blonde poker forum

Ok this is a moan...........

I am sick to the back teeth of the out draws that im getting on Billy Hills, ok I know, I know im not one of the fixed brigade its just recently over the last few months I just cant seem to win anything at all. i play mainly in the £2, £5 and £10 multi table tournies, i play tight controlled poker, progress just below the money and just cant seem to do anything at all, its like im feeling cursed nothing hitting at all. for instance lastnight level 11, im on the button, evryone folds i have:

 Td 8d.

I call

SB and BB call

flop

 8h 8s Aspades

SB, BB check

I raise half my stack of 3500

SB, BB call


Turn

 Qd

SB, BB Check

I go all in

SB, BB both Call


River  Ahrt


SB turns over  Ac Qh

BB turns over  Ad Qc

Unreal............

Tonight 10 minutes prior to posting this:

------HAND 1------
Game #1865091504: Hold'em NL (150/300) - 2006/03/31 - 22:54:57 (UK)
Table "Tourney 2259530 - 7" Seat 2 is the button.
Seat 1: bruceyboy (8978 in chips)
Seat 2: gabr63 (20010 in chips)
Seat 3: _sodapop_ (4675 in chips)
Seat 4: RICIAR (3165 in chips)
Seat 5: gazomwe (3560 in chips)
Seat 6: Wigwam002 (5450 in chips)
Seat 7: Mrpalm (3915 in chips)
Seat 9: Mmachine (12335 in chips)
Seat 10: Jarva1 (7968 in chips)
_sodapop_: posts the ante 25
RICIAR: posts the ante 25
gazomwe: posts the ante 25
Wigwam002: posts the ante 25
Mrpalm: posts the ante 25
Mmachine: posts the ante 25
Jarva1: posts the ante 25
bruceyboy: posts the ante 25
gabr63: posts the ante 25
_sodapop_: posts small blind 150
RICIAR: posts big blind 300
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to _sodapop_ [8h Qh]
gazomwe: folds
Wigwam002: folds
Mrpalm: folds
Mmachine: folds
Jarva1: folds
bruceyboy: calls 300
gabr63: calls 300
_sodapop_: calls 150
RICIAR: checks
----- FLOP ----- [2s Ac Qc]
_sodapop_: checks
RICIAR: checks
bruceyboy: bets 300
gabr63: folds
_sodapop_: calls 300
RICIAR: calls 300
----- TURN ----- [2s Ac Qc][3h]
_sodapop_: checks
RICIAR: checks
bruceyboy: checks
----- RIVER ----- [2s Ac Qc 3h][Qd]
_sodapop_: bets 300
RICIAR: raises to 1500
bruceyboy: folds
_sodapop_: raises to 4050 and is all-in
RICIAR: is all-in 1040
Returned uncalled bets 1,510 to _sodapop_
----- SHOW DOWN -----
_sodapop_: shows [8h Qh] (Three of a kind, Queens, Ace high)
RICIAR: shows [Qs Jc] (Three of a kind, Queens, Ace high)
RICIAR collects 7405 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----
Total pot 7405 Main pot 7405 Rake 0
Board [2s Ac Qc 3h Qd]
Seat 1: bruceyboy folded on the River
Seat 2: gabr63 (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: _sodapop_ (small blind) showed [8h Qh] and lost
Seat 4: RICIAR (big blind) showed [Qs Jc] and won (7405) with Three of a kind, Queens, Ace high
Seat 5: gazomwe folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Wigwam002 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: Mrpalm folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Mmachine folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 10: Jarva1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

I need a change. Please reccomend a new site before I lose it totally!!!!!!!!!

http://www.tiddlywinks.org/

LOL

Play on Pokerstars Joe.

Sadly, bad "form" is bad form, changing or blaming sites won't help.

Take a break man, or persevere, but it's nowt to do with Crypto, Boss, Tribeca, Stars or Party, bad luck just happens to all of us, & it comes in runs.

Hang in there man!

the online equivalent of "change the cards please" and we know how you feel about that Tikay

At present we have 2899 members, paying the 50p to each of them for a bad beat story can get expensive.

As someone I know told me about bad beats, half the people don't care and the other half are happy.

 ;goodvevil;

Exactly Adam. Peeps are fooling themselvs if they think changing the Deck, or the online Card-Room will help - it just wont.

But I do feel for Strummer. Poor "form" is horrible, a real character tester. Try to think of what it will be like when it changes - and it WILL change. My "form" has been awesomely good this wek, almost TOO good. I relish a struggle against the odds, with no hands, no real material to work with, having to duck & dive to survive. This week it's been almost too easy, my luck has been embarassingly good. Remember that Strummer, your turn will come.

