Gros Bad Run Poker

Poker is one of the most popular card games in the world, and most people now have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it works. Poker runs use the rules of poker to determine who has the best hand, but it always comes down to chance when deciding a winner. If you are looking for a fun day out and a new way to meet like-minded people, you. Many times, result-orientated thinking kills many potentially talented poker players. Everything you do in poker should be based on how to maximise your EV in every given hand. If you associate losing with playing bad, you are committing a mistake, because almost everyone loses in poker at times due to bad beats or bad run of cards. But if you are playing live poker or even playing on the internet without the aid of HUD stats there are still several ways to identify the marks at the table as well. So, below are my top 5 signs of bad poker players. 1) Limping As most people who are serious about the game know by now, limping is almost always bad in poker.

How ya’ running? Well, unless you’re just in neutral and idling, you are either running good or running bad at poker. Let’s take a look at both sides of this equation and see what we might be able to do to cut short running bad and to extend our good fortune when running good.

We’ll take a look at the bad news first as that may well be the more critical of the two. When you’re running bad and your pocket Aces are regularly cracked and your draws never seem to get there what should you do? Many poker players do the exact opposite of what will serve them well and begin to tilt making things worse. They not only perpetuate the losing streak but through their actions actually make it more severe. When you realize that you’re running bad, think of it as the true test of your character and mettle as a poker player. How one deals with adversity tells a lot about that person in life as well as poker. It has been said, “Adversity introduces a man to himself”. Endeavor to admire the man you are meeting!

Of all the many things you can do when you’re running bad, the one single thing you should be focused to is “Don’t make it worse”. I know that may be easier said than done but making that your credo will help get you through a down spell making it much easier to turn things around, if for no other reason than limiting the size of the hole that you dig. You see players all the time who are getting beat and then make it worse with all kinds of bizarre behavior. Above all, do not succumb to the lesser player’s inclination to go on tilt.

Well, when you have access to various Poker professionals, full time, you should expect a good chance of this. Would you believe, poker is very much like life itself? Sometimes things run good, sometimes bad. Cue, pychological discussions. There was lot of Kahnemans' 'Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow' in here - sometimes randomly shoe horned in. The real meaning of a bad run well see, i was doing poor at the tables, so i got Poker tracker, and man, did it help, went from $250 to $2000 in a month. I worked on my leaks etc.

That having been said, what actions should you take to get this ship turned around and headed back in a profitable direction? The first thing one should do when finding himself in a slump is examine his poker game in an effort to determine why it is occurring. Is Lady Luck really treating you that poorly or have you developed some sloppy habits which are contributing to this downward spiral? Have you loosened up and developed a habit of playing too many marginal poker hands? Have you started to regularly push thin edges? Are you betting on the come too frequently? Have you examined the lineups in the games you’re frequenting? Have you lulled yourself into a feeling of invincibility after a string of victories? If so, you’ve let arrogance sneak into your game and that’s a definite prescription for disaster. Old Mr. Ego strikes again! Hubris is the cause of many a downfall.

One needs to examine the questions presented in the previous paragraph and determine if they have veered off their A game and are possibly playing a C or D game. Maybe it’s time to take some time off and temporarily get away from the game. You might consider shortening your sessions. Many times over the course of a session one’s chip stack can fluctuate dramatically, so make sure to quit on the upside. If you “manufacture” a win in this manner it can help psychologically by breaking the string of defeats. One key adjustment you should make when it seems the Poker Gods are spiting you is to tighten up. Many players do the exact opposite in the hopes of building a big pot. There is no question that it’s a great feeling to aggressively press a strong draw and then hit it and scoop a nice pot. However, when Lady Luck is being fickle that same play can be a real chip burner. You should become a little more conservative when the cards are not falling your way and wait until the storm blows through.

If upon careful examination of your game you can honestly say that all the basics are in tact and you are playing strong, solid, disciplined poker and the cause of your misfortune is truly a bad run of cards, don’t despair. Stay tilt free, continue to make good decisions and before you know it you’ll turn the corner to better times. Remember, don’t make things worse by digging a hole climbing out of which may prove difficult. Tend to get a little more conservative and focus on making good poker decisions. Analyzing a session after the fact and being able to feel you played well and that a lesser player would have lost much more can also be a source of accomplishment.

