[Schly]

Originally Posted by jrlarson

I joined Poker Stars in November. I am a reasonably good, conservative player. I played the one table 3$ progressive table and took my initial $50 investment to $280 in 2.5 months.

Then the cards began to change dramatically on all in showdowns for me. In the last four weeks I have dropped straight down from $280 to $180, and nothing has changed but the odds defying outcomes of showdowns where the pre-flop odds were all in my favor. I started keeping track about 2.5 weeks ago on all-ins when I knew that something was going on. The odds defying results are 11 against me and 1 for me as follows (remember these were all in's pre-flop:

11 LOSSES:
kk to 44 (4)
AsKs to k4 (kk4)
a6 to kq (k)
kk to tt (jq98)
ak to a5 (5)
jj to at (a)
(all in after flop) 8j (8j) to 97 (turn river = 56) that one was beyond funny
(all in after flop) qj (q high flop) to ad8 (two diamonds turn & river to save him)
aQ to kq (k)
AJ (tka8) to Q3 (j)
A6 to 85 (8)

1 WIN:
A4 to QQ (AA4) (I guess giving me one big improbable was supposed to make me feel better about the other 11, right?

The Poker Starssite is a joke. They must be leveling out good players to ensure that bad players get some victories and hang around their site.

I really don't want it to be true, because I really like pokerstars, but man, I've played a couple thousand tourneys there in the last 2 years and it has not been pretty.

Let's put it this way, I play low limit single table 3 dollar or 6 dollar SNG's and the occasional 12 dollar SNG.

I went from a 100 dollar buyin to zero in about a month. Fine, ok, I'm learning the system and dodging the Donks.

I buyin again for 100, it lasts a month and a half. Great. I can live with that, it's fun, right?

I buyin for 75. I've got it. I've learned to be tight/aggressive, how to read players online, and most importantly, how to play pokerstars crazy flops and suckouts. I made it to *almost* 300 bucks in six months.

Then everything changed. I could not win a tourney if my Mother's life depended on it. In fact, the people that used to play alongside me (on UltimateBet) began calling me "4th place". No matter what I did, or how premium my cards were or how far into first I was when we were 4 up, I ALWAYS got taken out in 4th place. Usually by 2 or 3 consecutive, ridiculous beats. Flopping a set, betting aggressively preflop after spending the entire tourney establishing tight, non chasing play, and I'd get called by someone with a middling hand and they'd suckout, or flop some ridiculous chase cards that they could not lay down to any bet.

This went on for about a month and I went from 29x.xx dollars to ZERO. Insane.

I didn't change my play, I didn't do ANYTHING differently, I just could NOT place in the money in more than 1 out of every 10 or so tourneys when I was placing 4 of every five tourneys.

So, I cash in for 50 more recently and again, it was good for a month, then straight down. Now I'm back to about 50 and I think I want to cash out because there is no way for me to win, no matter how good the cards are for me.

So, where to play? That's the 100 dollar question for me. How's Full Tilt?


EDIT: BTW, I play once a week in a private tourney on pokerstars.com and the cards fall COMPLETELY differently. Very normal, very predictable poker. There are some suckouts, but that's poker, but you can reasonably calculate your odds with the hand you play.