I usually look on posting bad beats as catharsis... it's not nearly as important to me whether everyone is reading the posts and sympathising about it, or whether they think I'm a jerk and are hating my guts (or just yawning, or flipping past the post without really reading the details.)

It just feels good to have a moan, get it off your chest - and then leap back into battle with the ole axe-a-swinging.

Wishing Mr. Strummer  ;goodluck; of course!!!

i know what you mean Tikay. I had a game at Notts a couple of weeks ago. I bubbled but, far from being disappointed I was dead pleased with myself. I went the whole night without seeing a single pocket pair or an ace bigger than A10. I had to fight for every single chip the whole night. I also turned down a saver for 11th when I had 1.5 x BB left and my nearest rival had 5xBB. that's bought me some equity when i get to the bubble chip leader.

in some ways a game like that is as rewarding as being hit in the face with the deck. that being said, a run of cards wouldnt go amiss if the poker gods are listening

thats not strictly true.

Once people have the thoughts impregnated in their head that x site is rigged, it negatively impacts their game (whether they admit it or not). They start playing terribly.. overplaying/underplaying hands.. calling when they should be folding, raising when they should be calling, zigging when they should be zagging, and losing when they should be winning.

Its not the sites fault obviously, but its the negative connotations that are synonymous with their perception of the site.

You see people say all the time "man, I couldn't win on billy hills, but now I changed to X site, I started winning again".. because their slate is clean, the demons are gone, and they just play poker.

A similar analogy is a golfer that holes put for 20 years with the same putter, but then changes. The putter hasn't changed, but their confidence has.

Of course, if you are a professional/seasoned player, moving sites probably wont alter your perception at all, but then in the same logic you wont be thinking the sites are rigged in the first place.

As always, this assurance comes with experience.. but in the interim, changing sites can certainly do your game some good. At the least, it cant do it any harm.

Nice Post totalise, & I take your point - but I don't agree.

To do OK at Poker, you need to keep logic near the front of your mind. If one REALLY thinks a cardroom is rigging the deal, well, that's not really logical, in my opinion.

It's all about - imho - dealing with adversity, handling the breaks when they go against you hand after hand, comp after comp. If you allow your mind to think there is some sort of conspiracy against you - (think about it - how does the site single YOU out for bad treatment?), then that is the real root cause of the players frustration.

They have to learn to accept that luck plays a huge - MASSIVE - part in poker. It'll be tough to handle bad "form" until they do.

So the logic that says the guy plays bad because he has lost confience in the site is, imo, flawed. He needs to go back a step further - & learn to accept that bad form happens, it just does, & there is nothing or nobody to blame.

If you want to remove luck, then Chess is a better option.

Luck plays a huge part in Poker - for good, & for bad. EXACTLY EQUALLY.

Nothing could convince me that, over the longer term, we do not all enjoy roughly the same amount of good & bad luck. We just need to learn how to handle the swings.

What was that tidy little poem by, I think Kipling? - "If".......

Can you estimate how many MTT's we need to play for all our luck to be roughly the same please tikay?

Nope!

 I just know that over the longer term, it HAS to be equally good & bad. Toss a coin a million times, & it will, within a few %, be equal heads & tails. Ditto a thousand times, or a hundred times. The variance DOES increase with a lower sample. Which is "form".

Nothing is more certain. Ghosts don't exist, & good/bad luck is dished out equally.

Tikay,

I just typed out a long response and it was just re-iterating the point I made previously, so we will leave it at that.... with the last comment i have being that if a player wont accept that luck is equal, and the site is rigged, moving sites is much more preferable then him playing there and playing badly.

of course, if he wont accept that luck is even, he wont be a succesful poker player, but for recreational players all around the world, that isn't a bad thing.

If is a great poem though

Byron,

My friend plays about 1,500 tourneys a year online, and each year we analyse his stats, and he is winning with his hands when he should be winning, and losing when he should be losing.. so the win/loss percentages are almost exactly aligned to what it should be.. not sure how useful (if at all) that is, but it gives an indication at least.

I know exactly where you are coming from Totalise. But the guy who moves sites - or changes the deck - to avoid (or fail to confiont) his bad luck, is gonna do it again in a few weeks, when his luck runs bad again.

Now, your agument is that he thinks his luck is bad/the site is rigged, & that affects his confidence, so he plays bad, & loses. And you are right, 100%. But........

