Bad beats keep coming but doing well on Party & Bodog

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05-17-2009, 02:52 AM
Ant8472

Bad beats keep coming but doing well on Party & Bodog

Well, after several weeks of savage and persistent bad beats and losing on showdowns I decided to mix things up a bit and have a go on Bodog and Party Poker, two sites that my bankroll seems to only know the way up.

I must say, it was a different experience altogether. I had mixed runs of bad and good luck which to me was luxury after the constant run of bad luck on Full Tilt for weeks and months in varying doses.

As I've said in previous posts, my hands are not holding up at all on Full Tilt. It doesn't matter if I am behind or ahead. My % of wins once I've entered a pot have dropped dramatically (always a sign to me that I am on some kind of losing setting) and everytime I either raise with a marginal or decent hand or try to bluff someone is always coming over the top. It is like everyone is catching their cards to beat me.

After a while of having people betting over me constantly I started to believe that it isn't possible they have it every time so I will call occasionally with a hand I think is better and yep, they have it every time! Every flop hits everybody. Every turn card persuades a bet.

So after such an awful run in Full Tilt my revulsion of the sight reached new levels and I no longer believed I could win there anymore. After all, if your hands hardly ever hold up how can you win at poker unless you master the art of getting someone to fold each and every time?

Playing on Bodog and Party Poker was a refreshing poker experience and restored the notion that poker can actually be fun as well as a game that can occasionally win you money. I actually caught some cards on those other sites and I gave some bad beats in Bodog. In one hand I was AK vs AA and sucked out a straight! In another hand I was 89 vs J9 and caught an 8. It was a complete novelty to actually win from behind, especially when I can't win from being ahead in Full Tilt. I had forgotten what it felt like to actually win a showdown! It seems completely ridiculous but I am not exaggerating when I say that nothing is holding up for me on Full Tilt and to actually experience a hand holding up is a novelty. People actually fold cards on other sites, because, surprise surprise, sometimes they don't catch a hand! Sometimes the big blind will fold to the small blind, because, surprise surprise, the big blind will occasionally not have a playable hand when the small blind has a playable hand.

Catching cards was an experience. I hadn't realized how few hands I was catching until I played elsewhere.

All this came to me as shock horror. After all, I had become accustomed to wins that were restricted only when opponents folded. Showdowns were a useless EV ploy on FT. I mean, if I am holding up 20% of the time there is no point showing anything down. I was getting close to only showing down my hands when I've got five of a kind. I haven't had 5 of a kind yet but I am expecting one soon on FT (anything goes there).

One more thing surprised me in my Party Poker game (which I ended up winning making up for all the losses in Full Tilt during the day). That was, my jacks held up against AK. More so, my opponent with the AK was the big stack. Now my entire life was taking on new meaning. Seeing a big stack not win a 50-50 in a showdown was like seeing god come down from the heavens and telling me that I will go to poker heaven someday and that humanity is actually good and not inherently evil.

On Full tilt when i am confronted with a coin flip, or my QQ are up against Aj, I am already sighing and joining a new tournament with the full expectation of getting knocked out. I will admit though, I had one hand hold up for me at Full Tilt today in which I was ahead, and I had my hands on my head in disblief.

Seriously though, when I can feel astounding lucky to win a coin flip or to suck out from behind on another site, things can't be right. Either I have situation specific schizophrenia occasioned by a severe case of confirmation bias in regards to my constant bad luck and bad beats on Full Tilt or something ugly is going down.

While I'd like to say that Full Tilt is the only site playing with glaring anomolies I can't. Pokerstars, which was incredibly kind to me for a couple of months and in which I won several hundred dollars, started to dog me as of a couple of weeks ago. I used to wonder why people called Pokerstars Riverstars. I am learning the hard way and its not pleasant. I keep losing hands to river cards. It keeps happening too. I will go all in with a significant stake in the outcome of the hand and the river will send me a losing blow. I have started to point before the river card comes and I will say 'ace' and bang! There's the ace. I could conduct party tricks over this predictable river card. It is either a gliche or Pokerstars way of distributing loser and winner modes. It is definitely much more obvious than Full Tilt's system. If there were only 4 cards put on the board in Pokerstars I'd be a gazllionnaire!

Finally one more thing. Just when I thought things couldn't get spookier on Full Tilt I had a hand that was utterly controlled on me. I had pocket nines in the big blind. The small blind had raised me and I called. The flop came JJ3 or something like that. I wanted to bet but my hand took on a life of its own and checked itself! It was like some mysterious force was controlling my hand. On the turn came an 8 and I so badly wanted to bed at this board but I was folded! What was going on!

The very next hand I had KK and flopped the stone cold nuts. I figured, whoever was controlling my hand decided to compensate me with the next hand. Although, the very hand after that I had KK in small blind and the button raised me. I somehow only lost half my chips, instead of the whole bloody lot when the button flipped over AA.

Sorry about the rant but I structured it in such a way that anyone reading it might get a laugh out of it.

Anthony

:biglaugh:
05-17-2009, 02:03 PM
J4bberW0cky

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ant8472

. . . I have situation specific schizophrenia occasioned by a severe case of confirmation bias in regards to my constant bad luck and bad beats on Full Tilt . . .

