With 888LIVE Manchester and UKPL Leeds behind me, both without any meaningful success, it’s back to the online poker tables for a few weeks before heading to the next stop in Reading. Unfortunately, my recent online play has been even worse than my live poker performance. I’ve got a few weeks to turn things around, or at least stop the bleeding, but when you’re streaming poker, that’s easier said than done.
I’ve talked before about how my life revolves around poker, leaving me with little energy to study and improve my game. But the reality is that you can’t expect to win in competitive online games without topping up your knowledge from time to time. It feels like a choice between potential burnout or a chance to perform better at the tables. As a streamer, though, it’s rarely that simple.
Explaining My Decisions… to My Opponents
I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to stream poker for a living, but it’s created my biggest mental barrier to improvement. Playing in the same pool of players consistently can be beneficial for the better players, who gather stats and use their opponents’ tendencies to exploit them. I also take advantage of these statistics when I can, but the real problem is the information I’m giving away.
On my stream, I do my best to explain my thought process during each hand, giving the reasoning for my decisions when I can. When I was grinding through the 10NL Challenge, this wasn’t much of an issue. Players were less likely to exploit the information, or they simply wouldn’t know what to do with it if they had it.
However, moving up to 100NL means playing against regulars who are much better at exploiting this information. I know for a fact that many of these players watch my stream, where I explain why I tend to overfold in certain situations or underbluff in others. I’m sure that this is affecting how they play against me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s cost me a few buy-ins along the way.
The Inner Struggle
What has likely cost me more is the mental battle I face in these situations. Instead of being able to focus on my thought process and make a calm decision, I spend the first 10 seconds of my time bank wondering what hands my opponents have seen me play that are similar to the one I’m currently in, and how that should affect my decision. I also have to consider the consequences for future hands—if I fold a river that I theoretically shouldn’t, will they target me in the same spot next time because they know I’ll under-defend?
Whether or not this is true doesn’t matter—it’s the feeling of second-guessing that’s the problem. These players can look at all my previous sessions if they want to, and many are good enough to use that against me. I know I would do the same, and simply knowing that causes me to second-guess every spot I’m in, which is a horrible state of mind when I’m playing for meaningful amounts of money.
A Problem I’m Lucky to Have
On top of that, I deal with what I affectionately call “bumhunters”—players who aren’t regulars but want to play against me just to see me in pain. Just this week, I faced a player I’d never seen before who overbet every time I checked to them. My adjustment was to trap with every hand I had, but both times I called down, they showed the nuts. At the end of my stream, they popped into chat to thank me for “paying for their kebab.”
I’m not sure there’s a perfect solution to this problem, but I try to console myself with the fact that playing and streaming poker for a living is the only reason I have this issue in the first place. What I do know is that if finding the time to study and work on my mentality gives me even the slightest chance of avoiding paying for that guy’s kebab again, then I’m going to do it.
