Party Poker, 50NL, and the state of things

[tarheeljks]

i don't think ama is saying that large downswings are impossible. he just wants people to man up when they occur and stop chalking them up to variance and start entertaining the possibility that it may be the result of leaks and poor play.
obviously part of not hitting downswings is running well, but the more important part is playing well. if you keep getting busted by sets on rag boards when you hold QQ+, then people may be catching on that you can't lay down big pairs. plug your leak and you will find that people don't set mine against you.

if it is "so easy" to hit a 10 bi downswing (much less 17 bi), why is conventional wisdom to set your bank roll at as low as 20 bi's? in the "mathematical sense" if you are getting your money in in +ev spots, even if they are spots in which you are a marginal favorite it is unlikely that you will lose 10 consecutive bi's. obv this is subject to playing style, but i don't see many lags around the ssnl forums, so no one should be crying about variance.

[Triggerle]

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if it is "so easy" to hit a 10 bi downswing (much less 17 bi), why is conventional wisdom to set your bank roll at as low as 20 bi's?

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Why would one need more than 10 if it wasn't?

[tarheeljks]

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if it is "so easy" to hit a 10 bi downswing (much less 17 bi), why is conventional wisdom to set your bank roll at as low as 20 bi's?

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Why would one need more than 10 if it wasn't?

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it (your bankroll) is a buffer to protect against poor play as well as when you run bad. i'll agree that it is easy to lose 10 bi's. . . when you are playing poorly. when you hit a downswing it is more likely that you have made a mistake than it is that you have run poorly (throughout the entire downswing).

[kazana]

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if it is "so easy" to hit a 10 bi downswing (much less 17 bi), why is conventional wisdom to set your bank roll at as low as 20 bi's?

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Why would one need more than 10 if it wasn't?

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Furthermore, the 20bi roll is only good enough if you're willing to move down when things go bad. That's the whole idea of it, otherwise you'd probably need something in the range of 40bi, maybe even more.

I disagree with ama in one point: Pure downswings of 15bi and more are absolutely possible. I know that, because I've been there. And yes, I have investigated every single big pot I have been involved in during and after that stretch (-28bi total over 3 levels and some 10-12k hands). As someone else said before, the main culprits were those 60/40s, 80/20s and 50/50s that didn't hold up as often as one would expect over a long stretch. Add in an unlucky run with KK/QQ running into better hands, and you can end up in trouble easily.
Sure, bad play was involved, too, but in my case that accounted for around 6 or 7 buyins out of the 28. Still leaves a net of 20+.

Having said all that, one should not automatically think downswings occur b/c of variance. Those are the times where you need to dissect your games and get full value out of pokertracker to figure out if, and what you were doing wrong.

[Triggerle]

I'm not disagreeing with the part about analysing your play. You should in fact do this after every session, not just in a downswing. What I'm objecting to is this line of thought:

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Trig, you have massive holes in your game and you were probably never a good player. Nobody who is a winning player below NL25 should ever, ever be going on a 17bi ds and I don't give a [censored] if you have some fancy mathematical model to prove its possible.

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I contend that the thinking behind a statement like this is a more sophisticated version of "hey, I don't care about your fancy odds talk. I won the hand, right?"

[Gelford]

I have lost 40 flips in a row ... most of them in my favor ... while playing sngs.


[censored] just does happen.

[ama0330]

Hey everyone,

I'm glad that my post generated so much debate. I tend to be ccaustic and opinionated (particularly, yet not exclusively, online) and though I do feel like I am a bit of a bitch at times, I like to think that I get peoples minds ticking over. So I'll respond to a few things first...

Chomp

There are so many contradictory explanations of your downswing. Actually, there are 3:

a. Bad play
b. Bad luck
c. "Sometimes you have to lose"

None of these are even remotely contradictory and all of them are extremely relevant. Of my 10bi, I estimated that 5ish were bad play. How is this either contradictory or irrelevant? What I am saying is that literally half my downswing was bad play. i don't understand what you are trying to say when you say...

