I'm having a 2025 existential crisis

Some fun facts:

- The biggest thing I lose to is random two pairs that you can't put someone on because they felt playing 85 suited was a good idea. And ya know what? For them in that hand it obviously was.

- The other huge hole I had is when there's a family pot of nothing but limpers, I'm in the BB with no choice to be in and I'll flop a strong hand, like trips or two pair. And I bet hard and milk them, only to have them river out on me. I can't even count how many times that has happened. Like if I have 82 and the fop comes up A22. I'll loose to A7 because another A comes out or something. I've even flopped 822, the boat, and lost to pocket 9's on the river because they limped with 9's and I was on the BB and had no choice but to be in. The amount of times I've flopped a boat in that EXACT situation is unreal. More than what a person would think it should be.

- I also seem to have an alarmingly high number of AA vs KK where I'm KK, also when I'm AA I've lost SO many stacks to KK because they spiked a set. Its like it gets me both ways. Stu Unger was right, Aces are good for nothing but winning small pots and losing big ones

- Another huge loss is despite people being in with anything, when I get dealt a premium starting hand it often folds to me. Remember, we're talking hundreds of thousands of hands here. Either the action goes wild before the flop and I lose my stack with the best hand or it folds to me. There is rarely an in between. This isn't hyperbole, its fact.

- Small pocket pairs are trash, so are mids. I don't care what GTO says, treat a pair of fours like a pair of fours. However, the amount of stacks I've lost to .....say... a set of fours or sixes when I had Aces and such, is staggering.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to any of this. You can't read these people or range them. If they have two cards, then they can have it.

I could go on.

It's 2025, if you want to have success you'll need to work with solvers, have a solid understanding of GTO ranges and frequencies and when to deviate. Was recently discussing with a buddy how Poker has changed in the last years. 10-15 years ago it would have taken me literally 5 min to explain someone how to crush penny-stakes. Nowadays you'll have to put in quite some work. Poker is certainly not dead, but I fear the kind of people nowadays attracted to Poker won't hand you over their money as easy as years ago.

right right. And yeah. I left that part out but I have put C O N S I D E R A B L E time into solvers. I mentioned that lightly but never went in to detail. I even take my trouble hands and run them through solvers and even go as far as to consult chat GPT and GROK. And the problem I keep running into is more often than not the chat bots will rate my play at 8 out of 10, which they consider to be "perfect for human play". I've gotten a 9 a couple of times, never a 10. And it will rate my opponent obviously much lower numbers. I asked it, how can it be that every time I run a hand you rate it perfect or near perfect and my villain's are much lower but I'm pouring stacks to them? It of course gives some dry repetitive answer that is of no help. "try playing only premium hands ...."

My theory is that math is different than what we think it to be. Its Not me vs that one villain, its me vs the entire table. I'm playing against 4 or 5 bad players and you simply just cant beat those odds. If I raise and they call, by the time the river gets there there is a solid chance I'm beat more often than not. If I have a premium and they fold I'm not getting value from my hands.

There simply just seems to be no in between. Again, if I plug the hands in to the solver and its rating them perfect, what more can I do? It almost seems that you have to know what their cards are. As I've said, if they have two cards, then they can have it. They'll play anything.

I'm just at a loss.

I'm hoping someone out there has had this exact problem and can reference me to something.

How many hands and how many buy ins?

Well, may I ask and get more specific on your question? Like how many buy ins did I lose, or play? And I presume by hands you mean the trouble area that I'm referring to which is the 2025 calendar year. I think it technically started at the very end of 2024. That's when this new player influx happened.

I have to keep my notes manually because a lot of play was on Bet MGM and their software is bad. It doesn't count like poker stars. So I have to do estimates with hands per hour and time played, etc etc. It's not uncommon for me to play 500-1000 hands per session. I mean, we're talking about a few hundred thousand hands here as a sample size.

I could pull notes and books up and calculate everything, which I will do again at the end of the year. I do it usually 3-4 times a year. The first time I did it this spring, I was good. Then again in summer, I was down to slightly ahead but near even. I'm about even now by my estimates.

