poker crossroads

[BrianSwa]

ok this thread/post is going to be very real post, most likley most real post I have made about poker on this forum yet. So my shift right now at work is 11pm to 7am and basicly I'am done work at 1am so I have alot of "alone time". Well last night during this time I got to thinking alot about poker and the last year or so I have played.

Ok now for the real part, as most of you know I'am not a winning player, I never have been. Basicly I play from paycheck to paycheck, meaning I work some overtime throw it online lose it and work some overtime again etc etc etc. I have sugar coated my play in the past because I didnt want you all to think I'am terrible.....I'am. So I basicly thought last night what are my options from here now and here is what I came up with.

1. quit poker
2. keep doing what I'am doing
3. Start over

ok
option 1 I really dont want to do I enjoy poker and dont want to quit something I enjoy
option 2 nah this option is not even getting thought about im sick of it
option 3 I really enjoy this option but in order to do this I need a total restart, meaning I need to start from the beggining. I need to get a membership at cardrunners (tp enter link here) and I need to read and absorb all the poker knowledge I can.

I need a couple things from you guys though, 1st I want some questions answered.
1. how many sample hands do you need to know you are beating a certain level of play
2. when do you basicly know you are beating this level, is it just based on amount of money you are winning or what.

I will be starting as low as you can go with .01/.02 NL and will be playing $1,$2,$3 tournies only but not alot of them. When I play it will be a set time online like 1 or 2 hours and I will be concentrating only on the game during that time. When that time is over I stop, I know you are supposed to continue playing but with my past disapline problems I want a stop time.

I will be posting hand histories here and I want you to not concider the amount of the game but how I played the hand....and I want you to rip them apart and tell me any tiny little mistake I made during the hand. Dont think about my feelings at all if I played it like a dumbass tell me Brian you played that hand stupid and here is why. You have to tell me exactly why though I want to improve. Last night I decided I want to get very serious about poker, I want to become a winning player. I dont care how long it takes me to move off of 01./02 as long as im improving.

I feel I have the skills to be a good poker player and just need to apply myself usually what happens is when I deposit money I start off good and play within my bankroll but when I take a beat I get mad and there i go to 1/2 NL with my $70 and its gone. I think by doing this from start and starting at the lowest you can go and not moving up that level no matter what I will be able to improve my terrible game. It will also be good to grind that bankroll, I also will not be moving up levels no matter how much I have online until I'am beating that game. So if I have $500 online I will still be at .01/.02 unless my numbers show Iam beating that game, so by the time I get up to the next level I will be plenty bankrolled for it. Dont really know what I expect you guys to say about this but any comments or opinions as usual are always welcome.

[Penguinfan]

Brian, I am gonna try to answer what you are asking, in all honesty you have been given sound advice here in the past and basically ignored it though, so don't be suprised if you get some shit thrown at you.

I think I could become the national spokesman for CardRunners, easily worth the $70 I spent to sign up and my intention was to sigh up for the month and watch the videos then quit, turns out I will be a member ($20 a month) for as long as the keep running the site.

You will know you are beating a level when you are constantly playing better than most people you sit with. This is easy to figure out, you should be making a modest profit each time you sit down, and when you lose it should be becasue someone else got lucky (though you will get out played sometimes, deal with it). Starting at .01/.02 is kinda pointless IMO. If you can't play better than them right now, use option 1 in your list.

After EVERY session be brutally honest with yourself and rate how you played, did you win or lose money and why? The sessions I have played the best poker, again IMO are ones that I picked up several small to medium size pots without showing down my hands. It doesn't take a lot of skill be dealt AA and get all the chips in pre-flop and hope they hold up (they never do by the way).

The most important thing is to have a goal, something I never did, unless you count "Make as much as I can" as a goal. It's important becasue long sessions that yeild only a little profit can be boring, that is a fact I have found out about winning cash poker.

I was playing two tables for a while yesterday and up over two buy-ins, on the last orbit I got KK beat by QJo which cost me over half the profit I made. While not entertaining, it was still a good session in my estimation. I made a small profit, played well, and got rivered by a guy, something I want him to do every time I play him.