If he thinks a little deeper, and takes the problem back to it's root - that really, nobody is conspiring against him, it's just "variance", "form", "luck", he will be able to cope better, & his head won't get messed up by thinking, erroneously, that there is a conspiracy against him. It's all about handling adversity, as simple as that.

Now, take it a step further. Poker is an irrelevance in life. It's a game, played with cash. Nothing on a poker table is REALLY bad. We choose to play the game, nobody forces us to. For recreation (small dosh) or seriously, but we do so knowing that there is a very large luck quoitient involved. Far worse - far FAR worse - happens to every one of us in real life, every single day. It's my view that if players could get that clear in their minds, they would be able to handle "beats" better.  And then they would not get all phased by runs of so-called bad luck. Bad luck on the poker table is of no consequence set against the real world. Grasp that, & you are halfway towards being like me - a good, err, loser....!

In my opinion, I hastily add. Good debate, this.

My view pretty much ends here..


"I know exactly where you are coming from Totalise. But the guy who moves sites - or changes the deck - to avoid (or fail to confiont) his bad luck, is gonna do it again in a few weeks, when his luck runs bad again."

I'm hoping that after site hopping, and seeing that this stuff happens no matter where he/she plays, then it will click, and he/she will see the light, that it doesn't matter what site they are playing. IF that isn't the case, then the cause is probably a lost one anyways

I know when I first started, I had a sick run, couldn't lose a pot. Then I started losing, and of course it was the sites fault, how could I lose after winning so much so soon? so the cash out happened, and I moved to another site. I didn't even start winning there, so I figured THAT one was rigged, then after the winnings had slowly dribbled away into the copious rolls of the professionals, it was then that I actually bothered to look at what was happening... and I was just playing like filth, and the good luck ran out. It wasn't a case of me getting bad luck to lose, I just wasn't getting the good luck needed NOT to lose.

A lot of people I spoke to went through the same process, despite my protestations to the contrary, so I've always felt its something you need to figure out inwardly.



"It's my view that if players could get that clear in their minds, they would be able to handle "beats" better.  And then they would not get all phased by runs of so-called bad luck. Bad luck on the poker table is of no consequence set against the real world. Grasp that, & you are halfway towards being like me - a good, err, loser....!"


People should be happy (in relative terms) when they are taking bad beats, it means they are getting their money in good. Its when you dont take bad beats, and you are losing, you need to start worrying. This is where my detest of bad beat stories comes in.

Good stuff totalise, especially your final para. You should Post more.

yes, i've been revving it up a bit lately.. will post more as time (and interest) permits.

Some great views in here guys.

I have had the most brutal two days of my poker life and for the first time ever I found myself shouting at the screen after my two pair was rivered by a bigger two pair. I felt a bit silly. Outdraws happen and as Tikay says if you accept that outdraws happen and that you will also outdraw other players it really does help your 'mind game' to play the long game. I got up, restored my faith, had a cuppa and went back to make a bad night more manageable.

To be honest Totalise, I also agree with your negativity by association theory. I have played many sites and tend to stick to the ones that I have won money from and dont even look at the ones that I have lost on. The replies here made me think that I should really play on more sites and that the negative experiences I have had on other sites shouldn't really stop me playing there as in most cases the negative thoughts have been sown over a very small sample of losing sessions.

Somebody once said "show me a good loser and i'll show you a loser", i am a bad loser and happy to be so, it stops me getting lazy.
When i say a bad loser i don't mean tantrum/criticising wise, just angry and frustrated in myself (not necessarily with myself).

But do you blame the online cardroom?......

Of course!!
Rigged i tell ya, all of 'em!!
Especially when Kev's playing

If changing sites is likely to improve your attitude/expectations and take you off tilt then it should be done for this reason alone.  Luck does balance out but it could take an awful long time and we tend to remember the bad luck and our out draws do not register for long.

I love to win, and I hate to lose, that's the truth, pure and simple

Once the game is over, I have obviously done either one or the other, but for me thats not the end of it

If I have lost, I feel it is my responsibility to conduct myself well, to absorb and learn from the loss, to congratulate my opponents, to master my own emotions

If I have won, I try not to be too insufferable, to keep it in perspective, and I try not to get too carried away thinking how wonderful I am

Poker, like life, is a series of triumphs and disasters, until you learn to accept this, you will never be happy, no matter how good you are

In life, the bad beats matter so much more, but there is still nothing you can do about them, you can't change lifes deck, or lifes table.

The people I admire most in this world are not lifes big winners, but those who have overcome great adversity.

They have accepted the hands that life has dealt them, played them with flair and courage, and, against the odds, they have won enough small pots to stay in the game

But there you have it, in a nutshell.....

