Anything that causes you that much stress should just be avoided especially if you are winning elsewhere. If you are out to prove to yourself that you can beat that site then seems like to me that you are one a tilt.

I have the same frustattion with the $1/$2NL game. I can beat the lower and higher games, but I always ssem to have problems in the $1/$2 NL game. I havent played it for about 2 months, but I hate giving up playing it for the sole reason that I hate being a quitter and I know Im better than those guys. I have no answers right now. I just avoid it. I suggest you avoid Party for a while and come back to it later.

My theory of why it is so hard to win the $1/$2 NL and lower is because the fish never stop coming. You can never put them on a hand. They play any 2 cards to the river. That 25% to 30% of the flops that you see are getting cracked by Mr. 80% of the flops. He is not a winning player he just shuffles money from one player to the other and back again. So you/we are only breaking even. Once 80% of the flops guy bust out two more 80%ers are waiting to take his place.

Monk, all I can say is that I know EXACTLY how you feel. If you were a woman, that would be enough to make you feel better. Men want answers though, not someone to validate their feelings. Unfortunatley, I dont have the answers. Im just now starting to turn my rut around but Im still not making alot of headway.
Last week I won $1
Yesterday I was up $90 in the morning. In the evening session I was up $175 in 30 minutes and quit up only $35. Today Im down $90. YUCK!

Monk
You are one of the most literate posters on any forum...I suppose that makes it a bit easier to "read" your frustration...If we can assume there are no newfound leaks in your game (which after reading your posts for a long time, this seems unlikely), I am reminded of one the best posts I have ever read...Most of us on this forum have read and respect Grant Pittman...

I believe he wrote that he broke even early in his career from JANUARY to AUGUST!!!!! Think about that!! I have no doubt most of us play much softer games than Grant ever did, but it may be that things are just running badly (for now)...Think about it....

If it happened to a guy we all respect and admire............

B

After all this, I really need to build my bankroll to get to the NL 100 game...still at NL25 but almost up to NL50...just a couple more buyins and I'll be there.

Your topic reminds me of another friend who lets his girlfriend play on his account. He does pretty well for himself in the NL 50 game, and she plays 1/2 and 2/4 limit at Party Poker. She is up now over $1600 since maybe May or June playing these low limits, and she does all of it on "intuition", as she puts it. My friend is amazed as he watches here time and again catch two outers and four or five outers w/ some mediocre holding. But, she is a winner somehow, and she'll keep on playing. She does have an idea of course of when to be aggressive and when to play it safe, but at certain times during this year, some of her favorite hands consisted of 74o, J6, and K4s.

Anyway, I guess it's possible that some people will buck the odds more often than not, but I figure eventually it will come to haunt her. Also, I think you will start to win at PP eventually as well Monk...

THIS IS IN NO WAY A RECOMMENDATION TO PLAY WITH YOUR "INTUITION" ALONE.

So, the Empire frustration continues. Played again tonight, on stars, UB, and empire. Lost a bit on UB after some O8 play, and made a nice score on Stars as I came 3rd in a two-table SnG (with the help of some luck after I survived about 3 all-ins in 4th position). Felt that I played pretty well at the PLO8 tables too without hitting any big hands. Once more, empire was a waste of time and money as I shipped about 70 bucks without really seeing a hand at 3/6 O8. Multiway pots, crazy betting, but still nothing much seems to connect and low back-ups get counterfeited with monotonous regularity. i know it's a measly 12 BBs at a swingy game, but still it felt a bit like the straw that broke the camel's back, so I'm going to drop Empire and Party from my regular rotation of sites. Again. For the fourth (fifth?) time this year. Lol! Session was a reflection of the month, that is, that I'm having moderate success everywhere (up at UB and stars, though only averaging about $20 per hour playing at those sites, below average for me), but that empire still has me sitting less than pretty at -$400 for the month.