Tough not to be results oriented since that's why we play, but be honest about your play not matter what. Playing PLO8 I was down a good bit then scooped two nice hands in a row, the last one I played horribly and got all the chips in after the turn way behind only to suck out a miracle 4 to make me the hi and lo. I ended that session down only a couple bucks, but still have to be honest and say I played horribly.

Learn what you are missing, play within your bankroll and, at least at low limits, make every good decision every time results be damned, and the results will follow.

[BrianSwa]

yes I know im gonna get shit thrown at me but I dont mind at all, as for where to start what do you suggest? yes I know I can beat .01/.02 NL but thought starting as low as I could was a good idea. Do you suggest .05/.10 or .10/.25?


also should I start playing full ring or shorthanded?
im thinking full ring would most likley be better, more hands per orbit, not as loose.

[jimmym]

Playing poker is great, something we really love doing, we get a buzz its feels fantastic sitting in front of the pc holding that lucky thing (hope you dont squeeze to hard) asking the lord for the card you need and then thanking him when you get it.
Hour after hour spent infront of a pc, bankroll climbing, then falling then climbing then another deposit but this time your going to play properley, you know you can do it because you know someone who has done it and your a better player than him, step up then win a few, lose a few, step back down, enter tournies. play the low limits who cares hours spent in a low limit tourny with 1000s of other fantastic players.
Hour after fuckin hour, deposit after fuckin deposit...........When will this fuckin bubble burst ,,when Oh when will I start making something out of this fucking game I spend so much time playing, Oh well another deposit but this time I will play different, WONT I. ........ Truth is I fuckin wont, I will fall back into the same routine, same senario, same shit outcome.

Some of us are just not good poker players, we think we are but the bank statements dont lie, we play the same over and over we change now and then but then fall back into our shit ways,,,,well another deposit should sort that out..this time..


This time, shit the chances are the outcome will be the same, so what should some of us do? carry on playing the game we love, depositing enough to sit in a tourny for hours with 1000s of other players and winning it,,winning what 5 hours to beat 2700 players and winning $700 because its another low limit entry game. Fuck this its time to get a grip.

Five months later, not a single game played, not a single $ lost but I have money in the bank, so I must be winning. I miss playing poker, but I dont miss losing, instead of playing I will sit and read articles and books about poker, I go through hands other players have wrote about and understand were it went wrong and can now point were it could have went right. Am I ready to make that next deposit, am I fuck I know I need to learn more because after playing for the past years I learned only one thing and that was that I was a shit poker player who thinks he was good.

Does it matter when I start playing again wether to play in $1 tournies or $100, No but I feel I will have learnt so much more than just playing poker, I feel I will understand how to play poker.

My advice to you Brian could have been said in one word :QUIT: learn and return, more time for yourself, your family, do the overtime instead of the computer time.

[Govman6767]

Harsh words maybe BUT it is the truth I AM NOT a losing player I was also NOT A WINNING PLAYER I'm a break even player big wins big losses small wins small losses in the 6 months i've been here I have done nothing but read poker books. Books on odds, math, reading hands, tells, bluff's not just one factor of the game but the game in general. I realize in my time off I did not have to be a break even player because there was so much I did not understand and grasp that I feel I am grasping now and in 3 more month's I think of how much more I will grasp. I think it's easy to not become a losing player but it is VERY VERY VERY hard to become a winning player.

I don't know if you can go right from losing player to winning player I'm sure it's possible but it might give you a better feel if you aim'ed for break even player and after spending some time there understanding what you are doing wrong at break even you can progress to winning player. 6 months off is a GODSEND but it's 6 months off PLAYING not 6 months of of poker. It's 6 months of studying, learning, thinking, analyzing, after some time off you begin to realize what you were doing was wrong or if not wrong then it was just not the best way of doing things to get the most out of your game.