So which is it? You seem all over the place on this.

...its all three. My point is that my ds was twice as bad as it should have been due to bad play, and that I was deluding myself into writing it all off as variance.

If it is all three, then I think your downswing is exactly the same as recent downswings by Trig or me.

...exaclty. In other words, caused 50% or more by bad play. Which means that there is a huge amount of improvement to be made by all three of us.

In fact, it would be a bit ironic if your post was essentially the same as other DS-moaning posts, but the above quotes seem to suggest it might be mate!

You've lost me here because that was not even remotely related to the point of my original post, which was not a "ds moaning post". It was "ensure that at all times you are commmitted to improvement in your game and do not ever take anything for granted. Question every play and accept that if you lost a buyin that there is an excellent chance that poor play was a contributing factor". You should start with the burden of proof on your side - i.e. "you played it bad until proven otherwise". Thats the point of my post. I'm suprised that you thought my post was a ds whine?

But the small technical errors you mention like incorrect bet sizing or too little aggression explain a bad winrate, but they do not explain a 17BI DS. Surely you can agree with that?

No, I don't. I believe that these errors are more important than people realise, and that's another point I'm trying to make. There was an excellent post made by grunch a while back called "Difficult decisions, bad designs" which you can find here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...Number=6454057

It basically encourages people to avoid difficult decisions on later streets by making decisions on earlier streets which will set up the hand in such a way that you know at all times what your plan is and where you stand. I suggest that the reason so many people end up in such high variance and marginal situations is that they do not consider, as I suggested in my OP, the bigger picture. Table dynamics, opponent tendencies, etc etc.

I play a low variance style of poker. I will only play high variance poker when I deem it to be necessary, and the only place where high variance becomes necessary is at 200nl and above where your opponents become less and less exploitable and accordingly, your edge decreases dramatically. It becomes necessary to exploit even the smallest opportunity that your opponent gives you in order to turn a profit.

This kind of play is just not necessary at 50nl and below. People playing 25/20 and raising flop cbets and crai turn agasint a calling station are, in my opinion, taking unnecessary and avoidable risks which I deem to be, at best 0EV. Players at this level are too unpredictable to say with any certainty that raising a flop cbet is anything other than unecessary. Naturally there are times for this, but only as part of a wider, more thought out strategy against one particular player. I believe that "well he is 20/15/3, so this is a cbet a lot of the time, and tho I have no reads and no history, I checkraise" is poor play.

Back to your 10BI downswing. Firstly, good job admitting it because lots of people don't. But here's the thing...how do you know it won't turn into a 17BI's DS?

I believe that my skill is sufficient that even with bad beats all over the place, I am good enough to run breakeven. What you neglect in your analysis is that although we lose a lot of pots in a downswing, we dont stop winning them either. In my lifetime I've lost thousands of bi, but I've won bi too which means that I havent had a 1,000bi downswing. I know you know this, but the point is that a 17bi ds is so serious not because its 17bi but because you didn't win any in that time. Some losses are unavoidable, but what you will find is that most losses are.

That's a very thin line....is there really that big a difference between a 10 and 17 BI downswing?

Sorry, but yes. There is a colossal difference between the two. You can't just trifle away 7bi. And you're really shooting yourself in the foot here....

You get 2 quick AA-KK situations tomorrow morning, tilt 2 more away after that and boom!

This is my WHOLE POINT. You say "tilt 2 bi away" like its just standard or something. 2bi is a LOT of EV to be throwing down the drain. Can't you see that this is exactly what I'm saying? Downswings dont have a mind of their own if you are just tilting 2bi away without thinking about it. This is the whole reason for my post. If you are tilting 2bi away then you have room for improvement and you need to read my OP.

Nobody who is a winning player below NL25 should ever, ever be going on a 17bi ds
...I think you are on very thin ice there.

