MONSTER variance (w/ graphs)

[Trix]

Everyone is going to experience more variance now than back when a good winrate was like 2 and and great was 3+, pretty obvious I guess though.

Dont think I ever dropped more than 200ish bb, but didn´t play more than 150-200K hands and didn´t play much in game where I didn´t think my edge was 2+. Dont really have the mentallity for huge swings. There used to be some calculater where you could put in your bb/100 and see what kind of max downswings you could expect with x certaincy.
Playing around with that might be intersting for you.

Honestly, if 0.5/100 is a good winrate at 100/200, isn´t easier to make 1 at 50/100 or 1.4 at 30/60 etc and have alot smaller swings?

Btw. Every time I´ve had an extended bad run and gone back and looked through hands, I´ve come to the conclusion that I wasn´t playing optimally.

"Running" bad is like the best learning experience you can get in poker, the situations are much tougher and you have to stay focused mentally. Think it´s where alot of the value is made, if you can play better than your opponents in the same situation and keep cool.

Honestly, I have no idea if you have played optimally through this, most people can´t, but think everyone who is playing with smaller edges is going to experience bigger swings.

gl.

[Victor]

"Dont think I ever dropped more than 200ish bb,"

"but didn´t play more than 150-200K"

"Every time I´ve had an extended bad run"

youve never had a bad run, let alone an extended bad run.

[daryn]

right victor, i'm convinced some people literally have NO IDEA THAT THEY HAVE LIVED THE CHARMED LIFE.

you don't know until they drop the hammer on you!

[AlexSem]

ggbman for president. best post of the year.

[James282]

Schneids - if you've never been through a swing like this, you really can't comment on what causes it. There is no way you intimately know peoples games well enough to make sweeping generalizations. Results in poker just give us an idea as to who is better. They don't prove anything. Lifetime swing size isn't really an indicator of anything...if you have never had a swing worse than 320 bb while playing 3-4 handed..and this isn't meant offensively because I think you are a very good player...but it's not indicative of anything but the gods smiling on you.

[daryn]

[ QUOTE ]
Schneids - if you've never been through a swing like this, you really can't comment on what causes it. There is no way you intimately know peoples games well enough to make sweeping generalizations. Results in poker just give us an idea as to who is better. They don't prove anything. Lifetime swing size isn't really an indicator of anything...if you have never had a swing worse than 320 bb while playing 3-4 handed..and this isn't meant offensively because I think you are a very good player...but it's not indicative of anything but the gods smiling on you.

[/ QUOTE ]

the problem is like i said he will really never know this until/if it happens

[ImsaKidd]

Hey Guys:

I dont play limit (3/6 sometimes when donking around), but I would be interested to see some pokerEV graphs. There is a thread in the software forum about it. BBV has a thread too.

Link: http://www.pokerevsoftware.com/program/beta.html

There is some talk about accuracy/inaccuracy of the program, so dont believe the #'s 100%, but if some of you guys could run it over 50k hands or w/e i would love to see it.

[stinkypete]

a couple things:

a) a 1000bb downswing is not uncommon at all playing shorthanded with a winrate of 0.5BB/100. and that's a reasonable winrate for a good to very good but not exceptional player in the stars 200/400.

b) not having 350bb+ downswings is likely an indication that you've ben lucky in that aspect. it's also likely that you're have an extremely high expectation if you've played a million or so hands without a 350bb downer. i havent run the numbers in a while, but it's not that unlikely for someone with a 2.5BB/100 winrate to play a million hands without a 350bb downer.

c) people don't understand how much winrate affects potential downswing size and frequency. an 0.5BB/100 winner will have waaay more and waaaay bigger downswings than a 1.5BB/100 winnr. the best players in a game don't really have big downswings. good to very good players will have big downswings, particularly if they're playing at the highest level they can beat.

d) the thinking that everyone will have these huge downswings unless they're extremely lucky is dumb. the thinking that there's some magic number of BBs that's a correct bankroll size is stupid (as most people have realized by now - but that wasn't the case a few years ago). bankroll requirements and downswings depend really heavily on winrate.

in summary, guys like schneids don't have big downswings because they almost always play with a huge edge. guys like doughnutz will have huge downswings because they play with a much smaller edge. none of this should be surprising.

[ragazzobello]

it's all one long session

[kahntrutahn]

[ QUOTE ]
Hey Guys:I would be interested to see some pokerEV graphs. There is a thread in the software forum about it. BBV has a thread too.

[/ QUOTE ]


Quote from program's author : "Limit players in particular will get less use out of these calcs."


This is of course, the high stakes limit forum...