Anyways, will have $100 rebate coming in the new year, once that's here I'm leaving Empire for good (at least in the medium term) and try to set things right again. I can pare my BR down a little by withdrawing from empire and royal vegas in the new year, and see where stars and ultimatebet take me. I think the xmas/new year break will do a lot of good - just hoping I can get my month back on the winning trail before then, and perhaps appraoch the new year with a new aggression. As I said, I really don't think I'm playing badly (as my excellent SnG results this month have probably shown), and other than a few BB's pissed away at 3/6, I really can't recall any major mistakes in my game of late.

I think everyone goes through these cold periods, perhaps I'm fortunate that in the past I havent had the problem because I generally beat the PLO high games by such a degree that even short downswings have almost invariably been followed by a few big winning days that have counteracted. I think it's telling that this month I've not made any of those big, marquee pots that can turn an average session into a big one - perhaps, as a few people have noted, it's due to people playing a little tighter over the xmas period. Certainly, although average pots seem to not be down at any of the sites, the number of big big pots I've seen has been pretty low. Perhaps when a cold run of cards and some bad luck combines with a sudden lack of fish giving up stacks with dominated hands, it's a recipe for a short downswing.

Let's hope this doesn't last much longer. Another $20 loss today but fingers crossed sooner or later we'll see that silver lining. Good luck to everyone else on their downswings!

Monk
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Monk,

You are stating the reasons why I quit Party/Empire. The place is all-in crazy..and many of the times you are not a huge favorite. They move in with their flush draw or straight draws when you have an overpair blah blah. Well you know...you can lose ALOT of those with bad luck.

I started on Party/Empire a couple of months ago and was KILLING the $100NL game to the tune of like $60 an hour or something along those lines. And then my bad streak hit. For that month..I actually ended up DOWN overall with FULL HOUSES and TRIPS. If someone told me that I wouldn't believe it but man..I've got screenshots from pokertracker...it was an insanely bad run.

So what I did....I left the site. I decided my bankroll couldn't handle that crap and I went back to where I made my initnial roll, Royal Vegas. It's a completely different game over there. Everyone is passive and afraid to lose their stack. Much easier for building bankroll, which is my goal at present.

You're a proven winner at other sites. I say just leave Party/Empire outright and go back to winning. If you want to gamble and "go all-in"...download a casino and put some big money on red or black. At least then you'll have fun.

I think an old addage applies here. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Go back to where you are winning. That's what I had to do and it's working wonders.

Thanks a lot for your input kenny. It's nice to know I am not the only successful semi-pro type player who can't seem to figure out the craziness at Party. I have always enjoyed my best successes in the omaha games at relatively tight tables that I can boss around but which have one or two passive players who can't drop a hand, and thus are liable to give you their stack at some point. The party ones are more crazy and hyper-aggressive, and like you say, this can turn a game where no hand is a massive dominator preflop into a bit of a high-variance proposition. I have also found that my best O8 limit results have actually come at UB (where average pots for a 10-handed table are usually 6-7BBs) rather than party/empire (where the average pot at my limits is 8-10BBs). I guess the one reason I have perservered all this time at party is that my BEST results have come historically at Cryptologic, where the games are often loose (big bet ones anyhow - I killed the 100NL when they brought it in earlier this year, same story with the 100 and 200 PLO). I do actually play at royal vegas myself, so maybe I'll check it out a bit more thoroughly - been there a month now and won a few hundred bucks. What's your screen name? I have also noticed that the NL tables are pretty passive, but with a lot of calling stations. Small and minimum raises seem to be the norm as well, usually the sign of soft games.