"wer tend to remember the bad luck, & our outdraws do not register for long".....

Overcome that problem & you would not tilt in the first place!

HAS to be Post Of The Week.

Agreed - once again RED-DOG puts everything into perspective!

So Joe before you blame the pokersite try looking at your starting hand requirements. You were behind preflop both examples.
It can't all be good as Red tk and totalise have debated above.  ;goodvevil;

can i suggest www.blondepokerleague.com for your change of site

my form online has been terrible for past 18months taking some horrible beats

but i signed up with blondes new skin and my form is changing i am only $9 down when i would of been $100 on any other site

i also found the turbos were the best place to ply my trade as the blinds go up every 60 seconds so less chance for my lack of form to take hold

mind you dispite my poor form i can still beat the elderly anyone remember the score from the blonde bash2 when i took on the old man

Some good stuff posted and I accept the beats and just wanted to moan. Funny thing is Totalise knew that the tiddle winks site was .org and not your usual .com. hmmmmmmmmm.

Yep the 108s was an attempted blind steal, but on the flop i was 95% plus to win the hand.

Anyway thanks for the constructive comments.

I was reading an article about this some time back where a mathmatician proved that there is a bias with coinflips, the more the sample the more the variance.
Not to dispute your point, just quashing another urban myth :D

Don't believe everrything you read, & especially don't believe mathemeticians who set out to disprove what's already proven beyond doubt.

We all enjoy, in the longer-term, the same amount of good & bad luck. But some folks give themselves more chances to get lucky, or unlucky. And THATS the skill bit. And others, the majority, sadly, only remember the bad luck.

Everyone can run bad. I've seen posts of long term winning players drop their bankroll over 50,000 hands.
Most of the top pros you know of today have been broke at least one, some many times.

So when your full house gets busted by some smurf hoping for an inside straight and he makes runner runner quads, dont throw your monitor in the pool - find out his name and where he lives and go and kick his head in.

Um so anyway, take up buddhism and chill.

so we live on average for 3 score and 10 so after 50% of my 3 score and 10 i have had 100% bad luck so over the long run i should be instore for 35 years of good luck well i cant wait for it to start

He can actually toss a coin and get heads (or tails) evrytime.

Who can? Thewy? He prob can!

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/2004/diaconis-69.html

When i was younger i used to be able to toss a 50p coin to always get whichever result i wanted.

Just another suggestion towards the 'changing the site will give you new confidence/make you play proper poker again'. I've found something similar a while ago, which was resetting/changing my record keeping tool. I've been using a website to keep track of my poker until mid-march, which included my absolute novice period (now I'm an advanced novice) and therefrom quite a significant negative figure.
I still have that number saved up somewhere, but have started a new statistic from zero this month, which I found boosted my confidence in my game quite significantly, because rather than having that big negative number from last year to look at all the time, it's now all black numbers and graphs in the positive. March was my first winning month in poker, but in the last 10 days I've already made more profit than in the whole of March, and blame that partly on having that new stats sheet. Makes you look more positive at things, I suppose?!

Yes, I'm sure you could - but that was SKILL, not LUCK......

As to ifm's link, I rest my case. After faffing about with computers, air-resistance, automatic coin flipping devices, dropping cats, bla bla bla, he surmises that a coin will come down heads 51% of the time, but pointedly fails to state the sample size.......

Luck evens out. Life must be dull if you think it does not.

It is no myth to say that the larger the sample size, the smaller the variance. However, I would disagree with tikay when he says that the variance increase in a smaller sample is down to 'form'. I think it's mathematical, nothing more than that.

It's down to each individual result's effect on the small sample, being greater than it would be on a larger sample, due to it being more relevant on the smaller sample. In other words a single result is a larger proportion of a sample when considering smaller sample sizes.

So IMO it's not down to 'form', it's down to the fact that your sample size isn't big enough yet. This is where I imagine a lot of poker players who record their results go wrong. Sheriff Fatman said it best last month - "people just dont realise how long the 'short term' is."

Seperate note:

Ifm's point about being a good loser is excellent. Whilst it doesn't mean we should throw wobblers and hand out rub downs, if you ever get to the stage where you aren't hurt by losing then something is seriously wrong with your game.

I was referring only to the coinflipping thingy.
Tikay 51% IS a bias, i was refuting that over time a coin flip will balance out 50/50. (the urban myth)

What was the sample size?

Don't remember, i will have a look for the rest of the research later.

U Little Quasher

I'm sure he has a point but if the sample size is under a certain size then the variance may be within acceptale limits.

