Am I just dooming myself to mediocrity?

[mechanek]

Hello all,

The question I pose is not rhetorical atleast to myself.
I have been playing poker since I was a kid starting with 5 card & 7 card, both draw and stud.

I have played so many different styles and variants it is hard to remember them all.

I've done the after work games, the small home games, the back bar games, "free" (beer is never free) bar games, casino 3-6, 1-2 and $30-up buy-in tourneys.

I almost exclusively play NL Hold-em now and have for many years (was playing on PS before anyone knew who Moneymaker was).

I have had the oppourtunity for the past several months to do nothing but play and have had one sig cash $933 in a $50+5 MTT on PS this summer, finishing 10 out 2700+.

I cashed out $800 and left the change to play with.

Since then I have not duplicated anything even remotely close to such a finish.

I have continued to play and play and play, only to have buy-in after buy-in swept away, go deep, play solid and take the brutal beat close to the bubble and end up missing or shortly after and scrape the peanuts up off the table.

I have yet to be totally felted and have managed to maintain a roll that keeps me in the dungeon of extreme micro stakes.

I grind it out and finally get enough for a higher buy-in, make a run and get smacked out by the most ridiculous hands, all-ins snap called by pure and utter trash and AA spins out of the sky and crashes in a heap as I stare at "Table Closed".

I am a tourney junkie if I have not stated it before now and have had the similar happen at the microsopic stakes I must endure at the ring tables.

I guess the point of this is: is my belief that solid play will eventually pay or am I doomed to be the one that always runs into the last mutt at the table with the "I've got 200 more chips than you" mentallity and calls an all in with (insert any trash hand here) and takes me and tosses me back into the basement?

Please be candid and honest, your comments can not be any worse than the constant humilation I have been experiencing.

Thank you,
battered and bruised

[traperkeeper]

This is exactly why I stay away from these tourneys. I can lose 2 buy-ins at 10nl without going on tilt that's easy, but playing for 4 hours at a $10 buy-in mtt only to lose with A's to 108o super deep stacked puts me on extreme tilt.

I feel like the same donks that play 10nl cash tables will fold more because they see the actual cash on the table and the blinds don't change. That same donk will buy-in for $10 at an mtt and get 3000 in chips and the blinds increase and they just dont know odds or how to count their stack in terms of blinds, these guys just end up making retarded moves. Then I think about how I know I could of been grinding a profit playing cash games.

Phil Laak said something that changed my way of thinking, he said cash games are a poker players "bread and butter".

Dan Harrington said that he used to stay away from tourney's along with other cash players he knew because of the time involved and how volatile they can be. You can't always expect to win a tourney but you can have some sort of expectation with cash games.

I always go through a cycle when I go on a bit of a tourney binge, lose some of my roll and swear Im never gonna do it again, but the payouts make it so tempting and someone has to win.

When I play these games, Ill decide to grind a couple buyins at the cash tables and play these tourney's with no expectations other than to play my best and get it in good.

That's all you can do.

Personally I think playing micro stakes on stars is a bad idea, you need rakeback to make it worthwhile. Ill play tourneys on stars but stay the hell away from grinding the micros there.

I don't think your doomed.

[urbansprawler]

Originally Posted by traperkeeper

Personally I think playing micro stakes on stars is a bad idea, you need rakeback to make it worthwhile.

Sorry, I usually leave motivational threads like this to those better than me at cheering people up, but I had to step in when I read this complete bullshit.

If you can't beat micros on stars, you are not a good player. They are just easily crushable for even 7ptbb at 50NL. And 10NL can be beaten for 10ptbb+.

[traperkeeper]

Originally Posted by urbansprawler

Sorry, I usually leave motivational threads like this to those better than me at cheering people up, but I had to step in when I read this complete bullshit.

If you can't beat micros on stars, you are not a good player. They are just easily crushable for even 7ptbb at 50NL. And 10NL can be beaten for 10ptbb+.

Good for you...your stats are amazing, wow! You are such a good player!

Nothing was said about beating the micro's on stars. He says he's grinding extreme micro stakes to get a higher buy-in to just end up losing it over and over. You could add on 2-3 buyins per week with rakeback.

If your grinding for a tourney roll wouldn't rakeback be helpful? Is rakeback not helpful in any situation?

If stars had rakeback Id be there every day. All Im saying is if your gonna put the time in you might as well get the most out of it.

Not to mention Cake doesn't have 3k+ people in every tournament like stars.

[traperkeeper]

Originally Posted by mechanek

I guess the point of this is: is my belief that solid play will eventually pay or am I doomed to be the one that always runs into the last mutt at the table with the "I've got 200 more chips than you" mentallity and calls an all in with (insert any trash hand here) and takes me and tosses me back into the basement?

Stick to solid play. You said you had a good finish, so what was your mind state like at that time? Try not to let losing buy-ins affect you cause its gonna happen.

[mxrider]

Tournament play is one of the biggest variance games in poker that there is. Along with solid play, you need to get lucky at times AND avoid being unlucky. The fact that one bad beat can really put a hurting on your chances of cashing is what makes them so high in variance. The micros are filled with crazy bad players and it is a minefield at times but when you keep playing solid, it will eventually come together. A friend that does nothing but play tournaments for a living tells me over and over that it is just breaking even for countless tournaments waiting for that big score. I have had 2 $3k scores in tournaments a few years ago (within a month of each other) and have played a lot of tournaments without coming close again. It's just part of the game.

[Silverthunder]

Are you taking advantage of the resouces that are out there? For tournaments, I am not sure if books or training sites are better (for cash games it seems like the latter is better?)?