Variance and dreading the eventual downswing - Page 2

lawloser · #11 07-30-2006, 02:19 AM

I can't stay on this heater forever. My normal winrate is over 250,000 hands. I don't think that I got so much better that I doubled in a month. Eventually I will lose a 200BB pot when getting it all in preflop with A-A. In July, I can only remember 6 or 7 bad beats for my stack and cold decked maybe 5 times.... My hands can't just keep holding up... mathmatically speaking, it's impossible. Am I being a moron about this? Could someone explain it to me?

yvesaint · #12 07-30-2006, 02:22 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I can't stay on this heater forever. My normal winrate is over 250,000 hands. I don't think that I got so much better that I doubled in a month. Eventually I will lose a 200BB pot when getting it all in preflop with A-A. In July, I can only remember 6 or 7 bad beats for my stack and cold decked maybe 5 times.... My hands can't just keep holding up... mathmatically speaking, it's impossible. Am I being a moron about this? Could someone explain it to me?

[/ QUOTE ]

i just flipped a coin 10 times in a row. EACH TIME IT CAME UP HEADS!!! the next time MUST be tails right, cos that coin is due!!

krishan · #13 07-30-2006, 02:38 AM

yves you are pure gold.

Krishan

destroBU · #14 07-30-2006, 02:41 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Am I being a moron about this? Could someone explain it to me?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. It's already been explained. Don't worry about how hot or cold you're running, and don't bother predicting hot or cold runs, because you can't. Just play your best game and let the variance take you where it may.

FeltBelt · #15 07-30-2006, 02:44 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I can't stay on this heater forever. My normal winrate is over 250,000 hands. I don't think that I got so much better that I doubled in a month. Eventually I will lose a 200BB pot when getting it all in preflop with A-A. In July, I can only remember 6 or 7 bad beats for my stack and cold decked maybe 5 times.... My hands can't just keep holding up... mathmatically speaking, it's impossible. Am I being a moron about this? Could someone explain it to me?

[/ QUOTE ]

i just flipped a coin 10 times in a row. EACH TIME IT CAME UP HEADS!!! the next time MUST be tails right, cos that coin is due!!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are being unnecessarily (and insultingly) facetious and condescending here. The poster is obviously not an idiot who believes that simply because he has been on an upswing a downswing is now more likely than before. You're pretending that's what he is saying so as to make snide comments and make yourself feel smarter, but that's not what he's asking.

What the OP is saying, I believe, is roughly this: if you look at the graph of a winning player who has a solid idea of his true winrate, there will be periods of very high and very low variance, along with the regular dips and upswings one would expect to see in such a graph. The poster believes his true winrate to be about 4, yet he has recently been running at about 8 for a long period. If his winrate ends up staying at 4 over the life of his poker career, he will invariably have to lose money to bring his winrate into line. This may come quickly, and it may come slowly, but if 4 is his true winrate, if he plays long enough it WILL happen.

Thus, the OP is a little gunshy right now because he knows that unless his true winrate (as correlated with his skill) has become 8, there will be some losing in his future if he plays long enough and his winrate ultimately stays at 4. He'll be riding some dips if he keeps playing long enough, and they may be precipitious.

These are perfectly natural emotions and we all feel them from time to time. Heaters do not last forever, and the gambler's fallacy has nothing to do with the OP's perception (likely accurate) that he has been on a heater and his true winrate is not reflected in his recent results.

Note further that it is precisely the same phenomenon, but in reverse, that allows a solid, winning player to look at a downswing and know that his true winrate is X/100, that he WILL recover if he plays long enough, and thus that this too shall pass. We nod our heads sagely at the winning player when he understands this, and we believe he has thought correctly about his recent negative variance. Yet when someone comments on their positive variance in exactly the same way, yet instead of optimism about the future (based on an accurate conception of their own winrate) they expression some (well-founded) trepidation, posters like you ridicule them. It's YOU who is not thinking correctly about this issue, and though the OP could have expressed it more clearly, he's certainly not falling victim to the gambler's fallacy.