(Similarly in poker, with a small sample size for your results, a bad run may look like rigged software, your balance may seem like it's had huge losses, and you might think yourself a terrible player when this may not be the case.)

It does not give a sample size. 1% variance in 100 is "form"....!

Over a larger sample, it will balance out 50-50. It does not have to be a nice round number, like 100, 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000. Any large number will do. At given stages, one or other will be "ahead", then they wieil crossover. This is short-term variance. Over a large sample it will come out, as near as makes no difference, evens. It's not an urban myth, it's a fact.

Morre to the piont, if at a sample size of 100, it comes out at 51-49 could you, unerringly, with 100% success, nominate which "side" will win?.....NO! Because that's luck..........

or just pure guesswork.....

i'll say it again luck doesnt exist.

and i will be attempting to prove this on the laddies graveyard freezeout....

I'm surprised you dispute the findings of a man with such a high standing as Persi Diaconis Tikay.
Others who dispute the "myth" :-

Joseph Ford. "How random is a coin toss?" Physics Today, 36:40-47, 1983.

Joseph B. Keller. "The probability of heads". American Mathematical Monthly, 93:191-197, 1986.

Vladimir Z. Vulovic and Richard E. Prange. "Randomness of a true coin toss". Physical Review A, 33:576-582, 1986.

Two of these look as though they might be looking at the physical coin toss rather than the statistics of the results.

Well no, I DO think luck exists, it just does. But we all get, roughly, the same good & bad, & folks who whinge at Bad beats foget the suck-outs.

The Graveyard? I am in OK shape, was 4th of 93 (124 began) 5 mins ago, but I had a bit of bad luck (oops) & dropped to 27th, then I had  bit of good luck (oops again) & am back up to 8th now...... It's that Luck thing, see.....

Surprised or not, I do dispute them & so, I fancy, do you!

Blind me with science? No thank you.

only six places up on me after I got all in preflop with AA vs KK (playing as pattoc)


At the end of the days its all probability...and every piece of "luck" no matter how outrageous can be explained....

I know people who can toss two coins at once and make them come both heads or tails at will (It's called Flamming)

To combat this skill, in a proper tossing ring players are required to flip the coins from the end of a flat stick

I got you - 3,835 as I look. I'm on 4,665, & Red is on about 2,400.

What on earth is a tossing ring Tom? Do they wager big money?

Is it like soggy biscuit? :D

OMG, you wouldn't believe it

A large group of men form in a circle, two men stand in the middle one is the "Penny Man" It's his job to ensure that everything is kosher, ie, the coins don't have two heads, bets are honoured, trouble makers are ejected etc, For providing thes service he takes a small rake from every "Pot"

The other man is the player who's turn it is to toss the coins, he gives the penny man the amount of money that he wants to wager, and the penny man walks around the circle calling out, for example, "£500, who wants any part of £500?"

Bets are then taken from the crowd until the £500 is covered, (The penny man is also responsible for remembering who bet what amount) then the rest of the crowd are free to bet among themselves

The player makes his throw, if both coins come down heads, he wins all bets and gets another turn, he can bet for more than his original £500 stake but not less, he can have as many turns as he likes until he loses, then it's the next mans turn

In 1978 at Doncaster races when all the Gypsies used to attend, I saw a man called Coppie Price throw 17 sets of heads, he won over £30,000 and a new Land Rover, back then, £30,000 was a lot of money

What a life you must lead Tom!

I wanna know why after he did it like 6 or 7 times people kept betting!?

This would be a group of maybe 100 or so wealthy guys, all desperate for action, some of course were betting that he would head them

Ahh I see. A great thing to learn then!

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying Coppie flammed them

He may well have done, I'm just not saying it!

"flammed"?

When I see this thread on the main page, it says "sick to death of cry..."

I could have sworn it was going to say 'crying' and we'd had some really bad news.

Good news is it's not life or death news.

A very similar version of this game is played in Australian casinos, they call it 'two-up'.

On Anzac day there is an amnesty on gambling in the street, and you will see groups of people on street corners playing the game in the way described by Red.

Brilliant

It was (i dont know about now as the coins have changed) a well know fact that a coin would land heads up more times than tales - it was due to the spinning of the coin and the fact that the heads side of a coin weighed more than the tail side.

Just think, some sad git probably spent 1000's of tax payers money to prove this - GENIUS!!

I didn't read the entire coin flip article but i thought of the following (sorry if it is already taken into account):

Surely the bias would depend on the type of coin used, it's specific condition (ie how worn it is and where etc) and the type of flip used. Other things like the wind may also have an effect on which outcome is more likely.