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These guys... its bizarre. One hand they're eratic betting and calling anything, next hand they'll fold. Like.......................what causes that? How can you be a nut one hand and passive the next? And when they do play and they're calling down, sometimes they'll call with pure nothing. The times people have called me and turned their cards over with 3 5 offsuit is unreal. I'm like...what the hell were you going for mate?????????? Then the next hand, I'm an "idiot" and I get drained because they called a three bet out of position with A9 and they rivered a 9 for two pair against my AK. They didn't have "NOTHING" but they shouldn't have been in the hand. And they got lucky at just the right time with just the right circumstances.

This happened last night. I was on the button, I had QQ vs J9o . He limp called me, out of position. Hits a J...so of course he calls, even though he has to know hes freaking beat with a 9 kicker. Hits a 9 for two pair, cleans me out.

So, yeah see its not pure garbage/air. They have SOMETHING. and Who cares if that individual player did something wrong and they are a losing player.... that doesn't matter. What matters is they played against me, its my long term stats that matter. But that player is just one pawn in the army of the donkeys. I'm not fighting the donkey, I'm fighting the army. I never would have thought this way until this year. This bizarre and until this year I've never even heard of such a thing.

We can all attribute losing to a better, more studied player, or the occasional lose against newbies who gets lucky, but this is something different. I've never seen it or heard of it before. And I just saw another player in another section of this forum pretty much say the same thing only in different words . I said, bud, if you figure it out I'm all ears because I'm in the same boat.

Sounds like variance. You were accustomed to having a ridiculously high win rate 10-15 years ago. With that high of a win rate, you were very unlikely to ever experience a prolonged downswing. Well, today possible win rates are just much lower than back then at any level above 2NL. A win rate of more than 5-10BB/100 is very hard to achieve. When your inherent win rate is 5bb/100 you can expect to see some long downswings.

You are posting complaints about isolated hands. If players are calling your raises with random hands that can make random two pairs, guess what? You are crushing them. You will indeed lose some pots to their random two pairs , but you will win many more by playing a stronger range. You seem upset when they win because you think they shouldn’t. Well, that isn’t true. Equities PF run relatively close. A hand like 85o against AKo has almost 36% equity — you’re going to lose a lot against such players.

A good player adjusts to the competition. Maybe when you raise AK and a flop of A85r comes, you should not be looking to play for stacks. Certainly cbet, but when met with resistance, slow down. That way you can still push your edges but also minimize your losses when they have crap like this. Remember a player who plays stupid hands PF usually won’t be too tricky postflop. If they are calling or raising, they have something - act accordingly. You don’t have to (and you won’t) win every pot when you play a premium hand.

Thanks for the response.

One of my mistakes that I full admit is I waited to long for consultation. I figured that its better to have a huge sample before I said anything. Well now I have far too much information to share at once for anyone to be interested in reading. Its like a strobe light going off in a giant airplane hanger, there's just no way to look at it all,

I understand what you mean about not willing to go for stacks and of course that's not every time I'm just sharing glimpses of things that happened. Obviously any of us that play have seen every situation happen every single time. And believe it or not, I'm not ......."whining" here. All I'm trying to do is do the right thing. And I'm trying to be the good player and overcome this challenge. I have no ego about playing, I could be criticized for probably laying down too strong of hands and overplaying too weak of hands in my tenure. It doesn't bother me. I'm only after what is the correct play . I simply mention this so you can get a better glimpse of who I am as a player. I simply just want to do what is correct.

As far as the presumed board of K85 and playing more tight, I mean... of course its happened. Its happened every which way. It just seams to be this extreme unpredictable erectness. Its almost like I'm playing against players that are controlled by RNG's. Like one time playing a trash hand is great and the next its not and there goes a premium hand's +EV...gone. So then I'm not losing chunks or stacks. but I'm bleeding blinds away. Or raises that I'm forced to fold because I'm clearly beat. When you play for hundreds of thousands of hands, that stuff adds up.

Like mentioned I keep my "problem" hands and I'll run them multiple times over through multiple problems and a high majority of the time I did the perfect or near perfect thing.........yet still lost. Of course that happens, right? But how am I not "crushing it" anymore?

But I believe that you answered my question. Despite what others say or make it look like to be or what existed in the past, "crushing it" is probably gone. If you're ahead a few BB per hour, then ahead is ahead, right?

