<SPAN>The best thing that happened to my game in the last 3-4 years came just about 12 months ago. I admitted that I was a losing player. I had been blaming variance, bad beats, rigged poker sites and everything else. But the truth was, I was a losing player. I thought that because I could regularly beat my friends at home, that meant I was a good player, so naturally, it couldnt be MY fault that I was losing online, could it?

Well let me tell you, there was nothing better for my game, than admitting I was a losing player. Why? Because if you think you are a good player and blame things other than yourself for your losing, nothing changes. Your mindset becomes "I am a good player, but these bad beats keep me from winning". The truth was, my GAME is what kept me from winning. Once I realized that losing was my own fault, an obvious, but surprisingly lacking question popped into my head, "why am I losing?". This question is one of the most fundamentally important question that is SO often overlooked by losing players. But once you get up the courage to ask yourself this question and give yourself an HONEST response (honesty is VERY important), you will find yourself losing less almost immediately.

Over the course of the next week, write down EVERY SINGLE pot you lose. Print it out, spend a weekend going over it and you WILL find your weak spots. Maybe you are getting in trouble with middle pairs, maybe you take your bluffs to far when youre getting called, maybe you cant lay down AK, whatever your problem is, you WILL find it (more than likely there will be more than one). As you find these problems, literally write them down. You'll probably have 4 or 5 (I know I had 11). Everytime one of these situations comes up, look at your list of problems. One of mine early on was overplaying AK...so for a whole tourney I folded it. Everytime I had AK...in the muck it went. It got me used to folding it. Now if I think I might be beat, or all I have is A-high, I have ZERO problems folding.

Whats the point? Well, Adam said that it doesnt do any good to tell a player he is bad. Adam is absolutely right...but it does wonders if a player can admit to HIMSELF that he is bad. Moral of the story? There are a </SPAN><SPAN>LOT</SPAN><SPAN> of losing players, you dont have to be one of them. Learn, play and most importantly, no matter HOW successful you are, know that you will NEVER know it all. The wisest man is the man who know there are always others who are wiser! Wow, that was deep. haha good luck to you all~~</SPAN>

Fantastic post, super. So true.

Missed ya around here.

I never intended for my original post to come off as negative as people are percieving it.

Agree with supermoves here. Since the first couple of months of online play i've not been a losing player, but for a long time barely pushing a profit. I'd run well, run up a nice bankroll, have to cash out most of it for something (usually son's college tuition) and start building again only to hit what i'd call variance.

During a really bad run I started getting hand histories sent to me. Each hand I lost I sat down and ran through the calculator. Yes, there were a lot of hands that I'd go in as significant favorite. But, I also saw I was giving way too much weight to marginal (60/40 or even worse) hands. I realized after a nice run i'd get over confident and it hurt me. While on a rush these hands will quite often pay, on the average you're going to lose almost as often as you win with them. Factor in that you've been on a nice run and they've paid more than they should, it stands to reason that you'll lose more than you should to balance it out. Variance works two ways.

That's great man, couldn't be happier. on the other hand someone who may be experiencing a legitimate bad run (and yes they do happen) shouldn't have to question as to whether bad runs even exist or not. If I had believed that shit last summer I would have just quit. Luckily I knew that something wasnt right and was able to drop limits, change games and ride it out til the bad shit went away.

I aggree with everything you, Supermoves, said in your post. What needs to be addressed is how positive varience can make you think you are better than you are, and how negative varience can make you worse than you are. These can be tough lessons for anyone to comprehend. When a talented player understands these two basic concepts and accepts them, then they will be great.