I don't. I just don't. The reason is that the downward force of bad variance is constantly being battled against by the positive force of our massive edge. Thats the reason that downswings at higher levels are so understandable (and so devastating), because this upward force is so much less, because the edge is so much smaller. There is a fantastic post that I am so pissed that I can't find. It basically goes through the math of losing a buyin to tilt or bad play and how long it takes to make that buyin back, assuming a certain winrate. The point of the post is that it takes a LOT of time to make it back and losing a bi to bad play is a serious hinderance which should be avoided at all costs.

If you just go "durr raise 18% preflop" and do not consider how this fits into your game as a whole... well [censored] yeah, youre gonna lose a LOT of money.

Ama, you think that people trying to improve their game here read that durrr raises 18% of hands and then do that too?

You mis-understood me, I wasn't talking about Durrr, I was just saying "duh". As in, "I raise 18% of my hands without understanding why. Derrrr" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

So instead of saying "wow I'm leaving Party the games are so tough
I can't see anyone saying this. My last post on this matter merely said the players at PP aren't so bad that the lack of RB makes it overwhlemingly worthwhile playing there. It is probably a marginal call one way or the other.

Thats fine. I wanted to quash the assumption that Party was something other than ludicrously profitable.

Please tell me you are not suggesting wilfully giving up an edge the size of 1ptbb/100+? Isn't wr + rb > wr alone? If yes, then it is utter nonsense to decray people saying they won't go without RB. And of course the pursuit of a better wr need not preclude the pursuit of better rb...the 2 can go together.

Again, I'm not saying that at all. Im saying that you should be making enough money where RB should be a nice bonus and not the be all and end all. I'm saying that if having rb or not makes the difference between playing the site or not, even if your edge is so much huger, then maybe that's something you should look at, because it seems to me like what that implies is that you see a great deal of your profit coming from RB.

I'm not trying to debate the necessity or utility of RB in any way.


Anyway I'm at work, more later.

[matrix]

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I'm not trying to debate the necessity or utility of RB in any way.

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I'm just going to chime in here to mention that for Party Poker, Party does not provide Rakeback and Party does not permit Rakeback via any 3rd party affiliate.

The closest thing to Rakeback that you can get now is via the new Party points system. For info and discussion on that check out the Internet Bonuses forum or the Rakeback forums.

If this thread does turn into a discussion about Party Rakeback it will get locked/edited as required.

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People on party have it so easyyyyy. It's way easier than any other site on the net so if you're losing at party you need to get a coach or quit. Secondly, it's [censored] HARD to find leaks by yourself. You need to have a coach/friend that is actually good go over your game and watch you play because you won't be objective about your game.

Everyone should have a coach at $50NL+ and make sure they are qualified

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I don't think Party is "waayyyy easier" than any other site around. I thnk that much of the people who say stuff like that are US residents who have a severe case of "grass is greener" syndrome.

50NL at Party is very soft and very beatable, tho I think that the same can be said of 50NL at any of the big sites.

Also yes it's [censored] hard to find leaks yourself - that is the whole reason that we all post here on these forums.

To share our leaks and get other more objective peoples feedback on how we play and how we should play. You certainly don't need to hire a coach. Read the forums, ask advice from players who's opinions are respected, talk about hands on AIM or similar with quality posters, dl vids from people you like watch and ask questions about them, join Cardrunners etc and you ought to be able to build a solid basic fundamental TAG poker game that will let you beat uNL stakes for a decent clip.

[Shizzle12345]

i just got out of a downswing, believe me 15 buyins is possible. Your gonna get one some day.

[sputum]

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I have lost 40 flips in a row ... most of them in my favor ... while playing sngs.


[censored] just does happen.

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Do you know what the odds of losing 40 coinflips in a row are?
I think Ama is saying... if you can't beat NL50 it's not because your opponents are too tough [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
Table selection doesn't hurt though