Re: Downswings.
 

hahaha welcome to HSNL. Awesome first post.

Re: Downswings.
 

I use pokertracker to find out if a downswing is due to bad luck or bad play.For example i take the stats from the whole of last year(800k hands) and look at how many BB/100 i made with my premium hands.Then i compare this to the month where i am running badly.If i make much less BB/100 with those premium hands i think it is mostly due to bad luck.That is because i imagine that you play those premium hands the same most of the time,no matter how you run.

Re: Downswings.
 

coduresa from party 2k?? man blast from the past

Re: Downswings.
 

[ QUOTE ]
I use pokertracker to find out if a downswing is due to bad luck or bad play.For example i take the stats from the whole of last year(800k hands) and look at how many BB/100 i made with my premium hands.Then i compare this to the month where i am running badly.If i make much less BB/100 with those premium hands i think it is mostly due to bad luck.That is because i imagine that you play those premium hands the same most of the time,no matter how you run.

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If you miss value bets because youre scared of running bad or the like that would be a form of tilt= decrease winrate.

Re: Downswings.
 

There were some really good things said in this post, especially cero's. I really feel like very few players can fully wrap their heads around the implications of "variance", instead of just thinking of it as a reason for their downswing.

I also wanted to add that I've only been playing NL cash seriously for about 14 months, but in that timespan I've definitely seen the game change. A year ago, the nature of the game lent itself to smaller variance with some good game selection. Nowadays if you are playing high-stakes 6m, you are rarely at a table with less than 3 other "capable" cash game players. They may have leaks, but they still force you to be putting your chips in the pot much more frequently. The new tables create far more variance and thus, larger downswings. In fact, I think the games nowadays can also create some upswings that may not have been possible a year ago simply because the chips were not "flying" and thus their weren't as many opportunities to get stacks, regardless of your equity.

Re: Downswings.
 

Another thing people don't understand about variance is that it lets "anything" be possible... its just a matter of *how* possible. You are not stating anything by saying, "its possible for a great player to have a 30 BI downswing." That has no substance, because its possible for *anyone* to have a 200 BI downswing. Albeit, it may be *near* impossible for a good player to have a massive downswing and it may be waaaaay out on the distribution curve, but its probability of occuring is still >0%. A more appropriate thing to say would be, "10% of all great players have a 30 BI downswing over a stretch of 100k hands." It's the "% chance of occuring" for a particular sized downswing that has meaning.

Re: Downswings.
 

Hey Lefort,

Lots of good points. Along the lines of what you were saying about variance making larger upswings and downswings more likely, I think people who run very good before they run very bad are conditioned to think of the running good period as closer to "normal" than the running bad period. This can be a dangerous trap if you expect things to eventually revert to a place you consider normal, but which is actually an unlikely hot streak.

Re: Downswings.
 

Yeah I totally agree. And to make matters worse, I think a very large portion of the player pool started out their poker careers running hot. Because otherwise, they would have busto'd a few times and quit before they "blossomed" into real players. I think this concept has been discussed before... kind of like a "survival of the luckiest" until people develop the knowledge/skills necessary to stay in the game, then from there we all get "normal" luck.

Re: Downswings.
 

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Yeah I totally agree. And to make matters worse, I think a very large portion of the player pool started out their poker careers running hot. Because otherwise, they would have busto'd a few times and quit before they "blossomed" into real players. I think this concept has been discussed before... kind of like a "survival of the luckiest" until people develop the knowledge/skills necessary to stay in the game, then from there we all get "normal" luck.

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QFT.

Re: Downswings.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah I totally agree. And to make matters worse, I think a very large portion of the player pool started out their poker careers running hot. Because otherwise, they would have busto'd a few times and quit before they "blossomed" into real players. I think this concept has been discussed before... kind of like a "survival of the luckiest" until people develop the knowledge/skills necessary to stay in the game, then from there we all get "normal" luck.

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QFT.

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