One of the biggest things I've learned so far that hurt my game was not pumping the pots because I was afraid of losing but after studing some of the math and the theory over and over and over again I learned that my logic sucked. I was not losing because I was playing scared but I was not winning as much as I should have been hence my endless endless sessions of break even play.

summed up take the playing time off but don't stop learning and studying there is a lot of good info on these pages from TP and Zybomb don't just read it LEARN IT ANALYZE IT and slowly put it into practice.

I'm a B&M player who dabbles on the internet if you can find a casino play in the B&M rooms and find a low limit game where the blinds don't hurt and just look at ppl how they act how they play a person you can see on tilt is a lot better than a guy online who says he's on tilt cause he played the last 20 hands.

Take time off read study buy good books from good sources try Sklanskys new NLHE book or if that's too hard a read try the book "why I lose at poker"
good luck man I hope you make it
Because when I get back to the USA I'm sure gonna

[melioris]

climbs on the soapbox...

Brian-I am a consistent winning player at $25NL and $50NL full-table and 6-max. I don’t make a lot of money, but enough to keep me happy and allow me to make a few large (1K) purchases a year from my poker money. I play because I enjoy it, because I learn about myself and the human condition playing poker, and because at this point in my life I have all the intellectual stimulation I need and so I don’t feel like I am wasting my time by not doing something else with my poker time.

To improve at these levels is mostly internal, I think. I have started an assload of poker books, and I have yet to finish my first. Sure I probably have read most of them, hoping around chapter to chapter but I haven’t read one start to finish yet. I am interested in cardrunners.com and probably do it if I ever decide to play 100NL and above. But for 25NL and 50NL I think what you need to do to be a good player is self-control. And the bitch of it is you need that for EVERY hand you play. If you don’t have that, you will not be a winning player. No book, no video, nothing else but you can do that. And it doesn’t make you a bad person if you don’t do it, a lot of people work their asses off, take care of their family and play online to blow off some steam. That is great, but they aren’t going to be winning players unless they have self-control in EVERY hand. It will take you an hour to win a buyin worth of small pots, and one hand to blow it because you are not going to let that donkey push you around. Playing winning poker isn’t a shit load of fun most of the time and maybe you would rather have fun.

You need to consider the time investment. Family and job are the two largest time commitments most men have. It is tempting to carve out some time from one of those to play poker, but you got to ask yourself if spending less time with your family is worth it to play 25NL? Also, I believe it is our obligation as humans to spend some time each day trying to improve our self and the world in which we live. Becoming a better poker player ain’t satisfying that human instinct. The culture is which we live leaves a lot of people feeling unfulfilled, and I believe it is because culturally we don’t recognize this basic human instinct. So if you have the time to play, make sure you have already satisfied your commitment to your family, to your job, and to yourself.

This leads to my final point. To be a winning player I think you need to understand why you play poker. You got to spend some time reflecting and learning about yourself and understanding why it is important to you to play and win. I think this is the most important aspect of being a winning player. If you understand your motivations and you are clear with the desires that playing poker is fulfilling, then it is much easier to be discipline in EVERY hand and it is easier to justify the time you spend playing poker.

gets off the soapbox

[BrianSwa]

yea I could deal with break even.... As for what jimmy said like penguin said I expected some of the shit, again though he is free to make his opinion.

good advice though and I appriciate it, I plan on doing alot of reading and learning. As for this forum, I have been here awhile and there are tons of great advice on it, doing forum searches now on past articles. Might be suprised but Lou posted some great stuff back in the day that I have re-found and its actully pretty good.

plan on reading alot on the hand histories and mentally saying what I would do different then scrolling down to see what the local experts here think. This forum is a very good outlet to improve your game and there are some really great players on it. I know I have bashed the forum in the past but honestly its one of the best outlets to learn poker in my opinion, not kissing ass just stating facts. I have gone through this in the past on this forum and not listened to the advice becuase I dont think I really wanted to improve, this time though I honestly do which is the only reason I made this post, I honestly want to improve.

