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Advice on running bad
Just come off a pretty bad 2 months of poker. Constantly getting into spots where i have to coin toss for tournamnet survival (another issue)
It just seems that I get it in good, as I'm always slightly favoured in these situations. Either dominating the other hand, two over cards vs their two under cards, or a made hand (pocket pair, or top pair vs their f-all'
It feels like I am making plays that slightly favour me all the time, and that in the long run I should be getting a good share of fortune, but of course I rarely do.
THe favoured coin toss always seems to run against me. And this affects future tournament plays as im starting to avoid coin tossing now unless Im extremely shortstacked.
Question here is how do you react to a consistent bad variance streak? What do you change to say halt this bad streak?
Ive taken solid time off, watched videos and read up on different strategies to try out, but they all seem useless when i getting the poor end of the coin flip.
It just seems that I get it in good, as I'm always slightly favoured in these situations. Either dominating the other hand, two over cards vs their two under cards, or a made hand (pocket pair, or top pair vs their f-all'
It feels like I am making plays that slightly favour me all the time, and that in the long run I should be getting a good share of fortune, but of course I rarely do.
THe favoured coin toss always seems to run against me. And this affects future tournament plays as im starting to avoid coin tossing now unless Im extremely shortstacked.
Question here is how do you react to a consistent bad variance streak? What do you change to say halt this bad streak?
Ive taken solid time off, watched videos and read up on different strategies to try out, but they all seem useless when i getting the poor end of the coin flip.
Comments
Much of this is in the mind. Read "The Mental Game of Poker". It will solve most of your assumed problems immediately. It's almost all in the mind.
Also, for starters.....
Read THIS
And THIS
If that does not improve the perception, then you are doing something wrong as to how you play the game.
Let us know how you get on, please, & good luck.
Poker can be a very cruel game but you always need to think 'long term'. It sucks when your playing great and you end up going out on a flip or with the best hand but all you can do is make the most profitable decisions possible in each situation and instead of getting frustrated when you bubble a final table with your queens v.s ace 4 think to yourself '70% of the time I double my chips'.
The very worst thing you can do is actively seek to avoid flips if its profitable. If your waiting for premium hands all the time you'll have so little chips that a double up is worthless in comparison to going with the 'flip'.
I don't know how you play but it sounds like you may be being too tight. If you find yourself with AK on 5 big blinds and you get knocked out by a hand like J8o you might want to think about how you allowed yourself to get so short as opposed to how unlucky you got to lose.
For what its worth I'm going through the worst streak since I started playing. Last time I played I tallied my flips (sad i know) and found I won 4 and lost 13. But as long as I make profitable decisions then I'll win in the long run so its all okay.
Remember even the best players in the world only win half of their flips!
But yes as TK says the mind is a funny thing, we tend to forget our aj beating ak etc.
The book TK recommended BUY IT, read it, then re read it.
good luck in your endeavors
Regards
James
If we have 100bb and lose a 20bb pot we don't care all that much, don't even notice it. When we have 10bb and we lose the 20bb pot its game over, we notice it. It hurts.
I think the first part of what you said is actually more key than the second part.
"Constantly getting into spots where i have to coin toss for tournament survival (another issue)"
Winning uncontested pots and smaller pots is key in MTTs. If we have 20bb and can get to 30bb without having to go all in this is really good to our stack. We cant just wait for premiums and hope they hold. 3bet jamming and raising unopened pots from late position help us gain chips. At times we will go out with a non premium hand or when we are not a favourite to win. Likewise sometimes we will correctly put our chips in the middle, be up against a better hand and win!
Tips from me
Put your hands into a odds calculator (a lot of these are out there, google is your friend), quite often we aren't as big a favourite as we thought.
Review your hands
- See if your stealing the blinds much
- Are you playing back against aggressive players enough
Too often players look at the flip they lose as the reason they went out of a tournament and say there was nothing they could do. This is rarely the case, of course we need to win our flips to win tournaments but there are other factors involved too.
Post some hands in the clinic and people will give you help.
Just to let you know, I have cashed in two small tournaments, (winning one!) in the last two days, so really appreciating the good swings now, which maybe I wouldnt if i didnt go on bad streaks
(And i did notice some bad beats that ive dished out!).