Analyse That

   Having already come to some conclusions about my poker game choices, I thought I'd take a closer look at my results from the two types of game that have yielded the best results.
   Looking at single table tournaments (sitngos), I can see that the winning sessions are quite frequent, with many periods of successive wins. Where there are losing sessions, they usually occur singly, or occasionally in groups of two or three. Until recently, the biggest run of losses I had was eight in a row, but the next highest group was only four losses in a row. Then, in July/August, I had the following sequence: 5L, 1W, 8L, 1W, 8L. Fortunately, this is followed by three winning sessions in a row. It's starting to look like I hit a rough patch. Although it's early days, I seem to be returning to my usual W/L pattern in these games.
   In multi-table tournaments, listing the number of losing games between each tournament cash, the pattern looks like this: 1,4,2,WW,1,WW,7,16,3,6,WW,1,1,WW,2,1,(7). Where there is a comma, there is a single win and WW means two wins in a row. The number in brackets is my current string of losses. It should be noted that any cash is counted as a win, even if it is barely a money-back win. It seems to me that I am doing pretty well over-all, and there's no need to panic just yet. I've had a run of seven losses before; in fact my worst run amounted to sixteen losses in a row. I have no desire to break that particular record, and I think it's unlikely that I will. Patience is required.
   As if all that wasn't enough, I've also been looking at the notes that I sometimes make during games to see if I can detect any patterns. After trolling through these comments, I've come up with a list of my most frequent mistakes. Going from least frequent to most frequent, here they are:

**Calling all-in pre-flop with KQ or a weak Ace

**Trying to bluff a donkey

**Calling an all-in bet with top pair or less

**Playing marginal hands from early position

**Pushing all-in in the face of a raise or re-raise

**Calling an all-in bet post-flop when an obvious draw appears on the board.

   It seems to me that the best thing I can do to improve my game is to stop calling all-in bets, unless I have
         (a) the nuts or
         (b) a very good reason to believe that my opponent is bluffing.
   When you have a good hand it can be hard to believe that someone has drawn a better one. If you raise pre-flop with AK or QQ and someone re-raises or goes all-in, you just don't want to believe that they have AA or KK. When you finally hit top pair on the flop and get re-raised, you don't want to know about overpairs or trips. When you flop trips and your big bets get called until a third heart hits the board on the river, you don't want to give your opponent credit for his rivered flush. Nevertheless, it's something I'm going to have to learn to do. Discipline is required.
   As for playing marginal hands out of position, I do it far less often than other players. Even so, poker is a game of information, and you can't get much information from early position. I need to keep an eye on that bad habit.
   Finally, I need to keep reminding myself of the golden rule: YOU CAN'T BLUFF A DONKEY.