Brian Townsend's Downswing (for all the Brian Townsend haters)

[holdme]

who's brian townsend?

[Daddy Warbucks]

[ QUOTE ]
Steel Pots,

If Taylor Caby is so open about telling the truth, then why is he so secretive about details of the membership fair?

Maybe think about that for a while before believing everything he writes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cross forum jokes.....vnh Diablo!

[ArmenH]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, so aba is down big, apparently whitelime is down big and taking a break from poker according to his blog, so his is gaining from all this? Is it lars luzak, phil ivey? Who is the top of the hill in NLHE?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's sick to say but its mostly shot takers that seem to be taking huge chunks out of Brians bankroll...Players like, Mr Taan, Steven001, Shahin84, Lars and myself [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].....

Full Tilt Poker Game #3212072141: Table Bennett (6 max) - $200/$400 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:39:56 ET - 2007/08/10
AAROCKAA posts the big blind of $400
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to AAROCKAA [As Ad]
sbrugby has 15 seconds left to act
sbrugby raises to $1,000
AAROCKAA has 15 seconds left to act
AAROCKAA raises to $3,409
sbrugby folds
Uncalled bet of $2,409 returned to AAROCKAA
AAROCKAA mucks
AAROCKAA wins the pot ($2,000)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $2,000 | Rake $0
Seat 3: AAROCKAA (big blind) collected ($2,000), mucked
Seat 6: sbrugby (small blind) folded before the Flop

[SGspecial]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Okay, so aba is down big, apparently whitelime is down big and taking a break from poker according to his blog, so his is gaining from all this? Is it lars luzak, phil ivey? Who is the top of the hill in NLHE?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's sick to say but its mostly shot takers that seem to be taking huge chunks out of Brians bankroll...Players like, Mr Taan, Steven001, Shahin84, Lars and myself [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].....

Full Tilt Poker Game #3212072141: Table Bennett (6 max) - $200/$400 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:39:56 ET - 2007/08/10
AAROCKAA posts the big blind of $400
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to AAROCKAA [As Ad]
sbrugby has 15 seconds left to act
sbrugby raises to $1,000
AAROCKAA has 15 seconds left to act
AAROCKAA raises to $3,409
sbrugby folds
Uncalled bet of $2,409 returned to AAROCKAA
AAROCKAA mucks
AAROCKAA wins the pot ($2,000)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $2,000 | Rake $0
Seat 3: AAROCKAA (big blind) collected ($2,000), mucked
Seat 6: sbrugby (small blind) folded before the Flop

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, that put a big dent in his BR...

[wiggs73]

Armen,

Damn, sick $1,000 profit there.

[Sofisdad]

He's the most studied player on the interweb for the last year. Every big hand he's played is posted and discussed. The moves he makes, his styles of play against other styles, everything in his game is taken apart to see how it works and what has made him so good for so long. Poker players are smart and have adapted to him. He's still good enough to win his fair share of big pots but the days of running over all his opponents are gone. It feels like a magician that lets everyone stand behind him on stage to see how all the tricks are performed.

[Vega33]

[ QUOTE ]
Armen,

Damn, sick $1,000 profit there.

[/ QUOTE ]

He could make a vow of faith to Pastor Bob Tilton with that kind of cash.

[prohornblower]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I get the strong feeling there aren't too many experienced traders on these boards. Definitely not traders of my vintage.

Surviving as a trader/gambler through extreme variance without going broke is something that can only be learned from experience.

It's entirely possible for talented traders/gamblers to shoot the moon early in their careers. Normal distributions say it's possible and it does happen. However, shooting the moon doesn't mean you have the ability to survive extreme fluctuations in bankroll. More specifically, it doesn't give you the experience and tools to spot oncoming extreme fluctuations in bankroll.

Ideally, you want to avoid putting on (two-sided) risk outside of your ability to understand its origins, and most importantly your ability to anticipate and control an outsized random component.

This is what has just happenned in the mortgage-backed credit-markets. The sub-prime mess, as it's called. The players running the hedge funds that are all going to go busto shortly were not at all stupid, and they were not inexperienced either (at least at lower levels of risk, and/or in other games). However, in terms of outlier experiences, they had little or no experience. By all playing the same game, even as many other players distanced themselves from it, effectively they boxed themselves in into an illiquidity trap that sprang when even moderate negative events occurred for their models. Bottom line, when it became imperative to offload risk or die, there was no one to buy it.

The above obviously is not a direct analogy to poker.

However, all gamblers who experience a tremendous upswing without ever having experienced the game itself go suddenly ferociously wrong, tend to trap themselves in the same fashion. They gradually "modify" (semi-consciously misinterpret) events so that the world conforms nicely to their attribution of success primarily to their own ability or patterns they have perfected.

This is what I refer to as the first rule of professional gambling: never mistake what you think should be happenning with what is actually happenning.

