[Guest]

I had plenty of time over Christmas and New Year's for poker. Played a bunch of sit-and-go's and multi-table tournaments. Didn't even come close to the money. I discovered new, not-previously-considered-possible ways to fall behind:

1) You get garbage starting hands when not in the blinds, so you fold. You get speculative hands when in the blinds, but someone throws in a HUGE raise ahead of you, so you fold. This goes on for several consecutive rounds (one time I counted 5, meaning I folded about 40 consecutive hands without seeing a flop). Note that the raise you're folding to is NOT the same person every time; it's pretty much spread around the table.

2) In a short period of time, you get a bunch of premium pocket pairs. Sometimes you get all your chips in, sometimes you don't (it depends on the situation, of course), but you get action and are in a dominating position every time. You also lose every time. Spaced out over several tournaments, I lost something like 8 consecutive hands where I had pocket Aces, Kings, or Queens.

3) After one of the losses mentioned in 2), you find yourself with a little more than a big blind. There's been some good-natured kidding in the chat, so you send "Look out! Here I come!" before going all-in with trash. Of course you get called, and triple-up when the board magically fits your hand. This happens a second time. On the very next hand, you pick up Aces and send a "one more time!" message. There are three callers, the flop is something like 2 6 10 rainbow, so you figure your chances of quadrupling-up are good. The turn is something inconsequential, and the river another 10. You can see where I'm headed: one of your callers had Ace-10.

4) I don't know how many consecutive times I got beat on the river. Getting beat on the river will happen, of course, but I must have lost 10+ hands in a row where I had the winning hand going to the river, sometimes dominating, but the last card always favored my opponent. Even if it was 50/50 every time, the probability of losing 10 in a row is 0.0009765625 (if I remember my college statistics correctly).

Things evened out when I placed 4th in a $1,000 tournament. I caught one "miracle" river card to stay alive, and only took one bad beat which didn't hurt much since I was chip leader at the time.

[Beat The Fish]

Thanks for the post, but I didn't realize that I hadn't restricted all forums to only registered users. Please register to continue posting.

[bigjohn]

Sorry, it was me: bigjohn. I logged in, was doing other things simultaneously, and must have timed out before I submitted my post.

[Beat The Fish]

Hey, no problem John. That sounds like a pretty bad run, but you can't blame yourself for breaks like that. I was going through a pretty rough time a couple of months ago with the same sort of stuff happening. Except for me, it was in ring games so I was losing a lot more money.

Every time I lose a big pot I think about the hand and analyze it. Could I have played it differently? Did I make the right moves? If I conclude that I did, then I have nothing to be upset about. It was just a bad beat. Bad luck doesn't upset me... knowing that I did something stupid does. So try to think back and analyze the hands. If you played it right, then just plugging away at your game. The luck aspect sometimes comes in spells in poker so you just have to wait for it to come back and don't get too frustrated. Easier said than done.

[TooEasy]

[Beat The Fish]

Hopefully it's been happening to guys in small-stakes tournaments. It's bad enough when you lose your buy-in, but I find it much more painful to lose cash at ring games. The other night, I put shortstacks all-in 3 times when I had AK. They beat me all 3 times with A4, AQ, and AJ. I made up for it with my quads and straight flush later on, though. The straight flush was a killer because he hit a King-high flush on the river, but it was an 8h to give me 4-5-6-7-8h. I've never had both of those in the same playing session.

[TooEasy]

I'm losing at the ring games. This weekend I won $50 in a low stakes tourney, then an hour later lost $50 to some snapperhead check/calling 72 to the River. I had JJJ on the Flop, he hit twos full of sevens on the River.

AJs vs 72s; 6 callers, action to me, I bet $20. 2 of the callers fold.

Flop=7JJ; checked to me, I bet $10; 4 callers (i know, could've bet stronger)
Turn=2; checked to me, I go all-in. 4 callers.
River=2; check, check, check...

Unbelievable! I had over $50 in the pot when that last card fell. Keep in mind, this is $1-$2 NL, that's a nice size pot. There were 3 others that check/called that hand to the end. With that board, what the hell were they drawing to?

Here is my theory, the more fish that are in the game, the worse your implied odds become. Consider this: If your drawing against 5:1, and you have 5 check/callers each drawing against 20:1, their collective odds become 4:1. So, while individually none of them really makes any substantial gains, collectively they slowly bleed you dry. Does this make sense? If half the table plays every hand to the River, without giving any thought to their odds, then poker becomes mostly a game of luck, and skill becomes secondary. Half the table is playing poker, the rest is playing the lottery.

Maybe this is the trap. A fish is more susceptible to feeling "pot commited". Once they've got money in, they're chasing to get it back, and they always put money in. In a game with 1, 2 or 3 fish this is good, the odds are still in your favor. As their number increases, your advantage decreases.

I know I'm rambling, but, does any of this make sense? Maybe I'm rationalizing my own poor play. In a more comptitive game I would have bet stronger, but losing to hands like this has put a damper on my aggression.

[Beat The Fish]

That's exactly the type of game that you need to be more aggressive at. AJs isn't all that strong a hand to come in with a full pot like that, but at least you tried to raise to thin the field. Hands like that play much better against a smaller field, and I would've put in a larger raise preflop if I knew that they were all calling stations and I had chosen to play the hand.

Next, if you only had $40 left and you say there were at least 4 callers to your preflop raise, you should be going all-in on the flop. That's less than the size of the pot and you didn't say if two of the cards on the board were suited but that would add to your wariness. With 4 players on the flop, someone will probably call you so go ahead and push the rest of it in.

Lastly, I don't see how you didn't win the pot anyway. You say that the board looked like this: 7-J-J-2-2. If you had A-J, you've got Jacks full of Deuces which beats out Deuces full of Sevens... which actually is Deuces full of Jacks if there were two Jacks on the board. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Anyway, I understand your frustration with the fish at ring games. You just have to buckle down and play less hands and make them pay for the draws. Don't get greedy and bet that small amount into the flop... just shove it in and make them pay if you know they're reckless.

[TooEasy]

Your right about the hand. My recollection is not as sharp as I thought it was. That's the way I remember the hand playing out, but it doesn't make any sense.
It really doesn't matter though, it was just one of a string frustrating hands.
I do need to work on my hand discipline, but sometimes it seems like I literally sit through a hundred hands before I have one I want to play.
What makes it tough is I play for fun, I want to play, not watch, and if I make some money, great. If I lose to someone who outplayed me, I can learn something from it and walk away smiling. Even losing to a lucky River card is going to happen, but in these types of games it seems like it happens more than it should.
I'm going to stick to sit & gos for a while. I win more often there, and I feel like it's a better place to work on my game.

[Beat The Fish]

Well, it sounds like you're taking it in stride.

I enjoy Sit 'n Gos as well and I actually went through a period where that was all I was playing. They can be great for tighter players because you can afford to wait around for the premium hands until the blinds really start to creep up. Then, you can be more successful in stealing the blinds since you've earned a tight reputation at the table, anyway.

You've got the same outlook I do on poker hands: I don't learn anything from bad beats (except that I made the right choice) but if I make a bad decision or get outplayed I look back at the hand and try to figure out what I should've done differently. Bad beats do happen more often online because a lot of people just don't care. They don't view it as real money and it's just an extra click of the mouse to many. However, there are a lot of steps you can take to let it happen less often. That's what I tried to dedicate this site to.

I hope that you are still having fun, and it can be frustrating to sit around and wait for hands. If you're looking to play lots of hands, then maybe an aggressive tournament game is what you can do for now.