Learn how to play poker

What to do when you are running bad

Hello-

Haven’t posted in a while.  Haven’t had much reason to.  And it seems like I’m not alone.  Was reading posts on PokerXFactor about some instructors having bad runs of their own where nothing you can do goes right.  Get your money in good and still lose over and over again.

Your overpair gets beat by the donkey’s underpair.

Your 9-1 favorite KK gets beat by K9.

The list goes on and on.

I don’t like talking about bad beats.  We all have them and we all give them.

I get mad sometimes when I take one but then also laugh when I give one.

I especially like it when I crack big hands like aces or kings when they limp or minimum raise and you stack them.  Those beats are really fun.

But when you are running bad you need to step back, take some time off, talk to your poker buddies and see what it is you are doing.  They can help you find out if you are making bad decisions or just getting unlucky.

One common problem that occurs when you are running bad is you begin to play bad as well and it compounds the hits to your bankroll.

If you have access to hand replayers, I would make good use of them.  Watch how you play hands and see if you can make some changes that will lead to better decisions.

If you are playing a lot of SNGs, I would recommend checking your pushes and folds using an ICM calculator.

You can also try another game to try a change of pace.  I’ve actually been playing more 6 max pot limit omaha.  Fun game.  Not for the faint of heart though.  The swings are crazy.

Or just take a week or two off.

I actually did one of those self exclusion things on Full Tilt the other day because I was not doing well.  But by doing that instead of letting my emotions take control of my bankroll I prevented myself from playing and allowed me some time to cool off and come back another day in a better state of mind.

There are many things you can do to get through a bad run.

You could also read other player’s bad beat stories or bad run stories and they may be so large that yours pale in comparison.

All part of the game we love that is poker.

Good luck at the tables!

-Adam

Is patience necessary to play winning poker?

Hello-

Depending on how many poker players you talk to, you will get several different answers to how much patience you need to play winning poker.

It depends on the game you are playing – SNG, MTT, Cash games.

And then it depends on if you are playing a turbo SNG or MTT to how patient you can be.

It depends on your style of play as well.

If you are comfortable waiting for your big hands kind of like Phil Helmuth and waiting for the right situation to put your chips in play, you may blind down so many chips that when you finally put your chips in late in a tournament, the blinds may be forced to call you with inferior hands and stand a decent chance to beat your hand range.  And then you’ll be out and your patience will have been wasted.

But in this same situation if you are playing a cash game, you can open up 4 tables and just wait for good quality starting hands and wait and wait and wait until you get those hands and play them aggressively and more often than not, you will make money.  And your patience will have been rewarded.

However, if the cash game players are paying attention to how few hands you are playing they may easily fold hands like AQ to your raise but happily call your raises in position with suited connectors or medium pairs that stand to do well against your big hands that you may have trouble letting go because you waited so long for your big hands and you don’t want to let them go easily.

So like most things in poker, it depends!

Good luck at the tables.

-A