How could the game go wrong for Townsend in a sudden ferocious manner ? I don't really know. I don't play poker at that level, at those stakes, against those players. I'll throw out a guess: within increased visibility comes increased scrutinization and his opponents are onto many patterns in his play.

But knowing why the game might change is not nearly as important as recognizing that it is in the midst of changing and you need to get out and re-invent yourself before playing again. (Get out for practical purposes, not get totally out.)

9-12 months ago it's entirely reasonable to think that some of these highly-levered mortgage-backed hedge fund guys could have recognized that the game was changing, and they could have unwound their positions and moved on to something else. But I'll bet 99% of them didn't. They were making too much money, they were superstars, everyone loved them, they were smarter than everyone else, etc., etc. In short, they had long ago stopped asking themselves the question "Is this a game I want to play?" because they had in many ways become the game.

I see some of this in Townsend's blog. He seems to be veering into thought territory where the game must always conform to him (e.g. he can always figure out the leaks in his game, concentrate better, ride through variance, study his opponents more and figure them out, etc). If he had gone busto from on high before, he would instead be looking at the variance (downside AND upside) that he is experiencing this year and be seriously asking himself if he should just get out of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]


Geez, I think we might have found the most intelligent post on this forum ever.

[/ QUOTE ]

Damn, I wish I could read this, but this genius doesn't know how to use the Tab key. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[FatRed]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


[ QUOTE ]

Live 1/2NL plays like 10/20NL online.


[/ QUOTE ]


I hope you're kidding. You've got it exactly backwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wish I even understood what the original comment-er was trying to suggest here. Am I supposed to believe that the players in a live 1/2 game are of the same skill as 10/20 online? If so, I disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]

You and the guy you quoted were leveled hard and too stupid to know it.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFMFT

[stephenNUTS]

[ QUOTE ]
I get the strong feeling there aren't too many experienced traders on these boards. Definitely not traders of my vintage.

Surviving as a trader/gambler through extreme variance without going broke is something that can only be learned from experience.

It's entirely possible for talented traders/gamblers to shoot the moon early in their careers. Normal distributions say it's possible and it does happen. However, shooting the moon doesn't mean you have the ability to survive extreme fluctuations in bankroll. More specifically, it doesn't give you the experience and tools to spot oncoming extreme fluctuations in bankroll.

Ideally, you want to avoid putting on (two-sided) risk outside of your ability to understand its origins, and most importantly your ability to anticipate and control an outsized random component.

This is what has just happenned in the mortgage-backed credit-markets. The sub-prime mess, as it's called. The players running the hedge funds that are all going to go busto shortly were not at all stupid, and they were not inexperienced either (at least at lower levels of risk, and/or in other games). However, in terms of outlier experiences, they had little or no experience. By all playing the same game, even as many other players distanced themselves from it, effectively they boxed themselves in into an illiquidity trap that sprang when even moderate negative events occurred for their models. Bottom line, when it became imperative to offload risk or die, there was no one to buy it.

The above obviously is not a direct analogy to poker.

However, all gamblers who experience a tremendous upswing without ever having experienced the game itself go suddenly ferociously wrong, tend to trap themselves in the same fashion. They gradually "modify" (semi-consciously misinterpret) events so that the world conforms nicely to their attribution of success primarily to their own ability or patterns they have perfected.

This is what I refer to as the first rule of professional gambling: never mistake what you think should be happenning with what is actually happenning.

How could the game go wrong for Townsend in a sudden ferocious manner ? I don't really know. I don't play poker at that level, at those stakes, against those players. I'll throw out a guess: within increased visibility comes increased scrutinization and his opponents are onto many patterns in his play.

But knowing why the game might change is not nearly as important as recognizing that it is in the midst of changing and you need to get out and re-invent yourself before playing again. (Get out for practical purposes, not get totally out.)

9-12 months ago it's entirely reasonable to think that some of these highly-levered mortgage-backed hedge fund guys could have recognized that the game was changing, and they could have unwound their positions and moved on to something else. But I'll bet 99% of them didn't. They were making too much money, they were superstars, everyone loved them, they were smarter than everyone else, etc., etc. In short, they had long ago stopped asking themselves the question "Is this a game I want to play?" because they had in many ways become the game.

I see some of this in Townsend's blog. He seems to be veering into thought territory where the game must always conform to him (e.g. he can always figure out the leaks in his game, concentrate better, ride through variance, study his opponents more and figure them out, etc). If he had gone busto from on high before, he would instead be looking at the variance (downside AND upside) that he is experiencing this year and be seriously asking himself if he should just get out of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hello Busto,
I traded on the Street for almost 20 years,after retiring a couple of years ago.

Your post was intriguing and spot on in many ways,but what may I ask is your definition of a "Vintage" trader and the comparison to Brian Townsends recent downswing?
I am assuming an example would be the daytrading frenzied dopes that made millions pre-2000,and went complete BUSTO afterwards,chasing the Nasdaq collapse afterwards?

~stephen feraca [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]