blonde poker forum

I've played lots and lots of poker, live and online.
I'm gradually getting worse. I think I've moved on to an 'advanced' type of poker, ie 'fancy', and on some level I may just be forgetting the basics. I tend to keep calling in spots which I know are folds, even though the reasons might be subtle.
Anyway, my game kind of sucks now. I used to pwn. I don't know how to repair it, please help.
 

Move down the stakes
Play less
Study more

They would be my three tips yet I do not follow any of the above advice!

P.s welcome to blonde.

Thanks. I don't need to study more, I know everything about poker ;) That's what I feel on a certain level, but I've probably read way too little. Never did the whole online training thing.
My bad game gets louder when the BI is insignificant to me, I have trouble overcoming this.
Thanks for the welcome.

The vast majority of the time, when someone says they've advanced their thinking or they are playing at higher levels but have started to struggle, it is because they don't actually understand the game as well as they thought.

My stock advice in such situations is teach a child to play. That presents a slight problem in poker, of course. A child is best because they have no fear whatsoever about asking you "why?" Or about challenging you with questions you hadn't considered. Adults don't tend to do that, perhaps for fear of censure.

Nothing teaches you how much you understand about something like teaching someone else.

Thanks. I think that assertion normally holds true.
Myself, I was doing well at higher stakes, in fact the higher I went, the more alert and focused I was. My game is ok. But something, like the jadedness following thousands of beats and plenty of downswings caused me to stop believing in that game itself. I'm just not that player any more.

As you are moving down the stakes you need to go back to basics, literally abc and nitty and open up the more knowledge you have on the villain and if necessary

Thanks for the link and advice, JJ and Born.

I suppose you have to ask yourself what it is you want from poker. 'Make money' would seem to be an objective, but it may be supplanted with 'give yourself a big ego trip by how cleverly you can play'. That's what happened to me.
Going to start reading the basic books again, try to build that game back up.

I see where you're coming from (you've have some successes in the game and think you have found the level you SHOULD be playing at) but it would seem from your posts you know nothing about poker.

That's not meant to sound arrogant, I know nothing either.

Just to elaborate on what others have recommended, you have to go back to basics. But you might not know what that exactly means. Think about the game in this way. It's a game of strategy, and it's a game of deception. You sit at a HU table (or 6max), you have to know how to win the game. You have to know the reasons why you should win the game, and your opponent SHOULD lose (bearing in mind the luck element of the game). Break down every hand, every opportunity for you to take an action. You have to consider, how is this move helping you win the game? If you don't know, there is a chance that if your opponent is skilled, this mistake is giving him the opportunity to deceive you, to make mistakes, and to tin the game.

Therefore you need to learn (and it would seem you can't do this whilst playing. So you have to study).

The very best players on here are always learning and none of them would ever claim to have the game licked. I'm sure most of them spend a fair time studying.

If you used to crush and now are not, it is most likely because your game has not moved on. The game has got harder, but it is still beatable with a bit of hard work

Thanks so much for the advice. I got The Mental Game of Poker and it is awesome, helping a lot already.

I have moved to MTTs on Stars, and am doing quite well. I am traditionally 6max SNG, with odd HU, and some variants. 10 percent of my game is MTT (big fields, modest BI). I finish top 10 percent prob 30 percent of the time. I wouldn't say I'm amazing, but I'm beginning to think that the standard is not that high.
FWIW, I don't think my knowledge is lacking that much. There's only so much in poker that is about knowledge, it's not like you're doing Physics. Like in Poker, week 4, you raise in a SNG with QQ, you get a caller, and then two all-ins...in certain spots that's a fold. But hey, you have QQ. It needs to be pointed out to you why it's a fold. This is knowledge. But the majority of situations where you are winning / losing, once you've played a while, are nothing like this kind of situation, you make plays that are defensible, you wouldn't leave the table with a red face...but when you do them, you kind of know it's wrong. You just don't listen. Well, that's what started going wrong with my game. I never read the real solution to that yet. Hopefully the book will keep being of use.
So yeah, apart from that...MTTs the way to go?

first thing you need to do is change this attitude, gota put the hours in off the felt or you won't beat the games nowadays

Call

(http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Brian-Fantana-60-of-the-time-it-works-every-time-Anchorman.gif)

Thanks. I don't need to study more, I know everything about poker ;) That's what I feel on a certain level, but I've probably read way too little. Never did the whole online training thing.
My bad game gets louder when the BI is insignificant to me, I have trouble overcoming this.
Thanks for the welcome.
[/quote]

Without trying to come across as harsh, this is obviously where your problem lies.
I win some at poker and always have done, not because I am an amazing player or have huge natural talent because I have worked at it hard for a long time and only now would I say I am not terrible at the game. I am still a long way from being really good, and I work on it still nearly every day. In fact I am probably wokrking harder than ever before actually.

Even with this work, its getting harder and harder in general in poker the gap between the good players is getting smaller and more importantly the fish are not true fish any more. In fact they are the guys that used to win at poker a couple of years ago but haven't worked on there game and its' passed them by.

Don't be one of those guys imo

best of luck

Practice, categorically, does not make perfect. What it does is make something permanent.

To me, poker is a game where your approach will constantly change as you strive to improve. My learning curve for mtts, for example, goes kinda like this.

When I started out, I didn't play any hands. I didn't really get position, stack size, or any of that, but I did understand hand rankings, so I just went with waiting for a premium and going all in.

I then went through a patch where I decided that I should probably play a lot more hands, because everyone thought I was a nit and because I was trying to hit a flop and get lucky. From this stage I started to develop an understanding of position and what sort of hands flop well multiway, the value of small sets etc....

Over time, my game had gone through these sorts of transitions where I have experimented with playing lots of hands from the bb, then playing very few, playing every button, raising every button, limping aa all the time, balancing my range in some pretty ridiculous ways etc, and through playing like this and analysing the results I've come to have a better understanding of spots, stack sizes, ranges etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say is we all should go through stages of playing badly because we're experimenting with something new, and by realising this, we can then go back a little and use the knowledge we have just gained to make very real improvements to our game and understand why we've made them, rather than just because a book or a training video said so.

Welcome to the forums :)

Nice post Rexas. I love the idea of experimenting with different plays which may incur short term loss but reap long term benefits. I'd be the first to admit I don't take as many such risks, at detriment to my development.