Well, what about the flip side of the coin? Running good in poker is a wonderful feeling. You’re playing well and getting hit with the deck. Man, Oh, man – stacking and racking and starting to feel like you must be a world class poker player. Nobody can touch you. They fold to your bluffs and you always have the goods when they call. As wonderful as this is, many poker players begin to take their run for granted, attributing it to 100% skill (there’s no such thing as luck!) and thereby help end it prematurely.

Several dynamics of the game change when a player starts to really run well and gets on a rush. Some of these dynamics are positive and helpful in keeping the run alive while others can work counterproductively to curtail the run. Let’s look at a few of these factors. On the positive side, your opponents may begin to fear you which can facilitate your ability to steal pots. Your confidence may grow as opponents seem to try and stay out of your way and as the stacks of chips in front of you grow so does your image. On the negative side of the ledger, you may begin to loosen up and begin playing thinner and thinner edges. As your confidence grows and you believe you have become invincible you may begin to play a little foolishly, actually drifting into what can only be described as “positive tilt”. This form of tilt can be every bit as chip depleting as its bad beat induced cousin.

Since running good is such a wonderful feeling we should do everything within our grasp to extend the length of the run. Allowing your good fortune to seduce you into popping the clutch and peeling rubber on every hand can quickly curtail your good run and result in donating back a good portion of what you’ve accumulated during the run. How many times have you seen a player you would describe as having a horseshoe up his derriere based upon a wild rush and an hour or two later is almost down to the felt? I’m not suggesting you retreat into a timid shell to protect your winnings but loosening up beyond sensible standards is just foolhardy.

What we really need to do when we find ourselves running good is to get our heads around why it is occurring, to help make adjustments to maximize and extend the run. Enjoy your good fortune but determine the genesis of it. If you determine that you’ve just been a little lucky with quality hands then pushing those thin edges can backfire and cost you a lot of chips. However, if you determine that it is more than just some well placed good poker hands and you are playing with much weaker opponents, then by all means kick it up a notch or two and take control of the table. Just recognize that few really good things last forever, with the possible exception of the love of your soul mate. Recognize also that in both love and rushes, it takes a lot of work for the good fortune to last.

Well there you have it. Running good and running bad. No rocket science here. You want the good run to last and nip the bad run in the bud. Always ask yourself, “Why is this happening?” If you do that whether things are going well or are in the dumpster you should spend more time running good than bad.

By Tom 'TIME' Leonard

Tom has been writing about poker since 1994 and has played across the USA for over 40 years, playing every game in almost every card room in Atlantic City, California and Las Vegas.

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Do you get frustrated playing poker tournaments? You play all the time and it seems like you never cash. And even when you do, you cash the minimum. Every once in a while you get teased with a deep run only to run Kings into Aces – resulting in another broken mouse.

Well as you gain experience, you learn that in order to be successful as a poker player you need to get comfortable with running bad. This is even more prevalent if you are a poker tournament specialist. But no matter how experienced you are, these bad runs can test you and make you question your skill level. This is especially true if you are an amateur poker player who only plays a handful of tournaments a week. You can actually go months without cashing and this duration of time in between cashes can skew your view of reality and affect your play.

Now if you read enough poker forums and websites you will hear about all the online tournament pros who are regularly taking down five and six-figure cashes. They paint this picture of guys constantly making final tables and raking in mounds of cash. You may even be a bit jealous and wonder, “what do those guys have that I don’t?” Well, I’m hoping this article will help answer that question and provide some much needed perspective on the topics of volume and variance.

Amateur Poker Players vs. Pros

Amateurs – For the purpose of this article, an amateur player is someone who plays about 1-3 times per week, usually at night. They have a “real job” and may have a family or are in college full time, so they can only put in part-time hours. But make no mistake, this player is serious about the game and spends time on poker forums, watching training videos, etc. Since we’re talking about tournament poker, the amateur in this article plays mostly large field no-limit hold’em tournaments. They may be a winning player, break even or maybe a slight loser in the game thus far in their career.

Pros – A professional is someone who plays online poker for their sole source of income. For this article, we are using those who specialize in large field online poker tournaments.

