Poker Forum

I've been all the way back down to 305, but I cut my losing sessions before I got upset, and I started playing a little longer on my winning sessions. Why is it so instinctive to play longer when we're losing and quit when we're winning? Right now I'm playing a really great 50c/$1, omaha hi/lo game, I'm sitting on $50 and I bought in for $20, I wanted to quit when I got to 30, then again at 40 and the only reason is because I was ahead and I wanted to preserve a win. Mike Caro has some great stuff on our tendency to quit when we're ahead and keep playing when we're behind.

I've started to think of my bankroll a little different lately. I have no intention of taking my money out for a decent bit of time, so it really doesn't make sense to get upset when i have a losing session. My bankroll is just a number until I can take it out and spend it, and since I don't plan on taking it out soon I must fully expect to hit several rough patches along the way, and as long as I'm learning, things will turn around.

Just while I was writing this, a monster draw missed, and my turn nuts got cracked on the river, so I'm down to $42, and I'm starting to get tired of playing, which is a great reason to quit! New bankroll $385

cheers,
Chad

I need to add to my rules list, don't play poker while I'm cutting weight for wrestling. On Friday I hadn't ate a full meal in several days, and hadn't had anything to eat or drink that day and decided to play poker, believe it or not you become a lot more irritable and emotionally unstable in that kind of condition, so . . . . I lost a about 70 bucks, and it was completely my fault, the cards didn't have it in for me, I had it in for me! So I was back down to 315, and I'm back up to 340 now that I'm eating and drinking again, and lesson learned. I've got my rakebrain freeroll starting in an hour, with 290 entrants and $5000 up for grabs, so wish me luck!

cheers,
Chad

I had a rough downswing, and decided to take a break from poker for about a week and gather my thoughts, I read a bunch in Sklansky's Small Stakes Hold em while I was on a wrestling trip to Arizona, and I realized I hadn't been taking the size of the pot into consideration enough when deciding how to play a hand, I was often wreckless and overaggressive when the reward was small, so I'd end up building a big pot with a very marginal hand, but I think I'm on the road to recovery, and so is my bankroll, $407.55! I've started multi-tabling limit hold em again, I played six for 2 roughly hour sessions and made about $100, about 4 of my 6 tables were exceptionally loose, and I caught some good cards and got paid! I think I'm just going to keep rotating between games, 6 tabling limit is kind of draining, so I think I'll only do that if I'm really feeling up to it and focused, and if I am wanting to relax a little more I'll prolly play some 7-game, a sng, or a heads up match.

The whole rush poker concept is pretty cool! I've done really well at 5c/10c on there, but keep on coming up second best at 10c/25c, and that was the cause of my huge downswing, the play is definitely better, and I need to make some adjustments before I jump back into it, I tried opening up my 3-betting range and it seemed to work really well at the 5c/10c table there, I just need to think through all my opponents possible hands a little better when I'm getting into big pots. I lost $25 today at 10c/25c on hands where I had 2 pair or better, but based on the action, there was no way I was good, but I didn't take the time to really think it through. I really like how Tom Dwan thinks through his actions on high stakes poker, my goal is to be more like that. He sits and thinks through everything for a good bit, then makes some really great plays. I also like how he utilizes the over bet, there was one hand with alan meltzer on there that I think the only reason he got paid off was because he over bet the pot and confused meltzer into calling.

cheers,
Chad

Tilt has once again bit. I simply can't shake it, my A-game absolutely crushes whatever game I happen to be playing, but every now and then I go on tilt and give back about a month worth of hard earned cash. I've done a lot of thinking about how to avoid tilt, but all my conclusions rely on me acting rationally and quitting when I'm starting to tilt, but by the core nature of tilt, I am completely incapable of doing that. I think I'm its in my nature to be more prone to tilt than most, and this absolutely crushes my bankroll. I blew 185 at absolute poker, 180 once, 150 once, and now 200 at full tilt simply because I tilted and played way out of my bankroll, and countless other more manageable losses. This comes out to a large sum of money. I've never really tried practicing a strict stop loss, but I think this could be my cure. It just needs to be an amount of money that I can stand losing without any worries. I think I'll try making it super small, like one buy in for whatever limit I'm at and I'll click the self exclusion button for 12 hours. I really hope this works, but its completely up to me whether it does or not so maybe hope isn't the right word.