In short, stop being a one-liner douche and try to understand what people are saying, instead of imputing a meaning to their posts that allows you to insult them.

yvesaint · #16 07-30-2006, 02:54 AM

feltbelt,

[ QUOTE ]
I think the start of my downswing occured.

[/ QUOTE ]

how is this not an example of clear cut example of gamblers fallacy? perhaps you should google the term as well

in short, im not being a "one-liner douche" to "make [myself] feel smarter". you take my albeit blunt criticism and turn it into "facetious and condescending" insults when in fact they are the complete opposite.

you want something condescending? you take everything everyone says on this forum at face value, and retaliate in the most complicated and unecessary way. you constantly post garbage that happens to be camaflouged by long-winded posts and get into hissy fits when one person points out your error. this only gets exponentially worse when other people refute your arguments, and you get more and more defensive

FeltBelt · #17 07-30-2006, 03:00 AM

I think I have a good grasp of the gambler's fallacy. No need for me to Google it, as you so charmingly suggested to the OP.

So now when you get called out for being an a-hole, you come back by insulting me (irrelevant) and pretending your comments were all along just your attempt to help this poor fellow, and that you didn't mean to make him look stupid. What a joke.

destroBU · #18 07-30-2006, 03:14 AM

He says "o no downswing is startiNG!" but that's garbage. Tomorrow he could wake up and go on the heater of a lifetime. He's expecting future events based on past results. We're not even talking about longterm future, he's talking about like tomorrow, and altering his play because of it! That's called gambler's fallacy, although not quite as bad as betting your life savings on black being "due." Also, you can't expect any given winrate, because your winrate changes drastically based on a variety of factors, like: competition, focus, emotional stability, and how much you're evolving/devolving as a player.

Yves may seem harsh, but he's right. If you can't handle the abuse you get from him how are you going to handle the abuse you take playing poker?

(yes I adapted that from glengarry glen ross)

lawloser · #19 07-30-2006, 04:10 AM

Wow... everyone needs to calm down. I made a simple statement and YVES made a snide remark rather than explaining it to me. Some people are just like that, it's not a big deal. FeltBelt kind of nailed what I'm feeling. I know I'm not a 8.4 ptBB/100 winner (I pray so, but that is being overly optomistic). I have a grasp of what my true winrate is and eventually it will even out. Am I wrong in this assumption Yves? Additonally, I took a few beats for big pots at the start of my session. As a result, I stopped playing for the day. I didn't alter my play because I thought I was due for a bad run... I had a bad start and I stopped. While gambler's fallacy is a concept that is new to me, it is not what I'm talking about. Yves used the example of flipping a coin ten times and it's heads 10 times in a row. That makes no sense and is idiotic. If we flipped it 1,000,000,000,000 times it would come close to being 50-50 and I would wager any amount of money on that. It will even itself out in the long run, just like a true winrate will even itself out in the longrun (assuming no unknown variables).

I thank you FeltBelt for defending me, but believe me when I say that I don't feel stupid. I am highly educated and instead of reading up on "gambler's fallacy" like Yves did, I was studying for classes; even though it has nothing to do with what I was discussing. His remarks don't really bother me, but rather indicate an individual with a low self-esteem who likes to berate people on forums to make himself feel a little better. If I'm wrong on my assumption about Yves then I'm sorry, but maybe you should help those who don't understand a concept instead of making offhanded remarks. Isn't that what this forum is for anyway. And next time, please try to know what your talking about instead of coming to a faulty conclusion. Thanks.

Pompey · #20 07-30-2006, 07:08 AM

Hey lawloser i have a solution

I play on Prima 200nl to and have just gone 25K hands at 0.05ptBB/100 and I def feel I'm due some good fortune.

So here's my plan if you send me say $6K we can both solve our variance 'problems' and get back to playing at our normal winrates - with no downswing required. Whatdya say? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]