Thanks again.

Edit: yeah... I waited far too long to bring this all up. I just had flashbacks to the old days on the internet during the boom where people would ask advice and one of the biggest critiques was that they've come for help too soon and they need more sample. We'll I went far to long the other way. I'd love to sit here for a day and just type up a short story-novella's worth of what's happening but its just far too much at once.

Again, my mistake.

Again, I'd like to further stress, what SEEMS to be the hurdle here is the massive erraticness. I think we can all agree if they make a mistake and they make those same mistakes all the time and I don't they HAVE to lose, right? Theres no arguing that., but see therein lies the problem. They dont always do THAT thing, but they'll do something else, or just fold entirely.

The amount of times I''ve had a table full of maniacs and calling stations fold preflop is staggering. Its so hard to put this into words for a short description because despite my three decades of playing I've never ran into anything like this. I have no way to reference this or compare it to anything else. Its simply like I said, its this weird combination of not horrible but certainly not good either. Am I ahead? Yes, ...but "crushing it"? No... no longer. And thats what I'm getting at.

I'm understanding that thats the thing that I'm truly ignorant on that I'm sure the rest of you are fully informed of. Those days are and have been long gone and I'm the old head here that was in a time warp bubble and I'm just now learning that.

Again, my fault.

- How long has your downswing persisted (number of hands)

- How many big blinds were lost during this downswing

- What was your win rate prior to the downswing

- What is your standard deviation

- What game were you playing (NLH 6MAX, PLO, HU, etc.) and what were the blinds

Also, please attempt to only answer these questions as succinctly as possible and provide no additional information.

Thank you so much (and to the others), that weighed in here to help me. I've been perusing the forum all day, socially catching me up on poker with 2025. At this point I'm satisfied with my current theory of basically things have changed and I and apparently the very small player pool we had, were all people out of time. Now, "the world" is starting to bleed into the pool and catch us up with time. This is how things are now.

I'm willing to go ahead consider this question answered to satisfaction, but if anyone wishes to carry it on for conversational purposes, please go ahead.
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Just real quick off the top of my head just to answer you with what I remember while I'm on the fly here. My win rate dropped significantly. It went from 7 BB down to 2 BB-ish.

The games were 25NL and 50NL 6 max (mainly)

The BB's weren't exaaaactly lost-lost, It was a change in the trajectory. The swings were smaller, but more equal in the shorter term, , , , , , , but drawing back the focus over this calendar year (looking at it that way) instead of the upswings lifting me up higher and gradually climbing the scale like they use to, the downswings were dragging me right back down and standard deviation remained more toward even-ish but still slightly ahead.

I know that's not the exact specifics you asked but I'm not at my desk now. But again, I'm all good now. I'm going to regroup and try a different approach.

thanks so much.

Iz a cliche but the only way I've found to truly know if you're good enough to play any stake is to beat sequential stakes from the bottom up. If I took any extended time out from playing that's exactly what I'd do. Time consuming, potentially, but the only way you can ever know if you crush a pool over small samples is if you can say to yourself definitively: a) I understand what mistakes my opponents are making and b) I am confident that I understand the optimal responses to those EV errors and am deploying them correctly.

No offense but describing your current pool as too erratic or unpredictable to dominate sounds a bit fishy. If they're making wild EV mistakes then we have to learn to hyper adjust to them (= working on theory/posting hands etc). If we don't know, fine, but we probably shouldn't be playing that stake for, or expecting to accrue, profit.

My apologies on the delay.

This may have been lost between the back and forth but you're misunderstanding. I was winning......very well I might add. That's not the problem, the problem happened with this ... "influx" of new players into the pool. Things went WILD.

Well what do you mean exactly by "fishy". That's an interesting description

Again, there was influx of new players. I was doing quite well, great even. I stayed there because of the extreme eracticness and of course because of their gigantic mistakes I of course was up A LOT........then I would give it all right back through coolers, bad beats, etc... I tried all sorts of technicques and strategies and I gave them time to work and nothing I did so far seems to work.

I ran into another poster on the board here that appears to be having the identical problem elsewhere but that conversation never took flight, the thread is dead.