If anybody reading this has some advice, or has some routine they go through to avoid tilt, and wouldn't mind filling me in, I'd greatly appreciate it!!! If I can find something that works for me it'll save me thousands of dollars.

cheers,
Chad

Eh I just quit now when I go on tilt i quit playing for a good period of time

I am bad about tilting to, very bad temper lol. Pitbull poker when it was still here helped me to slow myself down. I didn't like pit or give a crap about whatever money was on the site soooooo. When I get mad and begin to tilt and you really do know when your starting, but I could go there blow money and get my tilting attitude over with and not care about money lost. Of corse on that site playing like a moron got rewarded so I ended up with some pretty good nights there. Even now that pit is gone there is still a site or two that I have a little cash on from freerolls or whatever and I don't care at all for the site and the only reason they are there is for my tilting nights. Maybe worth a shot if walking away isn't working for you. Also getting into micro mtt's helped some nights. Like merge has those .06 rebuy donkfest so I would donk rebuy donk rebuy, said and done I may lose a buck nothing that I will miss.

Thanks for the advice, I think playing a mtt might be a good plan, you can't lose money too quick in those.

Hallelujah! Pokerstars has a feature that allows you to restrict your table limits! They can be adjusted but if you're moving them up it takes 24 hours to take effect, they also have the self exclusion thing that full tilt has, which I use fairly often. My huge problem is solved, and they also have triple draw which I would love to give a shot. It seems like their rakeback/whatever they call it there seems worse than full tilt, but that one little feature way way more than makes up for it! I'm taking my money off of full tilt and headin to poker stars!

cheers,
Chad

Plus with Poker Stars you are playing very few if any bots. Those Full Tilt Bots can really put you on tilt.

I could only deposit 100 at first at pokerstars, and couldn't make another deposit for 48 hours using the e-check method. I figured I'd either put 200 or 300 on. I've already made $111.38, in my first couple days there. I'm still trying to decide how much to put on, but I'm leaning towards depositing 300, it seems like its gonna be easier to withdraw my money using the e-checks, the money would just sit in my account otherwise, and I am confident that I'm not going busto, so all in all it seems to make sense to deposit 300 instead of 200 and be 100 dollars closer to playing 1/2! It'll also be nice to get the extra hundred deposit bonus!

The play there seems to generally be more passive than at full tilt, a lot more limpers at limit hold em, and the $5 heads up sng players seem to be weaker than their full tilt counter parts. I really like the 8-game mix heads up matches, nobody really knows how to play 2 to 7 triple draw, so I generally have them crippled by the end of that and finished before limit hold em has finished! I've also successfully given Badugi, and 2-7 ring games a whirl! I've wondered a little bit today why the quality of play seemed to be a little sharper at full tilt, and the only conclusion I have come up with is the free poker training that full tilt poker academy offers. Final conclusion is, I'm excited about the switch, the new games and much needed restrictions on my table limits seem to add up to a winning combination!

cheers,
Chad

Cash games on poker stars are weaker ive found. Probably because the site is mainly known for tourneys every though it has a ton of cash games. Most players play tourneys on the site.

I also use echeck as pokerstars wont take my debit card but tilt will. Tilt was the only site that actually took my card. But the downfall of echeck is you have to wait 10 days for your deposit to clear on stars. But your money might be taken from your bank account in 2 days it wont clear on stars for 10 days no matter what its stupid.

But when cashing out echeck cashes out in 2 days to your bank account

Thanks for the info Despise! It seemed like the cash out process would be fairly easy with e-checks, but I had the same problems with my deposit. I couldn't use a debit card, and then I accidentally put the wrong account number into e-checks, so my initial deposit only sat in there for a couple days. It worked out awesome though, I deposited $100 and got my $100 deposit bonus, then redeposited because the first one didn't go through and got another $100 deposit bonus without my first one getting revoked!

