Monday, October 17, 2005

Losing Sucks!

I absolutely hate reading posts from players that complain about a 200 or 300 BB losing streak and wonder what they should do about it. I am not going to write one of those posts.

I will say that I dropped $1500 over the last few days. I was playing 4 tables at a time in 3-6 on the bad beat jackpot tables at Party Poker and the $55 sit and gos. The jackpot was up over $650,000 so I thought it was a smart play to give myself a chance at it.

Was I unlucky? Yes. Could I have played better? Yes.

Now I am forcing myself to move back down to the $33 sits and 2-4 in limit. I am going to limit myself to two tables at a time as well. I also want to play more Omaha 8OB if I can find decent games. There is quite a mental challenge involved in this. There is a strong urge to make my money back as quickly as I lost it. I know that moving down will delay the accomplishment of that goal. However, it should also prevent me from losing any more money.

My main short term goal is to have a fat bankroll for my Wedding in Vegas in December. Since I know there will be at least one or two sessions of black jack or craps, I am going to need some money that, "I can afford to lose."

I think one of the issues I encountered with the 3-6 games over the weekend was game selection. When I could get Poker Tracker to work with Game Time, I seemed to find 2-4 other players at the table that looked pretty good. I didn't have the discipline or the tools to find other softer tables. No matter how many fixes I try, I cannot get Poker Tracker to work in real time. It always freezes up on me after about 45 minutes.

As for Omaha, I think I have finally settled on a preflop strategy. I will only play A2XX or A3XX hands along with 23XX hands if the other two cards give me good cards for a high. I will also play 4 cards over a 9 if there are a lot of players already in the pot. This alone should give me enough of an advantage to make up for lack of skill post flop. I have noticed that players will play absolute crap online. I still need to get better at figuring out when I am drawing to a nut straight, but I am improving. It's a shame that there are hardly any limit tables available in this game, even on Party Poker.

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