Hi

hand 1 I’d play similarly if I understand the scenario right

hand 2 a very viable option if I understand stacks correctly is to just ship over the late position limper

(it would be much easier to reply if you could post the actual hand histories)

hand 3 I am not sure I understand

But the gist of your post is if these “bad” plays are exclusive to the micro stakes. Imho they are not, not at all. It’s a big part of your profit having these bad players at your tables and they are very much present at mid/high stakes too, probably constituting a smaller percentage of the field though. I can sympathize with how one-tabling these sort of beats may take their toll. Just to give you some perspective:

I normally start off my session 9-12 tabling and keep registering for the first two hours. So i have roughly 7-12 tables running for the first part of my session. On a VERY good day I’ll still have at best 3 tables running 5 hours into the session but usually only 2 or even 1. 

Welcome to the site – good choice imo, I am sure the pros will have a more coherent reply for you 🙂

RonFezBuddy said:

Hand 1 – just unlucky

Hand 2 – I think you must have blinds or your raise sizes wrong as you say you raised to 900 at 400/800. If we’re at 150/300 here which is what i suspect, you didn’t raise enough PF over the limper. As played I’d call the river for reasons stated, tHere are worse Js in his range.  However you did give him odds to call PF with his 56ss, you didn’t bet big enough to narrow his range to play the rest of the hand with more information.  This is definitely a small leak.

As for the rest of your post, I don’t want to minimize what you’re going through because I know how painful it is (trust me, i know!), however this is what tournament poker is like. Every successful player has these stretches, and even when you are winning, your big score is probably surrounded by tons of near misses.  The problem with microstakes is that the fields are giant and the play is quite bad which increases your ROI but also increases your variance greatly.  Over the long run you WILL win but none of us will really hit the true long run in poker.  From your post I can tell you’re light years ahead of your competition but even with that it takes a lot of tourneys to break through.  Some people get the lucky run early, some get it late.  You have a higher % chance of winning than most but nothing is guaranteed.

If you want to keep playing this game you have to adjust your mindset.  You have to play the stakes where you know you can endure a 200 buyin downswing.  Because it’s eventually going to happen and you have to just let it roll off your back.  I know you’re in the micros so you’re playing the right level, now you have to realize it just takes tons of tourneys before you have the breakthrough. And until you get there, there will be many nights like this.

Check this article I wrote for the site.  The title is just playful so don’t think I’m trying to say you’re whining.  But it sums up my thoughts on the poker mindset.

And for the record i’m on a 3 month awful downswing where I’ve been on the verge of throwing things at my computer.  It’s natural to get frustrated but you have to pick yourself up and keep moving.

I think you must have blinds or your raise sizes wrong as you say you raised to 900 at 400/800. If we’re at 150/300 here which is what i suspect, you didn’t raise enough PF over the limper. As played I’d call the river for reasons stated, tHere are worse Js in his range.  However you did give him odds to call PF with his 56ss, you didn’t bet big enough to narrow his range to play the rest of the hand with more information.  This is definitely a small leak.

RonFez-

1: the blinds were 150/300/50(?) and I raised 3XBB to 900. Thanks for catching that.

2: I DID allow him – 56ss – to call… Shite! Thanks again. That is the kind of leak I need to have pointed out to me. I can feel that I have these gaps in my understanding, but I’m not sure where they are sometimes. Thank you so much.

3: Mental leak: “adjust your thinking.”

Yup. I do get despondent when I check a player’s OPR and I see his/her ROI at negative forever yet they have four or five wins and a couple of seconds and thirds yet I see them playing poorly. Part of my despondence comes from knowing that there had to be some spots where I could have added to my stack earlier and didn’t, so I didn’t have the chips to continue when I did finally lose a huge hand, part comes from getting donked on.

I got bounced by a dude who was 0/78(!!!) ITM but went on a 20 minute heater 2/3 through the tourney and won 7 of 10 hands he played – went from 2k chips and nearly out with the avg. chip count about 30K – to 219K! And went to showdown on all seven hands! He took me out hitting a gut shot Ten on the river to complete an 8-Q straight (holding J9o) vs. my set Jacks. I should have shoved on the flop but wanted his chips. I shoved when a scare card Queen hit on the turn. He took the, what, 8% or so chance to hit the gut shot on the river and won. That’s when I need to say oh well. Yeah I might have gotten a little greedy because I had a read on the guy, but I still did the right thing – move on.

Perhaps sometime, if it’s not a hassle, I can send you a hand history from one of my tourneys – I play on a MacBook Pro and use Poker CoPilot for my stats and stuff – and use can dissect my play and show me those leaks. 

—————————–

And to the commenters above RonFez, thanks for the advice. I do need to learn to multi-table. Between about 10 am and 2:40 there are a bunch of micros I can play. I NEED to learn to be able to play them all as they show because it will aid me greatly with variance. Right now I don’t go beyond three or four tourneys before cashing, but in the micros you gotta go deep if you want the cash to mean something.