Strategic Retreat

Well, I crashed through my stoploss for 1/2 and, like a good little boy, I've moved down to NL100 to lick my wounds. After I make 10 buyins at this level, I'll try to move back up. It's pretty miserable to look back and see that at the beginning of the year, I was up $3,000, and that in the intervening time I've somehow managed to bleed it all back, then go on another hot streak and win another $2,000 and then lose that all back too.

Moving down sucks a fat smegma-encrusted dick for the following reasons:

1. My reward for stacking someone is only $100, half as much as it is at 1/2.
2. The standard preflop raise sizes and pot sizes are tiny compared to what I'm used to at 1/2, making me feel like I'm playing kiddy stakes.
3. Rakeback accumulates and bonus clears at half the rate it did at 1/2. (Incidentally, Full Tilt finally credited my account with the rest of my deposit bonus and I've started working on clearing it.) Additionally, Iron Man is twice as hard to clear every day.
4. Even if I run good, it's going to take for fucking ever to dig myself out of this hole with my upside potential cut in half and I feel like it's going to be a fucking eternity before I claw back up to the stakes where I feel I belong.

I don't know how different NL100 and 1/2 really are. I'm terrified that they aren't really that different at all and all of the things that I'm doing that caused me to lose at 1/2 will cause me to continue to lose at NL100. On the other hand, I'm also kind of terrified that they are different and that I'm only good enough to beat NL100 and I'm going to be stuck here taking unsuccessful shots for the rest of my pathetic poker career.

I've been feeling pretty lost when I've been trying to think about poker recently. I feel like I have all of the analytical tools and a solid framework within which to analyze situations, but somehow lack the experience or mental acuity to be able to make this analytical framework useful in practice. I know that if I can just examine villain's actions thus far and put him on a range of hands and figure my showdown and fold equity against his range and act to maximize my total expectation, I should win in the long run. But when I'm actually sitting at a table and I 3bet from the blinds and get flatted and cbet with missed overcards on a T84 flop and get flatted again, I have no idea what percent of villains range consists of 88, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ, J9, 97, 65, AT, A8, T8, 77, 66, 55, 44, etc. etc. etc. I don't know how many times he opens and flats a 3bet when he's holding these. Furthermore, I have no idea how often he folds any of these to a 2nd barrel or how often he shoves over with any of this when I fire more than half my stack on a blank turn.

Even when I'm sitting down after a session is over and looking at a hand and stoving ranges, I don't know how many hand combinations to include. And even when I eventually decide on some reasonable-seeming range, the equity result is totally nonobvious. I have no idea how I'm supposed to estimate these things with any degree of confidence in the 25 seconds I have at the table. I don't consider myself particularly bad at math, but I feel like I'm miles away from being able to do this. Is this something that comes with experience? Are some people just able to do it naturally? I have no idea how anyone does this, unless they're some sort of Phil Galfond-like savant. The seeming impossibility of doing this makes me think there must be some heuristic tricks or shortcuts to simplify this analysis, but what are they?

I feel like all good poker players are in on some sort of secret to which I'm not privy, and it might not even have anything to do with whatever arcane secrets Cole South uses to deduce villains ranges accurately and compute equities in his head. I wish I knew what good players know that I don't. I wish I knew even how to find out what they know and I don't.

I constantly hear stories about people who deposited $200 on PokerStars and ran it up to $20,000 in six months. Moving down right now is especially psychologically crushing because I feel like I was so close to achieving that sick dream. I went on a $3,000 tear right as I took a shot at 1/2 and I feel like I was on the cusp of achieving critical mass and going on a nuclear explosion for five figs and becoming the next rags-to-riches Poker Idol hero all-star. But I just can't seem to put it together - I just don't seem to have whatever it is those amazing players have. Hope I can find it at NL100!!! Fuck this whore earth.