All of a sudden Im terrible

I was playing on Full Tilt for a bit. I had just started playing cash seriously and started at the 10nl level with a bankroll of around $200. I made some bad plays my first session, but soon realized my mistakes. I was able to do alright at 10nl and had $300 in a couple of days. It was at this point that I learned of rakeback (Ive made some threads on here about it) and couldn't get it on my FTP account. I finally decided to switch over to PS because I could get the 100% bonus on $50 and I could get the 40% bonus on $240 reload bonus before the end of July. I deposited $50 and started to play 10nl again. Although my roll was only $50, I was going to be depositing the other $240 in a couple of days, and I wanted to get the bonus moving. After switching, I seem to play terrible. I dont know what it is. I think that in my attempt to be more aggressive, I end up just donking my buyin away with trash. I have been buying in with $5 as opposed to my usual $10 because of my bankroll as well, so that could play into it as well. But I am down to $15, and have until the end of July to deposit the $240 for the bonus. Should I just play 2nl for a bit to remember how to play? My only thing with that is that it doesnt get the $50 bonus moving, which I have to clear before I can work on the $240 bonus. Any advice is appreciated.

Also, I have a few questions as to what to do in certain situations that seem to come up:

1) The table has folded around to you in the SB and you hold Ax. Do you raise in hopes to steal, limp, or just fold because its not worth it? Or do you switch between these 3?
2) It is folded around to you in LP and you hold a small PP (22-88). Do you limp to hit a set, raise because you are the first to enter a pot, or just trash it? More likely to raise with 88 than 22?
3) There is a MP player who raises to 3x the BB. You are CO/Button with AQ. Do you flat it or 3bet it? Ive been under the assumption that it is normally bad to just flat a raise...although you would have position in this case.

Originally Posted by CheeseNip06

I was playing on Full Tilt for a bit. I had just started playing cash seriously and started at the 10nl level with a bankroll of around $200. I made some bad plays my first session, but soon realized my mistakes. I was able to do alright at 10nl and had $300 in a couple of days. It was at this point that I learned of rakeback (Ive made some threads on here about it) and couldn't get it on my FTP account. I finally decided to switch over to PS because I could get the 100% bonus on $50 and I could get the 40% bonus on $240 reload bonus before the end of July. I deposited $50 and started to play 10nl again. Although my roll was only $50, I was going to be depositing the other $240 in a couple of days, and I wanted to get the bonus moving. After switching, I seem to play terrible. I dont know what it is. I think that in my attempt to be more aggressive, I end up just donking my buyin away with trash. I have been buying in with $5 as opposed to my usual $10 because of my bankroll as well, so that could play into it as well. But I am down to $15, and have until the end of July to deposit the $240 for the bonus. Should I just play 2nl for a bit to remember how to play? My only thing with that is that it doesnt get the $50 bonus moving, which I have to clear before I can work on the $240 bonus. Any advice is appreciated.

Also, I have a few questions as to what to do in certain situations that seem to come up:

1) The table has folded around to you in the SB and you hold Ax. Do you raise in hopes to steal, limp, or just fold because its not worth it? Or do you switch between these 3?
2) It is folded around to you in LP and you hold a small PP (22-88). Do you limp to hit a set, raise because you are the first to enter a pot, or just trash it? More likely to raise with 88 than 22?
3) There is a MP player who raises to 3x the BB. You are CO/Button with AQ. Do you flat it or 3bet it? Ive been under the assumption that it is normally bad to just flat a raise...although you would have position in this case.

1. Raise most of the time. Especially if they are some nitty person running 10/2 I think they fold easier. If the person is like 70/30 possibly just fold. I rarely if ever just limp in this situation. To an unknown I am raising here almost 100%.

2. Almost always raise. I only limp pp under 99 if there are 2+ limper before me (this is in any position). I raise 99 almost all of the time here with 2+ limpers. Never throw away a pp in position when it is folded to you.

3. I almost never reraise. I usually flat unless the person is supper nitty and I know would never try to steal the blinds then I would be a folden. Versus an unknown I flat. I also play AK supper nitty as well though.

Definately need to buy in for less man, don't know how long you have been buying in with $5 before you got to 15$ but thats like a quarter of your bankroll.

I'm following a strict strategy of not buying into anything with more than 2% of my bankroll (unless its an extra 1% for an mtt or something as my bankroll is a little low at the moment).

Thing is when you're buying in at that level and the pot can become 50% of your bank it just puts too much pressure on you.

I've lost 3 bankrolls all about 150$ until I decided once and for all to follow a strict bankroll management plan which I put together from threads in the forum. I've consistently made small gains each day and I put it down to knowing i'm following a solid plan, and not putting lots of pressure on myself.

Also it makes such a difference knowing if you do make a blunder and go all in and lose you've only lost 2% of your bank roll i've done that three times today! could have been very costly otherwise.

Good luck man! whatever you decide to do

I know that I shouldnt be playing 10nl with $50 bankroll...but I plan on puttin on the other $240 very shortly so that I will be back where I was on Full Tilt basically. Ill have about 300, but I will also have bonus money to get. I would be playing 2nl for a couple of days until I put on the $240 and it just seemed kind of pointless as I was going to be playing 10nl anyways =/ I guess I could have just played 2nl for a couple of days...and then got the $50 bonus underway when I put on the $240. Live and learn.

I believe the PokerStars reload bonus is a 40% reload bonus. By this I mean that the bonus amount becomes 40% of the deposit amount. As in, if you deposit $200 your bonus amount is $80 - if you deposit $600 your bonus amount is $240.

Your bankroll is normally defined as the amount of money you have put aside for the purpose of playing poker. If you expect to deposit $500 from a bank account in the near future you could consider that part of your bankroll already now - if you have $100 on one site and $300 on another site you could consider $400 your poker bankroll. There is nothing wrong with saying that you have $300 in your bankroll and on that basis deciding to play 10nl, even if not all of your bankroll is on that site yet.

However, any site that you play on needs enough bankroll locally to let you survive the natural variance - if you can only buy in 5 times before hitting zero 0n that site you'd need to play lower until the bulk of your bankroll arrives. It's just really common sense.

There's an age old suggestion that proper Bankroll Management begins at 20 buyins - $200 for 10nl for instance - there are good points made for escalating to 40 or 50 buyins for a level before moving too far up. At the lowest level where you could go broke and just redeposit you can be a little more cavalier with bankroll, but you should only do that if you think you have the discipline to practice proper bankroll management as your roll increases - and there's nothing wrong with acquiring solid habits at lower stakes.

PokerStars bonuses are not great for microstakes players. To get a FPP (frequent player point), which you need to clear your bonuses) the rake from the pot needs to be a minimum of $0.40 - and the rake consists of 5% of the pot. This means that the final pot in a hand needs to be $8 before you get even 1 FPP. If you play $0.01/$0.02 or $0.02/$0.05 you rarely get any FPPs. If you play $0.05/$0.10 you will sometimes get FPPs, but it'll almost be too slow to clear any bonuses. Only really at $0.10/$0.25 do you start getting FPPs at a decent pace. In 3-4k hands in my database yesterday I noticed that at 25nl I got an FPP every 8.4 hands on average. I don't have my database with me now and I don't recall the rate for 10nl. I'd expect it to be around 20-25 hands per FPP. You need something like 500 FPP to clear the initial $50 bonus, which translates into 10-13k hands at 10nl and 4-4.5k hands at 25nl.

The pattern will repeat on other sites - it's never really worthwhile to change play stayle to clear a bonus - it will always be most important to play a profitable style of poker and have the bonuses be bonuses - something extra.