winning is very very slim, but there is still a chance there.
-Lastly, the day you start to blame the site is the day you should give up poker.
Example 1 : Shoving with JJ in tournamnet, 20bb. Caller with A4. xx4-4-x board.
Example 2 :1 hour later. Micro Cash game. AA with someone elsea as 3BB RAISE. Reraise 6BB, All in from person behind. I call, AA vs 65 off (yes). Board is x55-x-x
Example 3:I have 10 9 off in big blind. Decide to defend .Flop is 667. Small bet (2bb) so call. hit the 8. All in from other player. Call. Villain has two pair with pocket queen. I had the nut straight . Next card? Queen. Boats up to knock me out.
Example 4: shoving with 10/10. Callers with AK and AQ. 539-4-2. Both split with straights
I rarely play at all, just leisurely, so these arent minor incidents that happen over a large sampe. THese four examples have happened over 24 hours this weekend. I would easily take it if they didnt happen so soon together, and coupled with me dishing bad beats
But whether they happen 1 after the other or 9 years apart, is basically irrelevant.
To the OP, I would suggest that this issue, which has been raised by many, many people in the past, is simply one of expectation. The generally held view, is that poker is "predominently" a game of skill (quote taken from a Dutch court ruling), and therefore as players improve, and play more, they should experience more and more wins and less and less losses. The variance factor, is just a minor inconvenience to have to deal with. Unfortunately this is not the case, and it's not until a player has 100,000s hands under their belt that their true EV, a reflection of their skill and knowledge so to speak, will show through. I read a piece of work some years back that indicated that there was still only a 95% confidence level with 750K hands played.
So, even with poker being a great game of skill, there's still a fairly hefty vein of chance running through it, and I suspect you've not appreciated, or been misled over, what it's "reasonable" to expect , and therefore at what point it's reasonable to start asking questions over integrity. I've certainly been there, having found myself on the business end of runs of long odds draws that would test the patience of a saint and have cowboys reaching for their S&Ws. As a sideline thought, I've never yet read a book about poker that examines this factor in any depth, and says it as it is; it seems to be part of a new player's apprenticeship that gets left out.
Unfortunately it's a game where it's possible for good players to lose, bad players to win, and improving and playing more does not equal money in the bank. At a six seat table, the variance fairy is usually there taking up seat number seven. Until you've several hundred thousand hands under your belt, you're still gambling to a degree (the actual degree can be debated), and even then the variance doesn't just go away it just calculates out as a smaller proportion of your overall play volumes.
Currently I spend most of my time playing on a site where there's no money involved. The same variance puts an appearance in there, and so the conclusion to draw is that it's part and parcel of the game and nothing to do with any alleged irregularities in the randomness of the game. As someone above has said, it does cut both ways.
I wish you better cards in the future.
Goethe