I was sitting at $209 yesterday and had been a little frustrated with limit after a few rough sessions, so I tried going back to no limit. I was feeling ambitious and played 12-16 tables of 5c/10c full ring for about 3 and a half hours off and on yesterday and new bankroll $366! Its pretty draining to play that many tables, so that prolly won't be the normal session, but that game is very very soft. I played fairly tight, very position aware, and very aggressive. I think this combination makes decisions a lot easier and playing a lot of tables competently very doable. It seems like most full ring players want to hit a monster and get paid, so my constant pressure on pots won me a lot of uncontested pots, and when faced with someone playing back at me I'd generally just let it go. The overbet was definitely my most profitable play, it seems like people at these stakes want to call anything with top pair, so if I made a monster and put my opponent on top pair, I'd often bet about 1.5-2 times the pot size, and you wouldn't believe the hands that paid me off. I think I would have got called by fewer hands with a 2/3 pot size bet.

But ya, things are all well and the table limit cap is great, I get upset, blow a buy in or so and quit, instead of a buy in at 10x the stakes I usually play. I highly recommend trying to mix in the overbet next time you play!

cheers,
Chad

lol I messed up my echeck on stars the first time to. I didnt no what I was doing I just took a check and put the numbers in because i never use checks. I didnt no SSN ment social Security number so I put in the numbers on my check instead of my SSN

I had it that way for a good 2 months lol and then finally poker stars figured it out and told me i had to fix it lol. Wasnt a big deal though haha

And oh yea since I do my bookie on bodog I of course play the tables on the site also. And I will say this Bodog has the biggest whiner cry baby poker players ever.

I mean I thought FTP and Stars were bad these guys are huge whineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeersssss.

And there $.05 $.10 6 handed games play out like $.25 $.50 cash games there very very very bad players.

Its a site full of gamblers

So if your ever bored I would suggest just min depositing and checking it out

I've lost 5 or 6 sessions in a row now. None of them were devastating losses or anything, nothing more than $40, but I'm still down to $285 as a result. I just can't seem to win a coin flip, I've had several situations where the money went in with QQ against AK or similar situations and I just keep coming out behind. Stealing a lot of pots with aggression has made up for a lot of the losses I've taken at showdown, but its pretty hard to recover when you're getting stacked on a couple tables every session. I suppose that's poker! I think I need to just keep jumping from game to game. I always seem to do the best when I'm giving something new a try. I'd consider myself a winner at every game available that's within my bankroll, and I generally play really focused when I'm giving something new a try, and then eventually get kind of bored with it and that's when my play starts to go south, frustration sets in, and my bankroll starts to just hover, instead of continuing up.

On the plus side I've been getting a lot better at losing =) I only tilted once in all my losing sessions, and I quit the next hand before I could do any significant damage to my bankroll.

I took it a little over the top with my over bets a few times, and ended up losing with sets to straights or flushes. So, I need to pick better spots for them, where it really does look like a desperate bluff and a better hand is less possible. Maybe on drier boards when I have a set or something, but not when straights and flushes are possible.

I've been playing a little too much lately so I've slowed down over the past couple days so school doesn't take it in the shorts. I'm never going to make as much money at poker as I will being an engineer, so I need to make sure school is far and away the number one priority.

Well hopefully I can keep playing my best poker, even if I lose my next 5 sessions! I'm going to deposit $200 more and take my money out of full tilt within the next week, so hopefully I can string together a decent run this weekend and give $1/$2 limit something a try!

cheers,
Chad

I went to the casino last night and made $195, I played 1/2 no limit for an hour and made 100, then 3/6 limit for an hour and made 95. I think I'm going to play limit more often when I go to the casino, its a safer game, and I think people play it worse. Everybody at my table wanted to limp into literally every pot, even the regular who knew all the dealers was a hardcore fish. A lot of hands saw everyone but me limp into the pot, call the flop bet, and then after the turn bet people who had nothing would fold. This type of play can get really frustrating when you keep having to muck your good starting hands, but if you just play your good hands aggressively and stay patient its a very very very soft game.

I'm up to $400.83 on pokerstars! Once I get my money from Full Tilt transferred over I'll officially be bankrolled for 1/2 limit!

Its been a good 2 weeks! I made 300 on pokerstars and 195 at the casino! Not bad for 2 weeks where I still did well on my Advanced Engineering Math test and Thermodynamics test!

cheers,
Chad

LIVING THE DREAM! WOOT WOOT

Haha, I don't know about living it, but I'm at least headed in the right direction towards that dream!

