Learn Texas Holdem

Question: I sent you an email about a month ago about a situation where i flopped the nut straight, managed to get my opponent all-in, and got rivered by a miracle card. I was asking you and myself if i was playing to aggressively and i was wondering if i should bet less instead of losing almost my entire stack to a bad beat. You replied that it was ok to extract the maximum when you have the nuts. I beleived that too.

Well, i applied that strategy...and....well i lost everything. I started playing online with 25$, played 0.02$-0.04$ limit an some no limit, managed to get up to 140$ in a few months (not much i know but i'm learning) and lost it all in 2 weeks.

Here are some examples of plays i lost in the last 2 weeks (no-limit):

I lost 5 of my last 7 ace high flushes (is that even possible??)

I lost my last 2 Ace high straights.

I lost 2 of my last 3 full houses

I lost my last 2 A-A-A

I don't even want to mention my 2 pairs and top pairs, top kicker that win about 1/20 times without exageration.

Here's one of my memorable hands. I have K-6 of diamonds in the big blinds. It is just called to me and I check.

Flop is 2-8-A all of diamonds, giving me the nut flush. Well, of course i'm thinking i should maximize my profits, so i bet a small amount so that i get a few callers and hopefully someone will raise. One player goes immediatly all-in. He has more money than i do so i'm actually excited and i call. He shows poket 10s. He writes the "F" word in the chat window and i'm jumping up and down on my chair. The turn brings a 10...the river comes...the other 10. He apologizes but that doesn't help a bit lol

Today, I flopped a full house...and lost again to quadruple 10s. I also lost today 6-6-6 to a miracle inside straight draw caught on the river. He didn't have any pair and was hoping to catch a 9 on the river. I lost quite a lot of money on that hand. Not all, but a lot. I raised and re-raised to make it as costly as possible for him. Didn't work.

So...I'm now convinced it is impossible to make money playing too agressively. Unless you tell me that i'm experiencing a bad beat series. If so, how long can that last?

Here's my theory: online table, 6 players (A through F). I'm player F. Let's assume that i'm an expert player (i'm really not). Now, while player A will loose all his money to the other players, he'll bad beat me at least once on a flush draw he should have never been in in the first place. Player B will also bad beat me once as will player C, D and E.

Many players will automatically call to the river with any flush draw. At a 6 player table, it is almost sure that someone is on a draw. And forget about raising to make them fold, it just makes them happy. It only takes one or two bad beat all-ins to lose all the money you bring to a table.

If this occurs every day (and it does, beleive me), how can someone not lose everything in 2 weeks?

I thought maybe i shouldn't play no-limit...so i switched back to limit. I play "by the book", meaning that i select my preflop hands based on the situation and i think i play ok post flop as well. Yes, I do make mistakes, i'm no pro. But the bad beats keep coming and while i'll make a dollar playing right, i'll lose 2 to a bad beat, leaving me 1 dollar short.

I'm now affected and i need to quit playing for awhile. I made a mistake today after the 2 bad beats and figured i was now on tilt. The board was Q-10-Q-Q-2. I had A-10 and went all-in. I lost to a guy with the 4th Q. Costly mistake.

I don't know if this is a comment or a question but i beleive my theory is correct.

To prove it, i saw a World Poker Tour event the other day on TV. One guy (an amateur) kept playing bad cards and played them extremely aggressively. On one hand, he went all-in with pretty much nothing and Gus Hasen had him by the balls. The only cards that could save him was a 7 on the turn and a 7 on the river. The percentage they showed on TV was a ridiculous 1/2%. Do i really need to tell you what the turn and river cards were? LOL

He eventually won the tournament, and a million dollars, with miracles cards.

Here's my question of the day: Does talent and knowledge only bring you to a certain level, but luck is really what gets the money into your pockets? My "real" theory is: You can make money playing poker, as long as you don't suffer bad beats series.

ciao and thanks for the wonderful site!

Jeff

Answer:

No, luck can get the money in your pockets for a short time, but then it all goes back, and then up the food chain. A sound strategy that includes knowledge of odds, player types and counter strategies, experience, and follow through will beat a lucky player every time -- in the long run. What's the long run though? Well the long run can depend. A tournament isn't a long run. Nor is a session. Anyone can beat Gus Hansen in one hand, or even in one session. But the more time you play Gus, the bigger edge he will have over you.

See, if you are a winning player, you have an edge over your opponents. An edge can be represented as a number, like 5%. For a five percent edge to show itself, you're going to need a lot of time. The lesser the edge, the more time required for the edge to manifest. Let me give you a concrete example: I pay you a dollar every time you roll 1-4 on a six sided die and you pay me a dollar every time I roll a 5 or a 6. What do you think would happen if we just played one roll? And is there a difference between playing just once, or ten times, or a thousand times? Sure there is. Your edge won't be clear until we play enough times, but then it will be absolute. Until it reaches that bubble, it will appear as though it is just luck, yet it is well within the range of possibilities.

How this relates to poker is as follows. If you know that you are going to need to play against the opponents for a while to make a profit, you need to make sure you have enough funds to give that an honest try. Bankroll is very important. You can shoot yourself in the foot purely because you don't have enough money, regardless of how well you play.

There are ups and downs to poker that you can't avoid and the only thing that can buffer you is to make sure that you have a generous bankroll to play out of. The key is to not take yourself out of action. You don't want to take a hit at a big limit and then not be able to keep playing long enough to bring it back. One thing I want to mention about low limit games is that they can every bit as frustrating as bigger games. Collectively, bad players can make it difficult to win since you have so many players drawing against you.

That doesn't mean these games are harder to beat, or that they can't be beat (the opposite is true), it just means that you have to take a different approach. Much of this site is aimed at getting new players started and I try to give tips that aren't mentioned in books. As a rule, in loose games, you'll need a bigger bankroll to win. In your theory, it is true that you'll get bad beated a lot. You'll have large swings, both in a session and over longer amounts of time. You may lose for a few sessions, then kill the game for a few sessions and be up a lot. This variance is perfectly normal for wild games.

Next, in addition to having a good sized bankroll, you need to have good money management. For example, I for one am not a good objective thinker when it comes to money management so I have to do things to prevent myself from getting into trouble. I rarely think I can't beat a game and I've been in so deep and brought it around so many times that very little flags me that I should just get up, leave and swallow the loss.

What that does is set me up for big losses when I'm already down a lot and playing for marathon sessions. To avoid this, what I do is make sure that I don't have more than I'm willing to lose. If I have access to my whole bankroll, I'll likely sit there and never get up. All my decisions are made away from the felt. Also, dealing with losing sessions is another important skill -- one that you don't just innately have.

After a losing session, I would drop down in limits and beat the smaller game before moving back up to your main game. And if you lose there, move down again and so on. This is a good mechanism for proving to yourself that you are playing well. Playing poker day in and day out can be really draining and sometimes you get in a rut. Instead of taking a month's losses at your regular limit, you can get your head back on straight down at the lower limits. Again, this is here to prevent a catastrophic loss that takes you out of the game completely.

Next, at the end of each losing session I would try to figure out where all your money went and if it was really necessary to lose that much in those hands. Without fail, after I've taken a hit, I think I've played well. But sure enough, when I think about my play the next day, I know I wasn't playing my A game. What you'll find is that much of winning poker, after you've learned much of the strategy, comes down to a battle with yourself. This is why most players end up losing. They may know what a good strategy is, but implementing it is something completely different.