[AndyatSD]

Hi doughnutz,

TanShuiWen here. You own me and you know it (i.e., I think you are one of the better players on PStars). So now that we got that out of the way here are my two cents...

I don't think much of incomplete data sets (such as that datamine of the players I saw a few months back, which I compared my own results with it and found, at least for myself, it was grossly off) - but just by playing with you for many many hands I'd say you are for sure a solid winning player. You have at minimum a standard understanding of the game (more than what can be said about most people), and most importantly you know how the conventional type of players play (the typical TAG, typical LAG, etc) and accordingly apply a lot of pressure post flop on boards that would give said type of players a real headache given the circumstances, regardless of your two cards. For that reason, I think you are one of the toughest players to play against out of position (I'm sure you've noticed I've taken the check-call line against you much more than normal).

But it's also for that reason that I think your variance is huge. I think you bank a lot of your game on things like 'well 40% of your hands here would do good against this flop but 60% of your hands won't' so you try to shoove people off of hands when you both miss. I think it's not a stretch to imagine that while this will aggregrate and converge in the long run point, it's probably multiple times more likely that you run into a 'crazy swing' compared to the typical player.

You are also a better player than me because in the middle of this downswing you appeared to still be able to play at a near-A game level. I can't say the same about myself - I think I been playing pretty poor at stretches during this last two weeks [while we're on that note, anyone have any advice on major holes to plug for me? : )].

I think you already know what to do and you're posting primarily to just let it out of your system. As I said in my post - your results are not typical of conventional 2p2 style, so it's not likely the typical readers of this board will experience what you experience. Alerting them to the subject of variance won't do much good overall. On the other hand if you're just looking for validation that *you* are just experiencing variance - my vote is with you.

~andy