The Stats

Before reading too deep into these numbers, keep in mind that the purpose of this article is to provide perspective into your own results by comparing them to the results of other players. It is not meant to be a scientific study.

The numbers below represent an average of 10 players from each category and use results from both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars from 2010. The pro stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 8/22/10 and the amateur stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 9/20/10. They only include tournaments with over 180 players.

* Pro stats were taken from a ranking of the top 10 online tournament players. Amateur stats were taken from a sample of 10 amateur players who volunteered their screen name for use in this study.

**Avg. Played/Day is based on a 5 day week, but also only includes playing 2 sites. Actual volume per day may be larger for those who play more than 2 sites and less than 5 days a week.

What Do These Stats Mean?

As you can see, the pros are not these mythical beasts who cash all the time and final table every tournament. Media attention can sometimes give off a false reality as it only highlights their wins and never mentions how many losses it took to get there.

The realities are:

Gros Bad Run Poker Table

• Even the top pros only win tournaments less than 1% of the time. For some it was as low as 0.60%. So this means they are winning only 1 out of every 100 times. Of course variance doesn’t always come on schedule and they can go 200-300 tournaments without a win.
• Top pros only final table around 3% of the time. Some are as low as 2%.
• Top pros are only cashing about 13% of the time. This means they lose money 87% of the time they play! In fact, amateurs cash more often than pros. The difference is that when pros do cash, they cash deep more often.
• Pros have massive downswings like everyone else. In fact, becasue of the volume they play, they have had longer non-cash streaks.

Why have the pros averaged a $400,000 profit this year before September? It is in their ability to close tournaments. There is a reason why their ROI is 58% higher. Let’s look at the stats:

• Pros make 1/3 more final tables than amateur poker players.
• At a 9 person final table, the average of hitting top 3 should be 33%. Pros are hitting this 43.61% of the time.
• Of the times they cash, pros are final tabling almost twice as often as amateurs (23.9% compared to 12.8%).
• Pros finish in the top 3 almost 3x as often as amateurs.
• Volume, volume, volume. Let’s not forget that pros play all day, every day. This is their job. They have a distinct advantage of overcoming bad variance much quicker and also seeing “the long run” of making profitable decisions quicker.

Gros Bad Run Poker Room

Keep in mind that the group of amateurs used were volunteers from various poker forums. While not all were winning players, the fact that they study the game says they likely have better results than an average amateur. Also, because of their volume size an individual amateur’s skills may be better or worse than their results show.

Improving Your Game

How can you use these stats to improve your game?

Add More Tables

Get outside of your 1-3 tabling comfort zone and simply add a couple more tables. I know the argument is that it’s harder to make reads, but the volume you put in will make up for that. In addition, this extra volume means you are playing more hands and will result in improving your game even faster. This extra experience will more than make up for the short-term loss of a perfect read.

Play More Days

Just try to add 1 more day per week. Don’t be lazy. If you currently play 7 tournaments a day, adding 1 more day x 52 weeks = 364 more tournaments/year. Even at the amateur ROI average above of 20% and average buy-in of $30, that means an extra $2,184 in profit.

Stop Caring About Individual Tournaments

Bad Run Poker

It’s easy to expend emotional energy in any single poker tournament. You’re trying to win of course. But the odds are that you’re not going to. In fact, you’re only going to cash about 15% of the time. All you can do is focus on making good decisions and the variance will work itself out in the end.

Play for the Win

There’s a reason why amateurs cash more than pros. They care more about it and tighten up near the bubble. But you will miss out on valuable opportunities to accumulate chips if you are playing just to cash. In addition, you can’t fear busting or making a mistake when you get deep. In order to make real money playing poker tournaments, you have to trust your instincts and play to win.

If you’ve ever grown frustrated playing poker tournaments, don’t sweat it. Keep in perspective that even the best players in the world don’t win that often. The only way to balance out negative variance is to put in enough volume where your skill can prevail.

Good luck at the tables.

Gros Bad Run Poker Tournament

By Donovan Panone

Donovan started playing poker in 2004 and is an experienced tournament and cash game player who has a passion for teaching and helping others improve their game.

1. Great, revealing article. Stats like these are very encouraging. Thanks, Donovan

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