Given everything I just said, posting data and hand history's would mean next to nothing because its too isolated. My plan as of now is to sit back, take a break, reset, and go back and just take things one session at a time. So (for now) all is good, but I'm happy to entertain any conversation.

oy vey........for the love of pete. I just had my first session in a while. It was terrible, I just took cooler after cooler. Its fine, it happens.

However, I can add one more stat into my notes of being forced into the hand because I'm in the BB and they limp in and i flop a monster and I lose a huge stack. By the river I had a boat and I laid it down to the villians oversized river bet because I knew it was the dummy end of the boat.

Fun fact, on the one site you're actually allowed to fold your BB and I went on "reverse tilt" for a while and every time someone would limp to me and I had rags, I just force folded.

This situation is the biggest "leak" that I have. And I don't know what to do about it. Anyone that knows anything about anything will tell you that me force folding would be -EV and not betting big hands would be -EV, yet my notes say otherwise.

I just meant, (and again, deffo don't take this personally, my only intent is to help with transparency), but from my perspective, whenever I hear anything analogous to: 'I am a crusher, apart form... this strange patch where I don't know what I'm doing', I tend to think there's a fundamental failure to comprehend game theory there.

Opponent's can be roughly split into just two categories: a) they're so fishy our non-perfect GTO based exploit game still prints, easily or b) so comparatively clued up on theory to us they're therefore either better than us and we lose and/or at best harder to find leaks against. (aka 'reg')

The word 'fishy' in this context just means weaker player, and we're all fish to someone ofc. That's why i'd advocate using pure (i.e. accrued) bankroll as the barometer for setting your stake level rather than self-assessment. Fish often straddle both categories and fluke incredible play by accident and catch us out on our leaks/max exploit us. That could be what's happening in your situation, for sure. But if you won't post hands we have no way of telling you either way. Plus when you say things like:

Suggests it's more likely a skill or mental issue to me.

If you mean 'isolated' as in no-brainer variance, then of course serious analysis is pointless. But why would that cause an existential crisis?!

Or if you mean isolated as in 'the fish acted in a random way that caught me out, no point in looking at that'... that is definitely a big leak. imo. Even if you are a long term winner. Even nosebleeders don't play every hand or 'cooler' with 100% conviction.

No offense taken at all. I'm use to being on poker forums back in the day. You couldn't post anything in those days because people would rip you apart. People in those days didn't just tell you you were wrong, they acted like you were a lower form of life for not knowing better, which is why I quit socializing with poker and why I'm so out of touch, but I digress.....

Also, I'm making NO claims about my poker skill as far as titles go. I'm simply telling things that factually happened. I'm not the grand wizard of poker or I wouldn't be posting I'm climbing the thousand stair mountain seeking the wisdom of the poker monks here. I'm saying I dont know what this is. Also you have to understand "winning" is also a relative term, excuse me, not winning, but crushing or "doing well". It seems these days 10bb per hour is considered crushing. That just goes to show how the water line of skill level of the average player has rose. It use to be you can walk away with stacks near each session. And still can if you play 2NL, which I did as a control as I mentioned earlier. But even bumping up to 10NL is enough to quell that, which it use to not.

Yeah I don't know what to say man. Again, I'm not the poker wizard, I just know that I'm not new to the game, I'm not new to winning, and i'm not new to GTO, and I'm not new to studying players and I've never seen what I'm seeing now. Thats not saying others arent.......its saying I haven't. I'm HOPING yall have, thats why I'm making this post. Like "oh, thats "this" situation, you have to watch out for this and remember this formula, etc" .... or whatever.

I ...and maybe to a fault....almost think of poker like boxing. Getting points for doing things correct that add up in the end to a win. But see as we all know. Poker is the one thing you can do everything right and still lose. I don't know what to do if I'm in position and I three bet with AQ suited and my opponent habitually calls with A 10 off suit. That is a HUGE mistake for them according to theory and points, etc. But.......really...........is it? Is it THAT bad? What if the A 10 was suited? according to theory thats just oodles and oodles better, but my experience tells me otherwise and really when you compare suited hands to unsuited its only marginally better. And even if you realize you're beat and lay it down? Fine yeah, sometimes you're beat. But thats what I'm saying, you just blead cash. You keep doing that next thing ya know an entire stack is gone, like what happened to me last night. Only to take advantage of that mistake for a big pay out next time and clean them out. GREAT........but I've only won back what I lost from those repeated blead outs.

