New member, need some advice.

[beanfacekilla]

Hello all. This is the second time writing this, some technical difficultly and everything I typed was gone. Well here goes, I will copy and paste before clicking post this time so I don't lose my stuff I type.
I am a live cash game poker player. Online is not for me, live is. My problem started a year ago. I was playing live cash games at the casino 4-5 times a week, with excellent results. I was up in between $10,000-$11,000 for the quarter. I was living off my winnings, and keeping a decent chunk for my bankroll. I spent too much of the bankroll, and only had about $1000 left. I usually played $2-$5 blinds (200-500 buy in), but I went to the 1-2, 50-200 tables with my small bankroll. Now, I would usually double my money, and leave. If I did this in 15 minutes, I would stay a little while (so people didn't attack me saying I am doing a hit-n-run), but I left if I doubled my money. Sometimes I would buy in for 500, and leave with $2500, and the cards were coming. Sorry went off point there. I was down to $1k. Caught a bad wave of cards, and some devastating bad beats. Flushed my bankroll. Gone.
I waited until about 3 weeks ago to take another shot at it. I went with money I can lose. I am just card dead. Even when I get cards, I miss the flop. I am a tight-agressive player. I have studied poker, psychology, even read books on how to detect deception. I am a solid poker player. I practice on absolute poker freerolls. I have home games. I play heads up with my friend, who is also very interested in poker.
More about my play style: I am very tight with my preflop hand selection, because the majority of players, will play 40% of flops, and regularly call $15 preflop raises (on a $1-$2 blind table), with rags like 5-7 off, 7-3, j-2, etc. I feel that if you are playing with people like this, you need big cards to get in there. If you loosen up, you will just lose. If the table plays tight, loosen up a little, if they play loose, tighten the screws. This is my game. I have a pretty specific set of guidelines for preflop hand selection. I will not play low suited connectors, j-4, and any other rags in early position. I will loosen up a little in late position, under the right circumstances. By loosening up, I mean maybe j-8 suited, about the lowest would be 8-10 suited, or small pocket pairs and stuff. I will throw away a 7-2 or 7-3 off or suited, every time, unless blinded into it with no raise. I may limp for $1 in the SB with a-5, a-4, a-3, a-2 (only if suited), but I will not call a raise with ace rag suited usually unless on the button (and not a big raise then, just average). I will raise my big cards, most times. Some circumstances change this, but if I got a-k suited on a $1-2 table I would probably make it $12 or $15 preflop in late position, and would probably raise early position too, but most of the time, in the blinds, someone will raise for you anyways.
Now, last night I was dealt red aces, on the BB. Five limpers, and my option, I make it $17. Folds all around. This is after getting a few ok hands (q-j off, q-10 suited, k-j off, a-j suited), but those ok hands all missed the flop. I wanted 1 caller, and I picked up a few bucks from the blinds. I have watched people call raises of $15 and up with rags. And then showdown at the end, the mid pair of 7's on the flop, and they held on the whole way, hoping for a miracle. People chase gut shots, all the time. 4 outs. They feel lucky. People will hold on to those low pocket pairs all the way to the river, hoping to catch a set, even with a scary board. Even if they did catch their set, they would be no good anyways. Do people just not know how unlikely a 2 outer is? A 4-outer? Or do they just not care, they are there to gamble. I will never complain at the table when someone sucks out. I will even say "nice hand" to someone who beats me (even though sometimes I am thinking, this guy is a friggin moron, and how could he even make that call, for $100, to get to the river, where he catches another 2 to make 3 of a kind). I am polite and courteous at the table. I am starting to think poker is not a game that can be played profitably for me anymore. Perhaps there are just too many fish out there, who will river rat you, and take your money with rags. And the thing is, I know that it is math, just like the house wins at the casino on roullette, craps, etc, the poker player who consistently play rags, is going to lose in the long run, period. You make moves occasionally, but you don't play garbage (this is my opinion, and an educated one, at that).
I just can't catch anything. Even when I do, I miss the flop. Here is another example: I had K-J suited, mid postition. I raise to $12. One caller. flop comes k-k-4, rainbow. I am last to act. UTG bets $25. I raise, all in, $132. He contemplates, trys to save face, then folds. I was looking at him when the cards hit the table, and he did not give me the impression he had a king. He may have had a medium pocket pair, and that's what I put him on. But other people at the table, same situation, and they get action, and rake a $300 pot from some donkey. I just am so sick of people sucking out on me, I bet STRONG. When I flop top 2, or even TPTK, I bet 75% to 100% of the pot. I don't want people chasing. And if they want to, it is going to cost them ALOT. But even with all of that said, some guy called me all in at the casino 3 days ago, with a 7-8 of clubs, and 2 clubs on the flop, no straight flush draw. I had a-k off, and flopped top pair top kicker (kings). I bet the pot, which was like $55, and he insta-called, all in with that draw. I was soooooooo mad. Such a donkey move, He could have got the flush, and I was on the nut flush draw as well. I don't think I showed any fear of the flush, or gave him a read that I didn't have the flush draw. How can you make that call? I wouldn't. never ever would I push all in with 7-8 suited hoping for a flush, which could be beat by a higher flush no problem. Hell, I don't even play 7-8 suited. Maybe on the button, but I think it is a garbage hand. I still had a little over $100 after that hand (200 buy in). But man, I had to get up and take a walk, to avoid tilt.
As stupid as this may sound to people, poker is MY dream. I feel it is my calling. I will try my hardest to achieve my goal. But I need some good advice. Am I too tight? Do I need to chase more? Is this just a run of crappy cards, and it will improve? Please help if possible.

