How much have you lost at Texas Hold 'Em?

I wouldn't hate playing against you; you seem like a nice enough guy, which is really all that matters.

It's like anything else in life vis a vis things out of your control: you can only worry about the two cards in your hand.

I wish I had time to tell that to the guy I sucked out on last week (case 8 on the river to beat a nut flush) before he stormed off.

 

Exactly. It's like Blackjack. Sometimes you'll split eights, get threes on both, double down on both, get nines on both of those, and the dealer will turn over 16 and draw a 5 for 21. It sucks hard. But you'll win so many more times than you lose in those situations. You have to play for the long run.

Also, because people mostly only watch no-limit, they try to play the same way at tables. So they slow-play big pairs or big flops the way they would at no-limit. Thing is, you're not gonna scare those bad players off that way, and the only way to build the pot is to keep betting.

 

I think I've lost three or four bucks during a family tournament. That's about it.

 

Never play online for money either. Especially when you can play with play money and have just as much fun.

 

Don't loosen up in limit. If anything, you should tighten up. As mentioned, it's much harder to push someone off a hand and the implied odds are much different.
I've been playing seriously for 15 months, at least what I consider seriously. I can't afford to play high stakes, but I study, take every game seriously, take notes etc.
I'm up overall, although I've had plenty of losing sessions.

 

Normally lose about 20 bucks a couple times a year to the old friends. That's about all I play, though. :-\

 

This is the problem: with tournament hold em, I know the most I'm going to be in for is $50 or $100 and that's definitely not the case with limit. I cannot stand feeding pots $6 or $12 at a time chasing 10-outers, which you have to be willing to do in limit.

I like to think I'm a pretty good tournament player; maybe it's just not in the cards (oh, God, sorry) for me to be a limit player, and that's fine. I was always more of an artist than a scientist anyway.

 

Buck --

Even the best players have negative weeks and even negative months.

If you have a negative year, it's time to find a different game.

 

Agreed.
Another common problem is people playing over their limit-ability.
the guy on the copy desk who's dropping a couple large in a year might want to consider playing smaller limits or smaller buy-ins.
When you play smaller limits/buy-ins, you get a chance to work on your game. Granted there's a lot of loose/bad play, but that's part of the game.
You want to dominate a $.25-$.50 game before jumping to $2-$4. I know $2-$4 doesn't sound like much, but it depends on how well you play, the level of the competition and how much you can afford to lose (either from a bad run or as you learn to play up to that level).

 

That goes back to the discipline.

People jump out of the 3-6 game into the 5-10 game because they're tired of getting case hands cracked by runner-runner flush draws.

Problem is, they haven't been able to turn a profit at the 3-6 game. They blame the donks, but don't the numbers show that the donks will lose that money back many times over before they crack you again? Of course they do. So there must be another flaw in your game that's preventing you from making 10-15 percent on your investment at the 3-6 level.

And you best fix that before you hit the 10-20, because they'll sniff it out and own your ass.

 

No doubt.
Very few people look at the problems with their own games. It's much easier to think 'That guy plays like a dumbass. That's why I'm losing to him.' Guys move up in limits to get away from the dumbasses but end up losing more money, which they then attribute to running into more people who play like dumbasses.

 

Right now, playing extremely infrequently, I'm ahead of my original buy-in on three different servers, ranging anywhere between a couple of hundred ahead at PokerStars and just shy of 2 grand on PokerRoom.com. And that's playing mainly on low-stakes tables.