Yes, to someone we are all fish. Theres always a bigger fish. (also, you said fish and fluke, i LOL'd)

As far as the rest of what you're saying........I guess thats what I'm figuring out and why i said I think I'm a person out of time. While what I'm saying is factual, it perhaps isnt ALL of the facts and as usual in life those little key difference make all the difference as to how to gauge whats going on. And that is what I considering "winning" or "crushing" and what variance ACTUALLY is. if 1-10 BB per hour is considered good/great. Then yeah...........this is all about perspective and this entire thread is completely moot. Because to me "crushing it" is more like 25 BB per hour or more. Like, you should be leaving each session with your opponents stacks. Not EVERY time, crap happens of course. So you backwash the stats to fill in the gaps, to like 25 BB per hour.

And Like I was saying I've ran my hands through GTO wizard and through chat GPT, my troubled hands of course. And I would have either high ratings or perfect ratings and my opponent would be low, but thats the thing...its not that one hand. Variance exists and its not me vs the villain in that one hand its me vs 5 villains repeatedly for hours. And again to ground myself, I dropped clear to the bottom to 2NL, the worst of the worst, and I crushed it. So the control still works. But when everyone plays just a little bit better it raises the water line. Even though they're still "bad" its enough to change the flow of the tide.

This is ....... apparently ...........what I need to learn. Its my perspective. And THAT is what caused the "crisis". I couldn't understand how I can repeatedly point out obvious and monstrous mistakes endlessly and not "crush" them. It didn't make sense to me. How could this be?? But given my age and experience I didn't want to jump to conclusions so I dedicated this calendar year to this situation with study, dedication, and perseverance and I guess I got my answer its just not the answer I thought I was looking for.

This is just for fun, but I'll do a super quick recap of last nights session, but again. I don't know what much its going to tell any of us except for the fact that it happened.

Last night: (my hands with the biggest losses of chips)

- 4 hands I had suited Broadway cards, that I was the aggressor and three bet pots and flopped top two pair only to get whomped every time, either by showdown. Some I layed down and some I paid off. I've never had a session where I flopped top two so many times in a session and they turned into a bluff catcher.

- I'm in the BB with J5 off suit. I do NOT want to be in the hand.
SB limps in.
flop comes J J 7. Pot is 1.77 BB
SB leads out for pot. I reraise the pot. SB snap calls
turn is K. SB checks. I bet 3/4 pot. SB quickly calls.
river is a K. SB leads out for a 150% overbet of pot.
I fold.

If you're doing the math, I didn't lose very much here. Probably the minimum. But again, all of this goes into the till for blead chips.

Again, I'm will to let the two pair flops go, poker is weird, that stuff happens sometimes. But they still happened and they still blead chips. But this limp when I'm in the BB problem is a real thing with me.

Heres another one from my hand history, similar but obviously I volunteered for this punishment.

GTO rated me 86% overall. So very good, but not perfect.

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I'm in the BB with J7 offsuit.

UTG min raises.

Everyone folds. I'm getting 4 to 1, so I call. (GTP supports this play, double green check mark.)

flop comes 9 7 4 rainbow

I check, they bet half pot, I call. (Again GTO supports this, double check mark)

turn comes another 7

This is where GTO disagrees, i checked, which it says is a "yellow" inaccuracy, but not blunder. Its still +EV, just less. It wanted me to lead out. I figured that's far too obvious. I wanted them to push.

They bet half pot, I call. (GTO gives double green)

river comes a Q Rainbow board.

I check, (GTO agrees, double green checks)

They bet 200% of the pot. I go in to the tank. Set of 9's????

I eventually call, begrudgingly (GTO agrees, call, double green check mark)

They turn over Q 7 offsuit.

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LOL, I don't know what to say.

Again, what does this tell us? Other than the fact that it happened. Its a bleading of chips.

fold pre

Alright, here we go. Just had another session and what busted me was the exact thing I'm talking about. This JUST happened.