As for just quiting and spending time with family like Jimmy said, I dont think there is a need to right now. My family is very well taken care of and I can balance playing with kid, playing poker and "playing" with wife very well. If it got to point like it did in past where playing was all I was doing yea then I agree its time to quit but as long as I can distinguish poker as a hobby and dont let it control life there is no problem with playing "when" I have time.

[jimmym]

[quote=BrianSwa]yea I could deal with break even.... As for what jimmy said like penguin said I expected some of the shit, again though he is free to make his opinion.

Brian, you got me wrong I am not giving you any shit, weve been around here for a long time some of us really do need a reality check and get our lives into shape, poker wont be our ticket to fame, it wont pay the bills, it can though cause alot of pain and stress and turn very ugly if not kept in check.

Some of us need to pull away from poker, think about what you done before we started playing online and see if we were better off. If the answer is that we were better off then change things. As I said we love poker but I also love other things that cost less and with better outcomes.

You asked us 3 questions but then quickley withdrew from your first option, I felt this is the option you want to take but are to scared to stop. Shit man I know its hard but then believe me for some of us its the only realistic option, take a year out learn the game enjoy some time doing other thing and look forward to a better time when you decide to return to plaing poker.

Ive started playing Bridge and BackGammon free online working my way up through the skill levels, I spend more time at gigs enjoying myself with my family, I do a little more overtime earning the cash for a trip or event and I have started saving more the past few months, give it ago Brian I feel its better than the starting over again theory playing low limits, players like JD and TP make a living from the players like us because they know how to play poker and dont just play poker.

[BrianSwa]

[quote=jimmym]
sorry took it wrong way but still +reped you for your 1st post because it was real...


im no worst or better of since I started playing, at 1st when I 1st started playing I played way way way too much but since then I have been able to work it into my life where I still have time for family.

I withdrew from option 1 fast because I had been thinking about my options all night. I came to conclusion as long as poker just stays a pasttime then its fine to play, as for doing it for living HELL NO. BUT I do want to get better. I'am the kind of person that when they do something they want to be the best at it so why not try to improve. Really making the money isnt really what I want I just want to be good, It wouldnt matter what it was I always want to be the best at what I do.

When I set goals for myself I always reach them, this is one of the only time I have not been able to reach my goal and to be honest that pisses me off to no end. I never plan on making tons of money playing but one day I would like to be able to play higher limits and know I could beat them, I dont want sucess over night and I plan on working for it, again as long as it dosent take anything away from my family. MY family is always 1st. hell poker isnt even in top 10 for me but it is something I enjoy.

[ChipFish]

WOW!
You had me fooled!

Seriously though, Cardrunners won't help you.
In fact it will do the opposite.
Since you can't manage a bankroll properly, you can't play a LAG style, as it will break you when you take one of your many (And well documented) Shots at levels you can't beat.

You should really pick OPTION 1.

But do what you want.

[Talking Poker]

Brian - I hope you +Rep everyone who has posted in this thread, because these are some very well thought out responses. I'm going to try to make mine a lot more brief (I got tired from reading all of that!)...

----
First a quick side note though - jimmym - Welcome back. Haven't seen you around in a while. Search for the "Request Line" thread in Off Topic. I think you'll like it and hope you contribute (in a new thread, if you like). What ever happened with that potential record deal thing?
----

OK, back to you SWA. I think by now, I know enough about you to form a pretty reasonable opinion. And I think you know this is true, despite how many times you've lashed out at me for trying to help you in the past. What, a dozen, maybe? More? I also think this potentially makes me an idiot for even reading this post, let alone replying to it.... but I'm funny like that. Somewhere, deep down, I still want to help you, even though you deserve it less than anyone on this forum (yes, I said ANYONE, eejit).

So, here's the deal: You've got the fundamentals of poker down. You're not a master, but you now enough to be a winning player at the low limits already. And I don't mean .01/.02 - I mean more like $.50/$1. You don't get the higher level stuff yet, but I think you could someday. I've SEEN you learn over the past couple of years, so there's no reason to think you couldn't continue to learn more advanced though processes. Your biggest problem always has been and always will be your complete lack of discipline. You can set all the goals and rules you want, but deep down you know that you won't be able to stick to them. And that's why you'll (probably) always be a losing poker player.