[JustClickinButtons]

First off 5 BI's is not enough to withstand the variance at 1/2. I think you should be more concerned with post-flop play rather than putting so much emphasis on preflop play.

Preflop Mistakes<<<Flop Mistakes<<<<<<Turn Mistakes<<<<<<<<<<River Mistkes

But yeah, back to the variance thing. A live poker pro gets roughly 35 hands per hour. If he is a particularly motivated fellow and he sits his butt in that casino chair for 40 hours per week 52 weeks per year. He'll play 72,800 hands per year. If he's a very good player and winning at 4BB/100 in a 10/20 nl game, he'll average $116480 per year. He plays pretty tight aggressive so his standard deviation is 40BB/100. We'll say he plays for 10 years, in that 10 years, if EVERYTHING GOES HOW STATISTICS SAY IT SHOULD. He'll have a downswing of around $37,600 at some point during his 10 year career, that's 18.8 buy ins. He'll also have a breakeven stretch of around 32k hands!!!!! That's almost half a year, where he goes to the casino for 40 hours per week and plays a game that he is long term winning around $50 per hour at and HE DOESN'T MAKE A DIME. Seems to me like he'd be about ready to quit, and would surely be losing confidence in his game at this point, and this isn't the 2% chance of happening in 10 years, this is something that should happen if everything goes how it SHOULD.

So yeah, if you want to be a live poker pro, you've got to play bigger, variance will eat you alive if you don't have a big cushion to fall on when the money runs dry for a while, so you really should have 6 months of living expenses tucked away and ATLEAST a 50BI bankroll.

Online poker is a tougher game, but you can play as many hands in 2 weeks as a live player gets in a year, so that half year break even stretch becomes a week or two if you're putting in a lot of volume. I don't know about you, but I'd find that a lot easier to deal with when it inevitably happens.

Good luck to you, I hope you get your situation figured out!

Cheers

[fndrbndr79]

First off, everything that was said earlier about variance is absolutely correct. Consider this a big +1 for that.

Second, it sounds like your table image is insanely tight. That's fine (mine in live games is pretty similar), but you're not going to get any action if you're not playing. That means you can make a few more position-dependent moves than the action guys, but realize that you're not going to get paid off when you make a hand.

Third, I'd seriously consider trying the online game for a little while. You can get tons more hands than in a live game, and finding a good game is MUCH easier. If it doesn't work for you, that's fine, but if it's a postive EV proposition, you can make more at lower stakes online than in a B&M, even if your B&M has much higher stakes.