On a plus point, this month I have had moderate success at UB's limit O8 games, so whilst I have bonus there I will be playing the 3/6 and 2/4 kill games to pick that up, and will perhaps leave some BR on there because even though the site is pretty tight, I like the interface a lot (despite the crappy notes feature). If they put a symbol down on every player on whom you had notes I think it would overtake Stars as the best-designed site online. On other fronts, I have been highly successful and am quite enjoying the Stars SnGs, having won and placed in a few $30 ones this month. I love the two table ones, I think these could be a real goldmine for me, although my lack of natural aggression might preclude me from picking up the real money-spinning 1st and 2nd place spots. As for PLO high, my best game, I seem to be having real struggles finding good games (this is perhaps compounded by the fact that this month, when I've played, I have hardly found a single big hand; I haven't busted out more than once, but I haven't taken a stack either). The Stars games vary from uber-tight to reasonably loose, but often when I check in there isn't a lot of selection. At Crypto I could usually find at least 2 loose, non-aggressive tables, real goldmine stuff. At Stars/UB there is usually not quite as many loose players although they are often very bullyable. I think for the rest of the month I have to aim to dance with the one that brought me to a greater extent, and hit up the 100PLO at stars as much as possible, whenever the average pots are $25+. Going to keep playing the SnGs whilst I'm winning, and hit the 100 & 200PLO8 at Stars when the tables are good. Those games have been very good to me of late and there's less chance of getting burnt for your whole stack than there is at PLO (you can bet if my stack is in the middle at PLO8, I have one or both ends of the pot locked up and ready for shipment). I guess all I need now is to hit some big hands - in past months I have been spoilt, picking up fairly regularly pots in the $400-800 range in the 100 and 200 buyin omaha games, and those pots seem to have dried up for me in the last month. I think in that time I've won one of these, and that was a $400 pot in the 200 buy-in PLO8. Looking at it objectively, I think that can only suggest that I've basically not had a run of good cards and nice situations lately, and have had to make do with scrapping for smaller pickings, which has led to me winning only $1400 or so since the beginning of November.

Maybe see you at RV some time, kenny - i had planned to cull the $800 i had there in my new year BR emptying spree but perhaps I should continue to use it as my outlet for NL ring games, as the comparable ones at UB and Stars can be a little over tight for my liking.

Once again, thanks all for your help.

Monk
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Another brutal session. I played dreadfully, to the point of even misreading my hand at one point and calling down with a "boat" that was in fact a mediocre trips at PLO. I havent looked at how much I lost but it's another couple of hundred bucks I think.

I am seriously just about done with this for now. My confidence has completely gone down the toilet and i feel my game is at an all-time low. Previously I've thought this was just down to a bad run of cards, but tonight some of the things I did were inexplicable. I think winning more than I could ever really have imagined for a nice period of time has basically made me lose my perspective as to the value of money. I don't spend the required amount of time on decisions which are the equivalent of the amount of money I make in four or five hours at work. I feel in zero control of what's going on at the tables, and I'm not happy about it. I'm pretty much resigned now to the fact this is going to be my first ever losing month since I started online a couple of years back, and to be honest it was a situation I thought I wouldn't find myself in. If there's any silver lining to this cloud, it's that my BR (built up to over $25,000 this year) has only taken a hit of $600-700 or so (I think, before checking) but basically it's still getting me down an astonishing amount how BAD this run has been, particularly as I can't really explain what's been going on. Am i just playing badly, have the cards been excessively unkind? I can't remember a lot of astonishing beats.

Today I had a couple of nasty ones, some goon calling all-in at PLO for a $60 pot with a gutshot... of course he hit it, and I was also chased down for a runner-runner flush in my SnG but really, a lot of my losses were my fault, or that's how it felt. Calling too much preflop, making the wrong move, not thinking enough, and one or two glaring errors such as calling down a pot sized raise at PLO8 when I was basically sure I was quartered, mis-clicking because i badly aligned the windows and calling off half my stack in my SnG with K8o early in the SnG (I recovered superbly to money in 3rd place, one high spot this month has been my SnG results - My ITM % is somewhere in the 80s currently).

I find myself exhausted and drawn by this run. Poker is not becoming something I am looking forward to every night, and I think if this continues much longer it will start to really get me down. Right now though, quite frankly, I don't care nearly as much as I ought to do and after a losing run of about 4 weeks now, I think I need to nip this in the bud, regroup, and maybe take my first proper "break". I have never been an advocate of taking lengthy breaks, personally, I always prefer to simply change my focus by switching games (the benefit of playing O8, PLO and NL), but then i've never been in a situation where my game seems so lacking in focus and aim, and where it's hurting me significantly monetarily. My lack of huge hands is perplexing as well, I don't recall winning more than maybe one "big" (i.e. 2 buy-ins +) pot at the 100 and 200 games this month, and otherwise it's just been a slow leak of chips. The bad run started at empire but now I am officially a losing player for the month at UB and royal vegas, and barely a winner at Stars.

