You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Sky Poker forums will be temporarily unavailable from 11pm Wednesday July 25th.
Sky Poker Forums is upgrading its look! Stay tuned for the big reveal!
What Do I Do? You Decide.lol
I have been through a slump on Sky Poker recently and am deciding whether to deposit, to move sites or whether I should give up all together? I only play MTT's so know that it can be extended periods between wins, and that you shouldn't hope to cash everytime. I have cashed a total of £750ish this month so far, yet have no bankroll left after only playing Main events. I know I'm not good enough yet to be making massive money from poker, nor am I nieve enough to believe in conspiracy theories, yet my results have become a joke and my game isn't in bad shape. I am struggling to justify depositing again and paying for tonights Main(£33). So I'll throw it out there and see what you guys think. Should I Deposit and just wait for the swing in variance, Should I look for a new site to play on, or Should I give up on poker and accept that I'm not good enough? Anyone with an opinion then let me know. Thanks. Best wishes. Shaun the Villa fan in Bham
Comments
Hi Shaun.
MTT's are, by definition, high variance.
Why not try some DYM's, or even better, Cash? - the variance in these is much less.
Try the sats to reduce your costs or just move down to some smaller buyin tournaments.
I would play cash but if you don't like it then smaller MTT buy ins plus the main event satellites rather than buying straight in if that's what you're doing.
Every time you write that you're a Villa fan in Birmingham Shaun I think the poker gods give you a bad beat
Thanks Belsibub. I have tried sats to reduce costs. Only problem with them is that the sats are a big percentage of the seat price. For example, if I tried to sat into tonights, a direct sat is £7.20. That is 20% of a seat, so if you don't qualify then you are just increasing the price of the seat. So if you try once and fail, then buy in direct, a min cash barely shows a profit. If you play the mini sats that get you into a semi/direct sat then you have to win two tourneys to get into the Main. Thanks for another opinion though. Best wishes. Shaun the Villa fan in Bham
Looking at your stats you clearly like to play a lot of Bounty Hunters. Whilst MTT's have a much bigger variance than cash, I would say the variance in Bounty Hunter Tournies is even greater than NLH MTT's.
Your losses in ME's can be put down to bad BRM (Bank Roll Management) I like to play one or two ME's per week, but try to build up my winnings in smaller NLH events such as deepstacks and treat myself to an ME if I manage to bink a couple of decent cashes.
I am a recreational player and accept that on average I lose £0.65p per game when I play MTT's, but also know this could be a lot worse if I played above my bank roll.
I would suggest coming down a few levels and playing NLH between £3 - £5.00 and treat yourself to an ME if you bink a couple of wins a week. You will probably find you enjoy it a lot more as well, as there's not so much pressure to cash in every game.
Best of luck in whatever you decide.
A high profile Team51 member had a similar downswing recently. He said it felt like he'd forgotten how to play poker, suddenly he could barely win a hand, let alone a tournament. He decided to go right back to square one and went back to playing the £1.15 DYMs he last played when he first joined Sky. Within a few days his confidence returned, so did the results. He's now built his way back up to the biggest games. We could all learn a lesson from his example. Good luck.
Shaun, I MUST say this, even though it is part of my role to promote, amongst other things, Tourneys on Sky Poker.
MTT's are VERY high variance. Even the greatest players sometimes go through a lean spell. In the Live arena, I know of any number of quality players who have suffered a "drought". (Mine is going in for 9 years now....).
You need to give this some thought - Cash, & DYMs, are MUCH lower variance. Or why not try the new "Timed Tourneys"? - again, these have much lower variance, as a greater % of the field gets paid.
The last thing anyone wants if for you to...
1) Go busto
2) Get "down" on yourself, & not enjoy your poker.
As for tonight, for a whole £5, you can play the Forum DTD - THREE Tourneys, all deep stacks, for a fiver!
Give the Main Events a rest for a week or two, play a bit smaller, & fingers crossed, it will turn for you soon. After all, even Villa won on Saturday.
Good Luck.
[QUOTE]i understand what you are saying but i do not understand the "new site option" if you can afford a deposit on another site, then why not deposit here?? the variance on other sites is exactly the same as here so may as well stay here imo!!
