Wednesday, March 19, 2008
SNG downswing and bad beats
You are going to get different responses on this - so take my advice with a grain of salt - since no one on this site agrees with me on this.
My brother was on a long losing streak one time and was complaining about losing AK to AJ and other situations similar to your beats. I analyzed his HH and found that, while he did take a string of bad beats, he was often all in with 8-10BB's and the villains were priced into calls.
The losing streak had caused him to tighten up so much that he was just playing premium hands, which meant that he couldn't get value when his hand was big and was often in situations where it was all-in or fold.
To aviod that, I suggested he play MORE hands in the early stages and try to build his chipstack by playing flops early. He did that and his "luck" turned around.
I love playing flops in level 1,2,3 at the $11 buy-ins because you can take advantage of other peoples mistakes without losing a whole lot of equity. I sometimes raise just to get a pot going and see who I can take advantage of later in the game, and just by building a big pot for people to play for, I can get others closer to elimination.
Position is vitally important to the game of poker, so when you enter a pot, always note your position in the table. For example, KTs is a pretty mediocre hand UTG, but a powerfull hand on the BTN.
So my advice is, work on your flop game and enter pots in the early levels to get reads and set your table image. Follow your pot odds too. If you are getting 5:1 odds for a 3:1 shot to hit your hand, you must call. Also, bet the exact value of your hand at all times. This is a little trickier but if you bet the value of your hand most of the time, you will be able to pull off bluffs and slowplays much easier. I estimate that 90-95% of my bets reflect the exact value of my hand (the other 5-10% being overbets [bluffs], or underbets [slowplays]). This is remarkably difficult to read.
If you improve your flop play, you will find that the bad beats you are taking don't bust you, since you will be ahead more often.
IMHO, STT's are uniquely geared towards flop-play as opposed to MTT's and cash, where you are usually playing for all your chips on the hands you play. In STT's you can lose chips in a hand and actually gain equity in the form of others being eliminated.
Also - DO NOT PLAY POKER WHEN YOU ARE IN A FRUSTATED MOOD
For me - this is the only emotion that causes me to play poorly - if I don't have patience I can't win
My brother was on a long losing streak one time and was complaining about losing AK to AJ and other situations similar to your beats. I analyzed his HH and found that, while he did take a string of bad beats, he was often all in with 8-10BB's and the villains were priced into calls.
The losing streak had caused him to tighten up so much that he was just playing premium hands, which meant that he couldn't get value when his hand was big and was often in situations where it was all-in or fold.
To aviod that, I suggested he play MORE hands in the early stages and try to build his chipstack by playing flops early. He did that and his "luck" turned around.
I love playing flops in level 1,2,3 at the $11 buy-ins because you can take advantage of other peoples mistakes without losing a whole lot of equity. I sometimes raise just to get a pot going and see who I can take advantage of later in the game, and just by building a big pot for people to play for, I can get others closer to elimination.
Position is vitally important to the game of poker, so when you enter a pot, always note your position in the table. For example, KTs is a pretty mediocre hand UTG, but a powerfull hand on the BTN.
So my advice is, work on your flop game and enter pots in the early levels to get reads and set your table image. Follow your pot odds too. If you are getting 5:1 odds for a 3:1 shot to hit your hand, you must call. Also, bet the exact value of your hand at all times. This is a little trickier but if you bet the value of your hand most of the time, you will be able to pull off bluffs and slowplays much easier. I estimate that 90-95% of my bets reflect the exact value of my hand (the other 5-10% being overbets [bluffs], or underbets [slowplays]). This is remarkably difficult to read.
If you improve your flop play, you will find that the bad beats you are taking don't bust you, since you will be ahead more often.
IMHO, STT's are uniquely geared towards flop-play as opposed to MTT's and cash, where you are usually playing for all your chips on the hands you play. In STT's you can lose chips in a hand and actually gain equity in the form of others being eliminated.
Also - DO NOT PLAY POKER WHEN YOU ARE IN A FRUSTATED MOOD
For me - this is the only emotion that causes me to play poorly - if I don't have patience I can't win
# posted by tiny @ 10:58 PM 
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