So, given everything I know, my advice to you is to quit. Again. But this time, don't fail at quitting like you have every other time - actually quit.

Now.... knowing full well you're not going to quit, here is my secondary advice to you to help you make your deposits last a little bit longer, and maybe, just MAYBE turn yourself into a winning player:

1. Figure out HOW you are going to work on your discipline BEFORE you even make another deposit. Start with that Zen and Poker book. It can't hurt.

2. As for what stakes to play, stay within your bankroll. If you start with $100, that's different than if you start with $500. STICK TO THE STANDARD BANKROLL GUIDELINES (300 BBs for limit / 20x max buy ins for NL). As your bankroll permits and ONLY as your bankroll permits, move up. If you start off badly, move down and don't move back up until you are bankrolled to do so. If you follow this advice, you shouldn't go broke. You might end up playing .01/.02 until you regroup, but in theory, you should never go broke because you'll never have all of your money on the table.

3. Don't necessarily make yourself play for set time limits. I know you think this will help you with your discipline, but it won't. Here's Thieu thing though..... you're probably going about this all wrong right now. If you are losing, THOSE are the sessions you want to cut short - not play longer to try to "get it all back." Maybe you are playing badly, maybe your opponents are better than you think, or maybe you are just getting unlucky - but for someone with the lack of discipline you have, you MUST quit before you lose control and end up losing everything. This is KEY. On sessions where things are going great, if you want to quit after X amount of time, that's fine, but in theory, these are the optimal conditions you should be playing in, so you should keep playing until things change (you get tired or distracted or the table changes, etc, etc).

4. After every session, use Poker Tracker to review your biggest winning and losing hands. Determine which you think you should have played differently. Did you win because you played well, or did you play badly and get lucky? Did you lose because you played badly, or because you were unlucky? If "badly" is the answer to either of those questions and you don't know exactly how you SHOULD have played it, post the HH here.

5. Don't fool yourself about your abilities and be open to criticism. If you post hands where you flopped quads and ask us how you should have played it, that's just wasting everyone's time. It will be far more beneficial for you to post hands that you played badly (won or lost, but especially lost) than hands you played well to "show off." People here are willing to help, but you need to be willing to listen to what they have to say and to admit you're not as good as you think you are (which you seem to finally be doing, just two years later!).

Dammit, I said this wouldn't get long. OK, I'm ending it now.

GL.

[thrash1294]

standard bankroll guidelines my biggest mistake can be summed up right there.
I just wrote that down on a sticky note and put it on the laptop.

thanks TP for the reminder

As far as brian Either get some free $ or play a freerolls to restart your roll.Say to yourself I wont deposit I wont deposit... I heard some where that cris (jesus) Ferguson is trying to turn $0.00 to $50,000 now there is a poker quest.

[Kurn]

1. Figure out HOW you are going to work on your discipline BEFORE you even make another deposit. Start with that Zen and Poker book. It can't hurt.

Best advice yet for Brian.

Not only can't it hurt, but it can help immensely. IMO, its the best book out there. Why? It doesn't try to teach you how to play the game, it teaches you how to manage yourself and your attitude while you play the game.

Its irrelevant how much you know the odds, the moves, and the other player types if you don't know yourself.

[JDMcNugent7]

man i wish i had read that book back in the day, i wonder how much it coulda saved me.

[BrianSwa]

just want to comment on talking poker comments, Thank you very much. Concidering how bad I have been to you in the past I really really appriciate how much you went into this. I was actully scared to see what you were going to say to this post but I have to admit that was a well written and perfect response.

as for everyone else yes I + repped everyone in this thread.

[Zybomb]

oh boo hoo 100k boy cry me a river!

[Govman6767]

Check out my book reviews and see if there is a book that might help your game more than any of the others