Defeating A Downswing

[WannabeCoder]

@Yorunoame

"When a strategy is correct against strong players, it should be even more correct against weaker players”…

I don’t think that statement has much validity in poker. That would seem to suggest that a GTO approach is always best, blind to your opponents frequencies, and that you should never adjust your strategies based on what your opponents are actually doing.

I’ll stand by my original statement. You seem to be steelmanning what I said, that GTO-style play that works against strong players will also be the most-correct style of play against a player (or player pool) with defined weaknesses. I agree with you that such a statement would be inaccurate, and have posted here and elsewhere about how to deviate from optimal strategies in order to maximally exploit the weak, passive player pool endemic to Replay.

What I actually said was that strategies that work against strong players should also work - and work better - against weak players. If we were to quantify player weakness by assessing deviation from optimal strategy, this becomes true by definition: the larger the deviation, the greater the EV delta against an optimal player.

As for discussions on limping and preflop strategy, feel free to continue the discussion in the following thread: Preflop Limping is Bad

[PegLegLuke]

Thanks. I’ll give this a try…

Phil

[znobody]

These are fake “chips Mister”" Or Credits? Keep on buying.

[Yorunoame]

Thanks for the clarification. I’m still not in agreement with the assertion that strategies that are effective against strong players are necessarily more effective against weaker players (even if I do agree that raising pre-flop is also effective against most types of weak players). It seems to me that you are asserting with that statement that the set of strategies effective against strong players consists only of strategies that, when used against any type of weaker players is more effective than it was against the stronger players, when in fact the set consists of many strategies that are very effective against a pool of strong players (say bluffing in certain tightly defined situations), and -EV against certain pools of weak players (call stations).

[theanalyst01]

Hi guys, the discussion seems to have drifted so I think I can join in here

Part of me defeating my own downswing, prior to reading Marcs advice, was to give myself a budget of 2500 chips and play my way up from 1/2 through to 50/100. 1/2, I must say, is a bit too easy even for me lol … so I started at 2/4 with rare forays into the 1/2 world. It’s nice to know that “dropping a level” has the approval of the good players lol

The play is completely different to anything even at the 25/50 tables - wildly different!

Forget iso-raising unless you’re prepared to go all-in - actually, forget iso-raising altogether! You need to stand up to 50+BB raises preflop which could AA, could be 82o that will still attract a couple of callers. All-in preflop could be anything at all!!! There’s no read because the bets are mostly large random numbers. The timing seems to be random - it’s certainly not used for thinking time! Bluff your heart away sucker - there’s some guy sitting there with AAAA, not raising, just waiting for you. Or it might be 5-9s with no connection to the board and he’ll call you with an all-in just because he can.

There’s a lot of hit’n’run bingo players as well. You don’t have long term for your superior play to pay off.

I’m definitely with @Yorunoame on this - I find it very difficult to believe that superior skills pay off in the short term against these types of players.

Maybe you’re in the 500k/1m league? You think that 200/400 is where the weak players live? I’m not stating that at all, it’s a genuine question.

As you’d expect, I’m holding my own, and making a profit, at the low levels but it’s much harder work than I expected especially because I’m on a self-imposed budget to test myself.

I’d really like to see some high ranked players do the same thing - provided they don’t play at the same table … maintain separate accounting for a starting bankroll of 2500 and start at 1/2 or 2/4. Then, using cash game guidelines, you’re allowed to move to 5/10 when your bankroll is 40k (20 times max buy in) and so on.

I’m just one not-very-good player so please don’t take any of this as an insult. I like to think that my experience, on-going even now (still at 2/4 level grrrr!), provides some insight.

Regards,
Ivan (call me TA if you prefer )

[puggywug]

I’ve had my share of downswings on this site.

It helps to get away from the game for a while and come back.

• Don’t play exhausted.
• Don’t play mad.
• Don’t play impatient.
• Don’t play expecting the worst to happen. Tell your negative voice in your head to shut up.
• Trust probability to work in the long term, even if it does not in the short term.

Review the hands you get beat on, as well as the ones you win. Consider the perspective of the hand “villain” and try to understand why they made the decisions they did. Did they outplay you or did they get lucky?

If you’re not getting cards, there’s not much that you can do about that. You’ll have times where you can’t pair the board, and times when you don’t see anything you think is playable, but it’ll hit monster hands after you fold it. Move to lower stakes for a while and play at a level where losing is of no great consequence, and work on your game until you start to hit again.

[JanCee]

All good advice. Well said!

[Fozman]

@puggywug

• Don’t play expecting the worst to happen. Tell your negative voice in your head to shut up.
• Trust probability to work in the long term, even if it does not in the short term.

In keeping with the pacing of the first three points, one may condense to…

• Don’t play scared.

I see people play at 1K/2K with their entire bankroll at the table. If you’re serious about building your bankroll long-term, don’t do this. I’ve done it before and it alters how you play, even if you aren’t conscious of it. You should try to play at a level where you have at least 10 or 20 max buy-ins; and as Puggy said, step down to where you have 40 or more for a while if you’re having a lot of runbad. Stick to your game and let the variance play out at a lowered chip cost.

Puggy’s last paragraph is very good advice. I’ll add that sometimes you’ll need to play those more marginal hands if you’re card dry. High cards with bad kickers can work on short-handed tables and low-mid suited gappers can work in limpy multi-way situations. Just be careful with how much you spend on them.

[love2eattacos]

@theanalyst01

Maybe you’re in the 500k/1m league? You think that 200/400 is where the weak players live? I’m not stating that at all, it’s a genuine question.

I tried this a while back and posted results in this thread. Short version is that the play at low stakes is generally much worse and you can be very successful there with a straightforward, simplified value-betting strategy.

With respect to the super-micros at 1/2 and 2/4, your observations seem spot on to me. Again these levels are very easy to beat - wait for something like 88+ / AJ+ and then just shove preflop - you’ll get plenty of callers. Variance will get you in the short run but it’s very easy to win multiple buyins quickly.

[theanalyst01]

@love2eattacos, thanks for your comment. I discovered that thread and read every post and comment with a great deal of interest

@love2eattacos

you can be very successful there with a straightforward, simplified value-betting strategy

Yes, that’s it exactly. My experience so far is that anything more complicated ends up hurting more than helping - that’s the only point I was making.

I’m trying to avoid the variance which is why I’ve go a “no rebuy” policy for me - ups the challenge somewhat lol

Things are going to be more interesting for the next 24 hours because the low stakes ring games are where the winter games tournament is taking place now!

Anyway, I’ve derailed this thread sufficiently for the moment, many thanks for your comments.

[Yorunoame]

In addition to all of these great points, re-reading your post sparked another thought on something that I think can be useful in recovering from downswings, and also in helping to avoid tilt: ignore the result of the hand or hands, and instead focus on the question: am I happy with the decisions I made on each street, based on the information I had at the time? Could I have improved the line anywhere? Did I size my bets well? Did I overplay my hand? Did I consider all of my options?

Somewhat different: I find it nice to turn things around, and pretend I’m the opponent after losing a big hand, and really think through their line in the same way. Sometimes there will be this initial rush of emotion after a tough river card and a big loss, “that lucky *** *** ***”, and then when I go through this exercise, I’m left thinking, gee, I like the way he played that.