[Closed] How do you deal with not hitting anything?

Well since i play SNG's if i catch this period i just wait until i can shove loose and maybe, just maybe i get knocked out in my first or second hand i played.

Anyway, for me it's much worse to get an ugly downswing or bad beat rather than not getting cards. I guess what you're experiencing it's some sort of "monotony curse" of the cash games, where nothing's happening...

Good luck!

If your frustrated stop playing because your not playing your A game. If you can accept that it will happen and you can continue to play well, do so. What else is there to say?
I've only had one session like this and was running bad for the first 1700 hands or so and kept playing and eventually it turned well around and then I was connecting and getting the monies in and by the time I felt like quitting I was at the 4400 hand mark.

The first step is appreciating that the frustration is tilt. Your mind is connecting the recent past together and creating a "I never hit" thought in you mind, which is then going to start to alter your thought patterns, and potentially alter your play.

Like everything, look at the hands that have frustrated you. If you have played them well, there is nothing you can do.

I've gone through something similar recently where I've been playing (FLSH BTW) and having passive players, in position, calling pre flop, raising the flop and/or turn headsup three/four times in succession. After a bit my mind starts making up reasons for it, like I'm being exploited, despite good sold reads suggesting it to be otherwise. Eventually you look them up and stare down the nuts at the river. Then kick yourself in the nuts for not having the appropriate discipline and playing each hand on its merits and trusting fact, not suspicion.

Hope this makes sense, and good luck strengthening that mindset.

When you don't hit nothing, just think that loosing the minimum is also a great skill. If you would be tilting you would probably loose loads of buyins and that is the thing that would kill your winrate, not the sessions which are negative, but where you did everything right to controll the damage.

It's like bet/folding A high flop with underpair. You know it's profitable in the right circumstances, but sometimes it seems like burning money in the short run.

i dont play cash much, but in theory, isnt better to fold more, and play SSS a liltle bit ! till u feel normal again about not hitting and start to get gd cards and hit ....which is ofcourse just pure random! i dont know..just what i think !

gd luck !

Originally posted by RahXephon1
When you don't hit nothing, just think that loosing the minimum is also a great skill. If you would be tilting you would probably loose loads of buyins and that is the thing that would kill your winrate, not the sessions which are negative, but where you did everything right to controll the damage.

Exactly...I'm playing some SSS currently and had a 2 hour session last night where I played close to 1k hands and pretty much the whole 2 hours i was either card dead or missed the flop completely with my playable hands...went down for around 4-5BI but knew i was playing well and i didn't lose too much due to bad plays.

Then I decided I'm going to blind out and logoff and ended up 3BI that session

Just be patient, cards will come, and they will hit. You are here to minimize your losses and maximize your winnings. Knowing how to do that is what makes someone a winning player.

Just my 2 cents

rahx got it imho, there is great skill in losing the minimum and unfortunately a lot of poker is like this.
u should never get frustrated playing poker imho. if u do u need to challenge your mindset. i do agree however that this is hard and poker can be a very annoying game sometimes ♦

Originally posted by DaPhunk
...Eventually I snapped and shoved a doublestack to a Checkraise against my AK on a KQ8ss board and just like that I was suddenly down 3 stacks.

Just wondering how the hell I could have stopped this from happening.

When I've done this I've found when I look back at what happened I realize there was a moment in there where I could have found the fold button. Just hitting that fold button in that moment is how u stop it. Also, if you feel you are about to do something stupid then take a break before stupid happens. This is pretty simple advice, I know. Hope it helps.

There's nothing you can do really. Just accept it. Yesterday in my session, I must have gotten 3bet about 5 times in a row by 5 different people in 5 different tables and they all had a 3b of 3% or so, lolz.
This kind of stuff happens. Sure it's unlikely and it only happens very rarely, but think of how many hands are played daily. A lot of shit can happen in one day. Some of it is good shit and some of it is bad shit and sometimes we're gonna take the bad shit

Like Wailboy said, if you change your game out of frustation, you're tilting. So, you only have 2 options really:

1 - Keep on playing, IF you feel like you can take it and you won't tilt AT ALL.
2 - Stop the session to cool off your head.

The cards you are dealt are out of your power, so focus only on YOUR actions.

just keep playing same game as you always do or maybe tighten up a bit. Like dont push draws and so on. Today I lost 1,3k in 380 hands today, my worst start ever. but still managed to climb back and make 200 profit(after 13 hours and 6000 hands though). I guess if you play medium stakes you will know about this. Just think about the hands you lost and if you really played stupid and what things you could have done better then remember it. Dont stop until you feel you really can't beat the game anymore. It's way better feeling to lose in start then win back than win in start then lose. It's just poker, some days you hit, some days you don't. If it affects you just play another day.

if u cant continue playing ur A game in such situations which ofcourse are inevitable, just stop playing, take a short brake and then start playing with fresh mind

Lot of responses, Thanks guys! Some thoughts;

I like what Waiboy said about appreciating that frustration is tilt. Crazy thing is, I didn't even realise I was that frustrated until I suddenly took this retarded line! Of course doing something quite so stupid made me realise I wasn't playing properly and I quit pretty soon after.

In the past I've tended just to go by my Stop-Loss rule of 3-4BI for BSS and 5-7 for SSS as my previous experiences of tilt usually seemed to come from Bad-Beats or making a -EV shove to a steal for example that I should have known better than.

This however, just sort of crept up on me without me even realising it, I was only down $20 or so for the session, as andreibalint said, it could have been the monotony of Cash Games (and playing as low a limit as NL25 due to immense cashouts can't have helped my focus)

As RahXephon says, I think I shall keep in mind that it is important to be able to minimise your loss!!!! I could have made many more mistakes by the time I actually did make one and at least I had the sense to quite before I made any more, not every session can go well ♦

Hopefully others can draw something useful from this thread also. Some sessions can tilt you even if you haven't taken a big loss yet!

P.s. ksh198, that day sounds sick. I can't do robustorz days like that ♦

Very useful thread for me. Many things that have been said are so true for me in like the past 2 weeks. Sometimes I really had the feeling that they were conspiring against me, each of them 3betting my raises one at a time. That at one point I just break and shove and, TADAAA, find their AA/KK/QQ glaring at me.

Boy, I couldn't have felt more stupid. Their evil scheme worked against me

BTW, Quote of this thread imo

Originally posted by caltabiano
A lot of shit can happen in one day. Some of it is good shit and some of it is bad shit and sometimes we're gonna take the bad shit

This happens to me when I play less tables than usual. It's a bit of an obvious point, but on half as many tables you hit half as many hands. I tend to struggle just as much trying to play too few tables as I do when playing too many.

You go out to your nearest starbucks and get yourself a nice frappucino, and enjoy that for the meantime. ♦

this is a helpful thread, i had one of those sessions last time i played (SH FL) . It was like being punched in the face every 5 mins, 10, 12, 14 outs all missed and then getting hit by 3, 2 and on one occassion a 1 outer. All part of the game and i think a little break and a deep breath to clear the mind will help and the thought that it is all one big long session.

All i do is open up more tables,i'm an SnG player so it's fact some tables are gonna be bad and some good. Try changing seats that works for me.

I start hitting something

Originally posted by dicekeyrollz
You go out to your nearest starbucks and get yourself a nice frappucino, and enjoy that for the meantime. ♦

Yay for Starbucks open until 5am!