Anthony

:biglaugh:

This is the gist of it. :)
05-17-2009, 04:40 PM
Ant8472

lol! So succinct but so wrong my friend!
05-17-2009, 04:46 PM
Dr Fill Good

How is it, that out of all of the players on this website. Who have all played a much much greater amount of hands then you on full tilt. Have never seen any of this massive trends you speak of.
05-17-2009, 05:48 PM
Ant8472

I don't know and its a valid question. One would have to be sitting over my shoulder to see it.

Just for the record, this post was kind of light hearted. The jury in my mind is still out on whether the site is rigged but after more than a year of this bad luck I am tending towards believing it is.

To try and answer your question, maybe its attrition. The players who are on some kind of losing setting eventually play somewhere else where they are making money or stop playing poker alltogether. If you do a search on the net for 'full tilt is rigged' you will get almost as many hits as 'Ossama Bin Laden'. There is definitely a sea of disgruntled Full Tilt players out there who report the same experience.

It only seems reasonable that the players who have a long term association with a site will be the ones that have had success on the site. Most of you guys are 99% players. How many truly bad or unprofitable players do you have on this forum? From what I can see, it is only the successful players who are writing all the posts here. I mean, would you be here on this forum and playing poker on Full Tilt if you were making deposits every other day? Perhaps not.

I've spoken to a lot of people who play live as well and who make a lot of money who also report having lost a lot of money on Full Tilt to bad luck all the time but who made a great deal elsewhere.

There is a theory that two types of players are getting the luck and making money on Full Tilt. 1) Those who are new so as to try and retain them and not lose them to other sites and 2) those who play very frequently over a number of a years. The rest of the in-betweens are the ones who are succumbing to bad luck. This is just a theory I heard about.

Just to give a bit of anecdotal support to the above, when I started on Full Tilt I was raking it in. I won 4 $10 SNG's in a row. I thought I was a magnificent player. I was hitting cards, playing aggressive, it seemed I couldn't lose. I put myself on a positive EV. As far as I was concerned, my poker career was taking off. Now, 18 months later, I've got significantly more experience and have read a tonne of books, and I am losing more than I was in the very first couple of months I played at Full Tilt.
05-17-2009, 06:56 PM
Dr Fill Good

Us winning players, that are on the "winning setting" go through the same bs as you. I had a 16.5k downswing this year. But I don't fit into your conspiracy theories. It was a combination of the worst luck of my life, and I wasn't playing at the top of my game.

It only makes sense that there are a ton of posts online about full tilt being rigged. There are vast amount of bad poker players out there that believe they should be winning. No one plays poker and thinks they are going to lose. Its a sad fact that many people, instead of looking inwards for ways to improve, decide it has to be the sites fault, there is no way that they could be the problem.

Confirmation bias is a big issue with whats going on here. Really though, you've moved from full tilt enjoy party poker. When I used to play there I could have sworn it was rigged.
05-17-2009, 08:09 PM
Ant8472

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Fill Good

Us winning players, that are on the "winning setting" go through the same bs as you. I had a 16.5k downswing this year. But I don't fit into your conspiracy theories. It was a combination of the worst luck of my life, and I wasn't playing at the top of my game.

Confirmation bias is a big issue with whats going on here. Really though, you've moved from full tilt enjoy party poker. When I used to play there I could have sworn it was rigged.

I haven't moved to Party Poker. I am diversifying and playing on other sites as well as Full Tilt. I've got accounts with PS, Bodog, Party Poker, Everest and Bwin. I often play on these other sites but I've only ever been regular on Full Tilt. It is a good thing I have these other accounts because that is where I've been making some income which supplements my losses on FT.

The reason I've persisted with FT is because I love the site (obviously not because I am making money). I like the graphical interface, the games listing, the sounds, the avatars and the look and feel of the tables. It feels very intuitive and pleasing to use. None of the other sites I play at are as user friendly. PS looks downright ugly. I also like the number of players on FT. Always plenty of tournaments. OPR records all tournaments on FT including heads up and single tables which is handy too. I also like the better competition at FT. Best way to learn is to play against the better players.

I have always preferred to play on FT. This is half the problem. I can't get away from it even for my own good. I deposited money in Bodog and Party over a year ago and have not deposited since. Each of those accounts have grown. I deposited $100 on PS about 4 months ago and it ballooned before losing it all recently. On FT I am making a deposit every other day!

I am not one of those people who impulsively blames the site and declares it rigged and continues to play the same way. I've spent a great deal of time analysing my game, reading books and learning from people like yourself. However, after weeks and months of bad beats and downright bad luck, I couldn't ignore that my outcome seemed rooted as much in the run of bad luck as in the way I was playing, especially when I was getting some modest success on other sites but kept pouring money into my FT account.

I am having a bad run only on FT, not anywhere else. It is exclusively on FT. One might say that the players are better on FT but not at the $10 level they aren't. Half the time it is a player sucking out against the odds and having played poorly.

You say you went through a long bad luck run yourself. Did this happen just on FT? Have you played anywhere else to see how you would go?
05-17-2009, 08:35 PM
Dr Fill Good

I played on party poker, and it was exactly the same. They are all the same, you are finding patterns where there are none because of limited statistical data.