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Author Topic: upswings and downswings  (Read 238 times)

 

pokermixu

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upswings and downswings
« on: September 20, 2009, 02:29:28 am »

Hi

After many upswing weeks I’ve had terrible downswing on this week. Seems like almost everything I try fails. My downswing may depend on many things. First of course I’ll had in my schedule many top players from the leaderboard. Secondly I’ve lost many games where I’ve been leading and going allin. I’ve used also my "not so crazy" table image and made some questionable but reasonable allins which have failed.  I’ve decreased amount of starting hands to play more tight but that hasn’t helped much. These things are of course normal when you play thousands of hands, but I’ll throw a question. When you are going downswing in your game do you usually make some strategic adjustments to your game or rely on your current system which will probably be mostly profitable ?

Thanks to Teppo, SmokinAl and ZachCope from tough opposition and making me to play better :).
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ZachCope

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Re: upswings and downswings
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2009, 04:56:53 am »
Chin up!

The +- vs each player can vary quite quickly as a $200 dollar win for one player results in a $400 swing in the +- vs player figure.

When I joined the site I made some big bluffs after I thought you trusted my play and you picked off every one! I think I was $1000 down at one point just vs you.

As to what changes you need to make I think radical changes in strategy can be counter productive, but slight adjustments might be necessary.

It sounds strange but in a HU you need to get your opponent to trust the way you play. They should feel that they understand what you are representing when you make certain moves.
If you get caught bluffing the trust breaks down and you need to re-establish it.
It’s been interesting to see how indivudual matches develop over time. At the beginning both players are very tight preflop. Then they open up and make more flop bets. After a while some re raising on the flop occurs. Then this becomes standard and there is more floating, 3 betting etc. Finally the ‘play’ moves to the river as no one trusts each other and the decisions are made by big all in bets etc on the river. I think that’s the point we got to in our big flush draw hand!

So the challenge is to tone down the aggression just a little so that even if I think you’re tilting I’ll lose due to you making more big value bets and me calling looser. But if you tighten up completely I’ll probably keep stealing off you and it will be easy to know if you have a hand.

….. of course now we’ve discussed it all you will probably take that into account and adjust a few levels further….  ???

That’s the beauty of HU no limit.  :D

For what it’s worth it was a tough slog getting back to even money with you and I think you’re game is solid.
I’ve been playing online a little HU and doing much better since playing you and others like Teppo!

Regards

Zach
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SmokinAl

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Re: upswings and downswings
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2009, 01:10:58 pm »
Apologies for my part in the downswing :P I know that I’ve run really hot against you this week and there was nothing you could do about a bunch of our hands.

I think there’s two important things to do during a downswing:

 – Don’t change your style as a general principle (eg say to yourself "I’ll play tight because I’m losing money"

 – Make an effort to understand why you’re losing money … eg if you’ve lost a bunch of stacks with top pair vs set or flush draw vs bigger flush draw, don’t immediately just decide you played fine because you had a decent hand and so did your opponent, but check out your big pots for things like:
  – Does your opponent ever raise with weaker hands (than top pair)?
  – Do you ever take that line with different hands (if not, your opponent may read your hand and it may not be a coincidence you lose a big pot each time the money goes in)?
  – Will you often get called by a weaker made hand (if not, it might still be correct to play that way, but you need to take the same line more often with bluffs to get "value" from his folds)
(etc)


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