In any case, I have decided to get "serious" about this break thing, and in order to stop myself creeping back on in the next day or two to hash out a few hours of play, I've decided to take the very serious step of withdrawing my entire online bankrolls to my bank account. I'll find myself some other way to kill time in the evenings until the new year, perhaps i'll go get myself a copy of half life 2 ... I've also got a few things to work on, including an article or two I intend to write for posting on here . Maybe I'll put my mind to thinking about how best to dig myself out of this funk, as well. I might leave a few bucks on stars to play some SnGs towards the end of the month, as my results there have been good enough to suggest I might have a future pushing my "career" in that direction for a month or two. On the whole, I think it's a smart move to get out whilst I havent hurt my bankroll to any great extent, and to re-evaluate. I think one area I might like to look at is playing fewer tables - I bore easily and to be honest I think these days I over face myself with high-level tables where i need to be on my a-game to win consistently, and my a-game is nowhere to seen. The iterative losses one can take on 3 tables of $100 buyins and 2 of $200 are quite large, I would guess!

I'll still be posting and readin here regularly, so I'll be around until I pick it up again seriously in the new year gl everybody, keep posting and enjoy the christmas period, I will keep dropping by whilst I'm on my break!

For your perusal (and mostly to make me feel a bit better, to be honest) here's my gross stats for the year. Things don't seem so bleak when I look at the numbers I've been able to put up, considering that at the beginning of 2004 I was targetting £300-350 per month (incl. bonuses)

Jan: £600 80 hours
Feb: £425 55 hours
Mar: £450 60 hours
Apr: £1497 72 hours
May: £1013 75 hours
Jun: £1103 67 hours
Jul: £1096 69 hours
Aug: £1138 81 hours
Sep: £1516 78 hours
Oct: £3105 102 hours
Nov: £921 79 hours
Dec: -£318 39 hours

The small totals in the first few months were due to concentrating mainly on limit holdem at that point, and due to my low bankroll not allowing me to play above 2/4 (I had been withdrawing above certain cut-off points). Once I decided to grow my BR a bit and take the NL and PLO (my best games) a bit more seriously and allocate some money to them, I only dropped below £1000 in the last two months of the year, and averaged comfortably over 1000 per month.

TOTAL: £12,864 in 857 hours (after moving to "big bet" games this is £11389 in 662 hrs)

With current exchange rate (£/$) rounded to £0.55 : $1...

TOTAL: $23,389 in 857 hours ($20,707 in 662 hrs for the big bet games). Averaging $30 per hour or so for the year, not bad given the fact i've been changing games regularly and trying some different things (getting serious with omaha 8, playing some SnGs, playing some smaller level games at the start of the year). This figure does not include live play, btw, which will push it comfortably above $25,000.

I am really happy that poker, which, at the start of the year was merely a small sideline for me that I was hoping would pay my monthly rent/mortgage, has turned into a major earner for me and a potential future career. If my abysmal downturn of the last couple of months had not occurred, I would have been close to $30,000 for the year playing part time, which was far in excess of what I had hoped for at the beginning of the year. I've beaten a variety of different games in this period, and improved my play from the start of the year immeasurably in some areas. For a long time now, I've played poker as a passtime and for a bit of pocket money, always dreaming that at some stage it would become a potential career for me, or that I could hold my head up having won a significant, meaningful sum. This year I've one from being a relatively serious recreational player to a very serious semi-pro, and although I feel some other areas of my life have suffered slightly from the amount of hours I've been putting in, I've succeeded in holding down the job as well, and putting myself in a financial position where I have been able to afford a car with my winnings (plus a few grand from 2003) and build up enough savings to be able to pay the deposit on a house in the new year. Poker, for all its frustrations, wicked downswings, and heart-wrenching, painful moments, has still opened a lot of doors for me, financially, and has psychologically provided me with something in my life that I know I'm truly good at, and something at which I have been truly successful so far, from the sweat of my own labour, learning and efforts. And perhaps that, for those of us who do not yet play for a living, is the most important thing.

