Poker Articles

Hah Chris spoken like a true idiot, congrats Seal we have all been down this path, only difference is my poker friends say I suck :) took a break myself so fully understand

Good Luck

Sa

Chris, thanks for your positivity and insight.  Why praise Seal for his literary work?  After all, he obv knows that an unexamined life is pathetic.  

LOL  I have always appreciated Seal's input on life.  And after reading your little "Love" profile on your P5's profile, I LOL @ your hypocrisy.  Go back, reread what you wrote on your profile, and reflect on your own words.  My free advice to you, my little ninja.

Nice artilce Seal.  I skipped out on a month of poker and came back to my biggest heater ever.  A few deep breaths can work wonders.

gg gl

hey chris way to speak ur mind man.....just tell it how it is

I miss Paradise too :(

It seems like you've hit the wall.  you might be trying too hard to get your game back. I think you need to take the focus off of what's wrong with your game and look for weaknesses in your opponents that you can take advantage of.  In other words: 1.  Identify players who are on tilt or just plain bad.  2. take the easy pots from them.  3. avoid tough situations until you get your confidence back.  IMO

gl getting it back!

Nice article Seal.  Gives me hope that maybe I don't suck and it's just variance I'm going through right now.

If you want to read an article about someones personal life and situations SEAL is fricken awesome. No joke he writes well about personal situations etc. He however offers little or no insight into poker. He asks lots of questions that we all ask ourselves but he does not answer.

Im not saying im anything special. Im just wondering why these articles are on P5's. I would read them if I was reading his personal blog and think aww thats nice and then offer him some sypathy or advice or something.

 I  expect information and insights in an article from this site. Just my opinion, no hard feelings to the guy. His articles just feel like FILLER to me.

Ya I think I have to agree with Chris here... I mean the articles are always interesting... but if db is correct, seal is a losing player, and always has been over a huge sample size

I have no clue how anyone can study poker this much and not beat low level mtts.

Hope you crush live at least or are setup with your teaching job, but fwiw keep the life articles coming, very interesting most of the time

Well, it's like the off-topic posts.  It's always there, hundreds go and read posts there, but not everyone looks at it or has to.  If you don't like the topics, don't read it, but no reason to rain on anyone's parade. Do you go into that discussion group and post," I don't like this group, it shouldn't be off-topic, screw the other players that enjoy it"...   ?   No.  Because it would be dumb to, wouldn't it?

/rant

Philosophy comment less please

I think there's definitely two factors at work here:

1. Your average field size on Stars is 1374. Since our profits come mostly from Top 3 finishes and those 3 spots are much harder to come by the more people you play against at once, large fields like that will lead to much higher variance. Try a different website with smaller fields or search out smaller fields on Stars and restrict yourself to those for a while.

2. There IS something amiss in your game. Based on your OPR, you are busting out too often(36%) in the bottom 30% and so making it into the top 30% below average amounts of time(27%). And 12% ITM is probably too low as well; it needs to be closer to 15%-18%.

This suggests to me that you are playing too loose early, before you have reads on your opponents, or you are not paying enough attention to the game in front of you. Whatever the reason, it's clearly your early game play that needs adjustment.

Loved the article Seal.  Nice to see how someone else deals with drastic swings. I'm still trying to work that one out.

Cheers

I was actually pretty shocked to see that Pikapp was right, and your Stars DB has been at negative ROI over the last two years. Perhaps your online game needs some pretty radical changes.

Positivity pays.  In athletics in high school I found a key in keeping a positive mental mindset, eliminate the negatives.  Seems easy, sounds simple right? When a coach is talking to a player is it better for him to say "Go get'em, I believe in you, but what ever you do don't step out of bounds." or "I have faith in you, we both know how important it is to stay in bounds, right?"

Obviously the latter is if not positive at the least practicing avoidance of the negatives.

What creates the negative?  Word with "n't" at the end are preceived as negativity in our brains, and thus triggers negative emotions. Buts and ifs create illusions of doubt in a person's mind.

Even reading your article, when you are talking about bad situations you will see these words arise, and when you are being positive and optimistic they're absent.  Keep these things in mind and make a conscious effort to avoid the negativity an doubt, even if it seems it is from a subliminal stand point.

We create our own luck...

honestly, if you have only a little fear, that you suck at poker, then you suck at poker - it's kind of self-fullfilling prophecy, imho.

taking a break is a wonderfull idea, but do something creative, make a baby, start a buisennes, paint a picture.

and besides, if it is true, that opr says your -roi% for the last 2 years on pokerstars, then i would play for smaller buy-ins.

and thanx for the article, enjoyed it.

The answer is inward. forget everybody else and focus on what u know. You are too saturated and confused. Empty and reboot yourself with what works for u. stay focused and do not stray in this large poker universe. Remember, poker is a devious game that attracts addictive personalities. Recognize them and exploit them. Be the predator!

If you are a poker player and have been for any amount of time, you have been through these ups and downs.  Overcoming this obstacle is one of the most important parts of being a "professional" in poker.  This separates the "pros" and amateurs".  Just like in billiards, running out and then knowing when to play safe instead of continuing your non-miss streak.  It is very hard to stay on track (staying positive)when you make the right call, make the right raise, make the right read, put your money in while your opponent is on a draw (for all his chips) and lose when your opponent hits his 4.5 percent, runner-runner draw.  I don't think anyone has an answer to this self confidence vacuum.  My best advice to any poker player is to keep playing, don't dwell on the past and look at the future.  I appreciate your article and I respect what you're saying, but no one has any "right" answer to this inevitable event.  Keep your head up and continue to march forward!

these articles are nice here and there, but i find way too many of the front page articles here are theoretical and have no real advice on how to actually play the game in the first place. Is it just assumed these days that everybody is a shark and the winning players are just the ones who don't tilt?

I think the most obvious reason is the overall quality of play is much higher now than 2 years ago.  This could be my first losing year also, it will be close.  I've reverted to playing lower, and more SNG's.  I think its easier to focus on SNG's than on a MTT that may take 5-6 hours.  Good luck to you.  

I have recently been looking at my long term statastics, well one year anyway some 2000 MTTs. I've broken down where I do well. Unfortunately this is not at my favourite site where the big bucks are "Pokerstars". So I bit the bullet and played elsewhere where the fields are lower and variance is less. This has increased my overall profit from a recent low of 20-40% and got me closer to my goal of 100% ROI. However still not there and going through a tough patch now.

So I have looked at my stats again and guess what I 've been playing some larger fields again and my ROI has dropped from 90% early this month to 40%.

So I'm going to cut down again to the tournamnets that I have the biggest ROI in.

The point I'm making is I'm constantly evaluating not only my play but where I'm playing and what tournaments I do well in. You have to keep changing to keep your motivation up and your profits. Maybe complacency has crept in. Like any "job" or profession you can become stale and an unconcious incompetent rather than the concious competent we all want to be.

Always evaluate and kepp moving forward! Good Luck