I'm at 10NL. I bumped down while I'm on this new "journey". I, myself, am being erratic. I'm all over the place mixing my play up so no one knows what's what. I'm working hard, grinding. Winning all sorts of pots. Made a few hero calls, made a few big laydowns, bluffed few hands etc. I'm doing well. I'm up to 143 BB. in about 100 hands of play or so. This is how it always goes.

Half of the table leaves. So there's two people that "know me", the other three are brand new. The one guy is a total and complete station. Dude bro is Grand Central Station. Limp call/passive. Literally any two rags.

Hand 1.

I have AhKs in the SB. He opens 2.5 BB. I bump up to 7. He calls.

Flop comes As 9d 2s

I think, I'm going for a strong check raise. I have top top and the King of spades. So I check, he thinks a bit and he checks. Turn comes Q h

dang it, I could be beat. He could totally have AQ here. So to test the waters I threw up a 2/3 bet. He simply calls. mmmmkay.

River brings Q s

I check, he checks. He turns over A9 offsuit.

I don't know how I feel about this or what to say other than he obviously shouldn't have opened nor called a 3 bet. Was he slow playing me on the flop? You'd think but this guy doesn't "Know" anything, clearly, So whos to say what his motives are. Did I suck out? Yes and no. I started strong and on the flop was behind but normally wouldnt be, but thats why we play cards at the top of the range, these hands win the most money most of the time. So, I played it correct, right? Anyway, this was a sizable pot. I win. I'm ahead in our "battle"

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Hand two.

I'm on the button. J8 suited I raise 2.5, he calls.

Flop comes J 8 10 rainbow

I lead out for 3/4 pot. He calls

Turn comes 2, still rainbow. I bet 3/4 pot. He calls.

River comes Q. I check. he bets out third pot. I begrudgingly call.

He turns over 9 4 suited.

Two sizable pots, so we're equal in that, but this one was a bit bigger so, financially he's ahead. But I'm still up overall from my 100BB sit down stack. I think I have like 120 BB (approx) or so.

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Hand 3.

I look down to AA under the gun. I raise 2.5. Guy to my left calls. Grand Central Station bumps it up to 10.5 BB. Everyone else folds. I bump it up to 25 BB. GCS goes in to the tank for 5 seconds, he calls.

Flop comes 10 9 2 rainbow. Pot is obviously sizable

I think for a few seconds. I know this guy will call so I bet 3/4 pot. He calls. The pot is massive now. Far bigger than my stack.

Turn comes 5. I shove all in. He snap calls. Turns over pocket 10's. For a set.

Boom.......my 140+ stack I ground for, gone in 3 hands to same guy. Even that last hand with the 10's he was -EV preflop pocket tens are a 75% fold (which is weird because its a 25% call but its literally marked -EV). But even if we give that to him and say, yeah nice hand...well played. Still, this is the "variance" or whatever in the world this is that I just cant seem to beat.
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I'm at a loss. I genuinly don't know what to do. I never give up on anything and I'm seriously considering throwing in the towel to Cash NL holdem. At least at these stakes or tables. I can't win. I don't know what to do. Most espeically if you combine this with last nights session where I got absolutely whooped ( I blead out about 90 BB slowly over like 500-600 hands between two tables).

While no explanation is needed for your opinion, I get it. ...but the math says I win in this situation more often than I lose. Hence why I called. How could anyone possibly put the villain on Q7 off ???

I had another hand where I was on the button with J9 suited, I raise. SB calls.

Flop comes up J 7 2 rainbow. I C-bet for half, SB calls

turns comes 5, I bet 1/3 pot, he calls

river comes K. We both check

SB turns over pocket Queens??????????????????????

I guess I lost the minimum so I aint mad about it, but just to show how you cant range anyone. Its like walking around in the dark.

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So, Two sessions, approx 750 hands. Down 2 buy ins. (200 BB). Just beat after beat. And so many of the times I did have a monster, like the nut straight. I either got zero value, or won small to moderate pot only to blead it out slowly on pre flop raises that missed.

