I can't beat the Party Poker $25 NL...Embarrassing, for sure...I don't know what is going wrong. I know you are supposed to have about 10,000 hand in PT to analyse, but I am down about $100 already after about 1500 hands, and I don't want to wait til 10,000 hands and be down like $300. Is there anything I can look for with that small a sample? I made about $600 playing $5 and $10 SNG's at pokerroom.com, so decided to try Party, but so far it has been a disaster. Any suggestions...

Brett

Look at how many times you've played anything but the top ten hands. Also, check and see what you're percentages of showdowns won is. If it's below 85 percent you're not folding enough.

I would check your VP$IP first. If yours is over 40% I would say that you need to tighten up and wait for better hands (especially against the PP players). Second check your Post Flop Aggression (without including Preflop aggression). If yours is 1.2 or under, I believe that you need to get more aggressive. Try playing less hands....and getting more aggressive with the hands that you do play. I know that sounds obvious, but it is not always done.

Microsoft Word to your mother, Ratbelly

Really a $100 downswing on $25 NL tables is nothing - if just a couple of big hands had gone the other way you would have been in profit.

The fact that you are worried about such a small downswing leads me to suspect that you are playing above your bankroll or out of your comfort zone.

If you don't want to drop back or go back to SnG's down then you need to concentrate, probably tighten up a bit and understand that this isn't an SnG. You don't have to push or call off your stack unless you are really happy about it.

I played 500 $5 SnG's before I started Ring -once I started dabbling in Ring it took me several months to consistently win (I was break even for ages).
The blinds remain tiny compared to the stack sizes and you ca always reload.

One way of adjusting temporarily might be to buy in for a shallower stack yourself, although that does have its own disadvantages. The problem is that you can't drop down any further at Party.

It's just a learning game - if you can beat the $5 and $10 SNG's you can beat the 10c/25 NL tables..you just need to nake a few adjustments

I just started playing NL recently and I am winning. Not setting any records or anything like that, but I am in the black finacially. What helped me was reading all the articles on NL holdem on this site and then I started reading the stuff in the reading list. This site along with with the No Limit section in Super System has helped me tremendously.

Sorry that was supposed to be a 6 not an 8.

even 65% is a bit high and I wouldn't fixate on it - what matters is winning the big pots - if I successfully manipulated the table so that the showdowns I lose have small pots (Ie I limited the escalation) but manage to build big pots for the ones I win, then i'd be more than happy with 50/50..

i think you have to get comfortable with the variance, you know when you misplay hands, if you are, work or it and recognize your need to improve...it could very easily been a small sample size of some bad luck.....