I just looked at some of my first blog posts from a month ago and I think I've developed a lot as a poker player since then, I had one post where I said a $6 or $7 dollar downswing was kinda tilting me, and just a few days ago I won a $48 pot, and I've had $50 downswings that didn't shake me. I've learned how to play Badugi, 2-7 and competently play PLO. I just hope I can continue to improve at this rate and move through the limits. In the moment it seems like I'm just crawling up stakes, but a month ago I was playing 20c/40c or 25c/50c, and I'm rolled for $1/$2 now despite tilting off several hundred dollars in the past month. I really think the move to Pokerstars is going to show some good results over the next few months and especially after wrestling season ends.

I cashed out from full tilt, I left myself with $13, played 1c/2c for a bit, ouch, I'm down to $1.65. If I don't go bust the next time I play there I'm going to try throwing bankroll management to the wind and go by Daniel Negreanu's rules he laid out for his 10 to 100000 challenge that I think he's quit on. Meaning I'll buy in for 1/5th of my bankroll every session and quit if I double it. In all likelihood I'll lose that $1.65 though, I did make it back from 2 to 200 and something on absolute though, but I'll have to get lucky to not bust it.

Cheers,
Chad

Played $1/$2 limit omaha hi/lo for 2 hours on 2-4 tables, made $80! Also had enough FPP's to purchase the promotional $40 bonus for the 40 billionth hand. New bankroll $520! Would have made a lot more, but one lucky bastard had no idea what he was doing and hit his gin card against me 4 or 5 times, grrrr, guess people like that are why the game is so easy to beat. I think I'm going to put 200 or so more in as soon as I finish clearing my deposit, I've been toying with the idea of putting in another 400 so I can get my full bonus. I cleared 100 in 2 weeks and I just moved up stakes now, so it should go even faster, and the risk/reward is basically I get an extra 200 free, but I have to risk an extra 200 to get it. So with those two being even, and the odds of me losing that much with the table limits in place being very minimal it kind of makes sense to get the full 600 bonus and then withdraw 400-600 when I clear my bonus, it still seems kinda scary to put that much money into my account though with my history of tilting. I've also thought a little about making an account in a friends name, and just transferring the extra money over there so I can't tilt it off under any circumstances, then transferring it back over when I want to cash out some money.

cheers,
Chad

Does anyone out there play limit omaha h/l?? I've literally played every game full tilt and pokerstars has to offer and I think this is the easiest game to beat on pokerstars for sure and right up there on full tilt too. I'm cutting weight for wrestling so I feel like death and only played for a short bit today, but I'm up to $557. The game definitely does have a tendency to draw you into playing looser and looser, I think its that you almost always have something so people get caught up in drawing weak to only half the pot, but if you can remain really disciplined with your starting hands, and generally just draw to a scoop I feel like there's some real money to be made at this game, especially 6-max. The only qualm I have is that I find it really hard to play any more than 3 tables of it, omaha has so many different hand possibilities and draws, so I have to really think it through to decide what I've got and what I'm up against. So ya go read the section in super system 2 or watch some of the videos on ftp academy, and you'll be well on your way to destroying that game.

In the past 2 weeks I've made $650 playing poker, its really cool to have built my bankroll and my understanding of various games up to a point where on a good run I can make a pretty meaningful amount of money. The possibilities of it all are also pretty amazing, I mean 6 months ago if I won $10 or so I would have been stoked, and to think that there's a possibility that in 6 months I'll look back at this post and laugh at myself is awesome.

I can't remember if I've posted this or not, but 2 of my friends and myself are heading out to Vegas March 17th-20th for Spring Break so I'm crazy excited, we all go up to the casino every now and then and generally do well, so it should be a good trip with a lot of poker, and who know what else!

cheers,
Chad

Last post = 2 hours ago, time spent playing = about half that kinda on and off, total earnings = $90, new bankroll = $647

Had a couple monster draws hit, notably one wrap wheel draw in a 4 way capped pre flop pot, to make for a scooped $50 pot. A34x found a 2 5 8 on the flop and a 3 on the river to scoop the high as well!

I love 3 tabling $1/2 omaha hi/lo

cheers,
Chad