Jason,

In the few hands you've written out you have made fundamental mistakes both preflop and postflop. You have made logical inconsistencies with your reasoning and were also unable to follow my simple instructions in post #10. Your style of writing is extremely superfluous and reads as though it is a stream of thought puked out onto a computer screen. You seem intelligent enough to have success, but you're currently too tilted and believe yourself to be more skilled than you likely are. You need to take a breath, re-read your posts and take a short break from poker.

If you want to improve at poker, then here are my recommendations:

1. Get some preflop ranges
2. Get some help understanding basic poker theory (books/subscriptions/runitonce)
3. Get some software to track your progress and learn how to use it (PT4/HEM/etc.)

If you can do 1. 2. and 3., then you have a good chance of success.

Good luck

This is really good advice, take it!

I have been playing Poker now for +10 years for a living/supplementing regular income. Poker is not all about skill, it's also about luck. I played millions of hands and only had a short period of about 100k hands where I was not running way below EV, never went into the topic of getting coolered more ore less. Making the right choices will improve your chances of success, but don't take it as a guarantee for that!

It sounds to me like you have some fundamental misunderstandings, some selective memory, and a bit of entitlement tilt going on. Case in point, you lost a hand where you had AQ and got called by AT and you asked “what am I supposed to do?” Well, fundamental misunderstanding - you aren’t supposed to do anything different PF - you WANT to be called by AT in that spot. You seem to actually be upset and a bit angry that your opponent made a mistake. Why? What do you think would happen to your win rate if your opponents all suddenly started to play perfectly? Their mistakes make you money.

Which leads to my other two points. Selective memory - you posted about the hand where your AQ got called by AT and you lost. How many other hands did you play your AQ the same way, get called by AT and win? I suspect (assuming you have played a fairly large number of hands) that there are many more instances where you won in this spot than where you lost. ThatÂ’s where your positive win rate comes from. Each individual pot is irrelevant. Whether you win or lose a particular hand simply doesnÂ’t matter. Your win rate is the sum of results over a huge number of hands. The results will even out.

Of course that can be frustrating when you do lose a hand that you “should” win. The problem is that there’s no such thing as a hand you “should” win. There are only spots where you are more likely to win than not. When some idiot shoves with 72o and you call with AA, you SHOULD lose — sometimes. Entitlement tilt is simply the name for getting frustrated when you lose a hand that you think you should win and let it affect your play. What helps me with this is to just ask myself “Was winning this particular pot really crucial to maintaining my win rate? Will I be able to recover the money I lost here by playing well going forward?” Until you can bring yourself to answer no to the first and yes to the second, and really believe it, you will continue to have issues.

Nah, and I tried saying it before...some of yall are missing the point. The answer here was answered very simply very early on. "This is how things are now." I was a person out of time. It's as simple and yet as complex as that. I've already acknowledged and said that. I do NOT know what I'm doing, or I wouldn't be here. I can't say that any more clearly, nor do I expect anything. I bowed out of that portion of the advice section of this thread and the rest of this, as I've stated, again, is for conversation purposes only.

Given that's the case, This is me just "talkin shitt" Couple of guys just doing surface level conversation. That's how the rest of that should be read and taken. Those hands?...same deal. Like "hey can you believe this? AA vs 10 and I lose, oy vey. If I didn't have any luck I'd have none at all" I'm not angry, again, as I've stated. I'm just baffled. I'm not mad about $10 bucks man. That's not sending me to the poor house.

Again, as stated, I do use software and take detailed notes. I've already started a new file on all of this and have been performing experiments with established controls, which I haven't even speaking about because its not relevant here anymore, this is my problem and my journey and I'm doing the work and figuring it out. And I'll either figure it out or I wont. And if not I'll admit defeat either temporarily or permanently and I'll move on. It's just a game. I love playing guitar too, and I'm not very good at that either. But I love it and I work at it. This is no different.

PS: (and again, those hands have been ran through solvers and then adjusted for situation through chat GPT from multiple standpoints and avenues, anonymously, so no bias can be performed. And it came up the same every time. Yet the ones that were standard GTO I got criticized for that too? Make up yall's minds. And that AA hand.... I got a 9 out of 10. The only reason I didn't get a 10 was because it wanted me to milk it even more on the turn. It wanted ALL of the chips in the pot against a player like that)

I appreciate everyone's participation and advice and I thank you for it. We'll see what happens from here.

Take care.