Anyways, recent downswing aside, it's been a heck of a year, and hopefully 2005 will see some more breakthroughs in my game. It's been fun posting online, meeting a lot of great people through these boards (many of whom I've been lucky enough to meet, or at least plan to, in real life over in the UK) and it's always fantastic to receive appreciation for some of the material that I've posted on here, as well as reading some truly A-grade material from some of the other posters on these boards. Despite its bad image, truly some of the most enlightened, intelligent, deep thinking people I know are involved in this game, and it's been a pleasure being around this last 12 months. Right now, I'm going to hit the sack, and reflect on what might well be a world record for longest post in history lol.

Thanks to all those online who've helped me this year (you know who you are!) and thanks also for the appreciation, thanks, and referral bonuses I've received from those who I've been able to help.

Catch you later, here's to 2005!

Monk
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Monk, when I read this, I feel like someone drilled into my brain and pulled my thoughts out and posted them. Im not nearly as eloquent as you so I couldve never wrtiten this post but believe me, youre echoing my thoughts very closely.
Ive pulled out of my funk ever so slightly the past 5-6 days but I still feel the frustration that you feel.
Most of the frustration, I believe, is from doing incredibly well for so long. Once you start winning money by the $1000's and winning most every time you sit down, you fully expect to win every session, every week and every month. I went something like 15 weeks in a row without a losing week before posting a -$75 one week. I was pretty distraught. I posted on UPF and a couple very good players said they couldnt believe that not only had I gone so many weeks without losing but that my loss was so small. They had swings where they lost hundreds all the time.

I won for the next few weeks and then my current streak started. Just like you, what I call a horrible streak is really just a length of time that Ive been playing break even or losing slightly, but after being so successful, it feels like I stink all of the sudden. I actually asked my wife the other day "is it possible Ive been lucky for the past 2 years and Im really NOT better than these other guys?"

She shook her said and said "you really are loing your mind arent you?"
Ive been ripping up the tables for 2-3 years and I break even for a month and all of the sudden I start doubting myself? That IS crazy.

Streaks happen. Its an anomaly (I like that word). I know a guy who bet on 14 college football games one saturday and lost them all. What are the odds? If you play long enough, there will be streaks where everything goes against you know matter how good you are.

Heres my suggestion to you. Take a break because you obviously need one. When you come back, go back to your roots.
Whatever you did to build your roll, go back to it.

If youve been playing more tables than you used to, cut back to what you used to do. Play slightly lower stakes so you can relax a bit. And most of all, stop looking at your hourly rate. If you are used to making $30/hr, then $15/hr is going to make you feel lousy. Just play stressfree like you used to when you were playing and learning with no high expectations.

Hmmm good advive. I should point out that I'm really used to making $40-50 per hour lol (incl bonuses), the 30 figure is from the entire year, the first 3 1/2 months of which were spent playing almost exclusively 1/2 and 2/4 HE. Last 6 months or so the figure's been around 40 i think (and just crippled a bit by the recent bad spell).

Like I say, I am going to take some time off, have a think about things, and hopefully come back with renewed focus. I might take in a live game at some point, but basically lay off the online stuff until i've made a few better decisions about things, and perhaps some new year resolutions i could start by fixing hours when i play, and developing a better means of keeping my records. I'm still very happy with having broken $1000 all but two months of the year, and having broken $2000 for all but 3 (or maybe 4) months.

Anyways, it's nearly 6am here and i should be doing something other than sitting here writing this lol ... I'm going to take that break and try to regain some focus, and then tear some unsuspecting PLO players a new set of buttholes in the new year

Monk
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