Posted by bigflop1
Exactly - to suggest otherwise suggests the bad run has "got into your head", as that's just not logical.
Posted by Tikay10
See above. It was a blatant attempt to inflate the amount of responses I got.lol
You to me see a quite accomplished player just having a bad run.If you just drop to a slightly lower level and play well i think then you will be more happy to deposit for higher games,Good luck
Jim spurs fan from Chelmsford.:):)
At the moment I am rarely playing the big tournaments, sometimes satelliting into the main events and Rollers. When you are questioning your own talent always seems to be the time when your kings run into aces or you make a crucial error. But I just see this as sound bankroll management.
Sometimes a break from the game helps, but only if you are not enjoying it. What you need to do is find ways of continuing to love the game while getting your form and confidence back.
Its crazy to be depositing regularly and just crossing your fingers that it will all come together again in a main event. Instead of spending £30 on one event, why not play 4 or 5 for the same money? There is almost as much fun to be had from final tabling a £5 tournament or even a £10 BH.
Personally I am against going down the sit and go route. It is something I have tried with only limited success in the past. Although I managed to beat the rake at lower levels, moving up its harder to beat those STT specialists, and more important it can affect your tournament game. Sit and go play is often more negative and then loses you that spark that used to win tournaments.
But recently I have started to enjoy cash, and now have a couple of hour long sessions every day at 20nl tables.
I also play a lot of hilo omaha, and think I have a small edge over most of the players here (blatant brag ... I just won a £1.10 entry tourny as I am writing this, only a tenner, but every little helps !}
Playing cash and omaha stops me getting bored with holdem tournies, and am sure will help my tournament game long term. And this month it has more than paid for my tournament entries including SPT.
Tikays suggestion of playing the DTD is excellent. I won it a few weeks back, and it gave me great satisfaction and a bit of a lift too.
So variety is the spice of life, find a way of enjoying your poker, regenerating your confidence, and eventually the results will come.
I had a lengthy downswing last year, and the year before too. But both times I came back with 2 or 3 main event wins in a week. Thats the lot of a tournament player. I will never let a bad run interfere with fulfilling my poker ambitions and neither should you.
Superb Post, Tony. There speaks a man who, umm, speaks.
Best wishes. Shaun the Villa fan in Bham.
good advice thought ,play smaller tourny's with a bit of cash on the side.and try to sat into main events(even if you dont win a seat these games are great value for £5 ish for a couple hours of poker)
Shaun, you understand that mtt's are a high variance game. Extended periods of poor results are part and parcel of being an mtt player and have to be accepted if that is your chosen game. Profitability can often depend on the turn of one card or the outcome of one hand, and that is the life of a tournament player. It's all highs and lows and invariably there are more lows than highs.
I've played online mtt's for approx. 9 years and had some wonderful runs and some extended downswings. It's all part of being exclusively a main event mtt player. I'm currently on a 200 game downswing and although I've had one main event win and a few cashes in there, it's been mostly losses. I'm not particularly worried that I'm in the midst of a downswing as I've encountered these many times over the years.
One way to even out the downswings is to up the volume with lower buy-in mtt's rather than going for the big one every night. When your game is ''off'' or you're in the midst of a bad run you will get very disillusioned paying out large buy-ins for little or no return and that in itself will affect your game. My personal way is to drop the volume, play when I'm in the right frame of mind, and see how it goes.
The advice about cash and stt's is good - personally it doesn't ''float my boat'' and playing just one or two mtt's a day suits me fine. Changing sites can work to give your confidence a boost, or, confirm just how bad you're running - so that's not really a remedy. The staying within your B/R is good advice if it applies. I get the impression it's more confidence thing with you rather than B/R management. Taking a complete break can and often does work wonders for some players.
So there are lots of ''remedies'' none of which are guaranteed to work for you. When you have considered your finances and made an honest assessment of how you are playing at the moment, try to work out for yourself what is best for you. We can all attempt to help you by giving advice relating to what works for us but the real solution is to find out what works for you. The way you react to your current downswing and the way you (hopefully) bounce back afterwards will stand you in good stead for when it happens in the future.
The only thing I can guarantee is that it will happen again in the future - it's an ugly but integral part of the game.