Analysis of A Seven Card Stud Downswing!

[Al Mirpuri]

I have just lost $273 playing $1/$2 7stud at Full Tilt Poker. There was a little 50c/$1 7stud thrown in.

I have lost $27.25 (correct to 2 decimal places)/ per 100 hands or 13.61bb/per 100 hands. I have been playing since 2pm Eastern Time (whatever it is called - I am British so not all that au fait with it) and have just finished at 11.15pm Eastern Time. It was eight-handed though players came and went and the two tables i played become shorthanded. I would often shift tables if they became three-handed or heads up.

It should be noted that though this is a chunk of my bankroll the loss is no way near to making me busto. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Statistics for 1002 Hands

Street Saw Saw/Total
Fourth 208 21%
Fifth 175 17%
Sixth 147 15%
Seventh 121 12%
Showdown 88 9%

Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total
Third 24 2% 2%
Fourth 7 3% 1%
Fifth 11 6% 1%
Sixth 16 11% 2%
Seventh 10 8% 1%
Showdown 35 40% 3%

Analysis:
Some fish took $100 off me. What can I say? He chased and he hit repeatedly. He took money off others as well. I stayed relaxed and decided to just play my game and not worry. It is important to state that at at no point did i steam or go on tilt. Steaming is for losers. I made no angry raises. The stats show that I did not win my fair share of hands. I am shy 2.5 percentage points in wins which is 20% of what I can legitimately expect at an eight player table (12.5% mathematically expected win rate). I have noticed from prior stat analysis that during winning sessions one simply wins more hands than one is mathematically due. I played tight though unsure whether through being card dead or disciplined. I played big pairs and better. I played the flush draws. If the situation was right I played medium pairs aggressively but as a rule medium pairs and small pairs did not any play from me. Playing tight is generally thought to be a remedy for a downswing but this did not work. My confidence has remained good and I did not try to win 'my' money back from anyone just played the cards. How tight do you think my opening requirements were: I only played 21% of the hands or was that too many.

I won small pots on third and lost big pots on the river. This is a big disaster as we all know. The trick is to win the big pots and lose the small pots. I played well nobody ran me over caught a few bluffers even managed to bluff a few hands because I was perceived as tight.

The opposition was really bad when I lost the biggest chunk of the money but better when I lost the smaller chunk (it broke down to $170 plus then around a $100). I am not Chip Reese nor do I think he was there at the table playing under a pseudonym.

My big pairs did not hold up. My flushes did not fill. At one point I had Aces full and ran into quads, the same happened to Jacks full. I made a lot of second best hands.

Conclusion:
I ran bad, I lost money.

I am now going back to the fray. May play higher at 7stud or may play a little no limit Hold'em. I am in a good frame of mind. These things happen to the best (and I am [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]).

One mistake I would admit to is that I do not practise game selection as well as I should. Though, today, there was little to choose from at Full Tilt at the level I was comfortble at. It is beginning to look as though I need to have bankrolls at various sites and get a bit more serious about my online gaming...


If anyone can see anything worthy of commment in the stats could they please point it out to me. Thank you.

[Phat Mack]

Don't know anything about online stud stats, but noticed that you won 40% of the hands you showed down. Is this low? Were the rivers being checked down? Were you priced in? Of the 60% that you lost were you often surprised by what you were shown?

Just curious.

[Al Mirpuri]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't know anything about online stud stats, but noticed that you won 40% of the hands you showed down. Is this low? Were the rivers being checked down? Were you priced in? Of the 60% that you lost were you often surprised by what you were shown?

Just curious.

[/ QUOTE ]

You want to be winning about 55% - 60% of the showdowns. By the seventh card you will have invested a lot of bets and showdowns are usually heads up. So 40% is low, imagine 60%-40% in a presidential race: it would be a landslide...

I was not surprised at what the hands that won were but I was surprised by just what the starting hands must have been...Full Tlit mixes up the hole cards so looking at the 'last hand' feature does not tell which hole cards were played but I could make an educated guess. What keeps the fish playing is that even poor starting hands can end up as reasonable hands. But the fish are bucking the odds and the odds will hold up in the loooooooooooong run. As the saying goes: you can push your luck but sometimes your luck pushes back...

[RandomUser]

The 21% 4th street number proves you are sticking to good solid starting hands. The tight players I see are typically 20-25% with many players in the 25-30% range (and the handful of 40% maniacs).

And yes, the 40% win at showdown is abnormally low for good starting hands. The stats I've seen typically are 55%+, especially for tighter players.

This is just variance taking its toll. If you can maintain your good starting hand selection, this will turn itself around the long run (although the long run can be 10-20K+ hands).

[Al Mirpuri]

[ QUOTE ]
The 21% 4th street number proves you are sticking to good solid starting hands. The tight players I see are typically 20-25% with many players in the 25-30% range (and the handful of 40% maniacs).

And yes, the 40% win at showdown is abnormally low for good starting hands. The stats I've seen typically are 55%+, especially for tighter players.

This is just variance taking its toll. If you can maintain your good starting hand selection, this will turn itself around the long run (although the long run can be 10-20K+ hands).

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for this post. A little part of me needed to know that I was not the worst seven stud player who ever lived...

A had a similar session some time ago and started playing hold'em and winning. It got my stack back to previous levels and I thought give seven stud a re-visit...

[SCSTWG]

I like the 21% on 4th street and that is where I am usually at. The Showdown numebrs are very low meaning you either went too far with a lot of hands, you are misreading your opponents hands, or you ran into a string of suckouts. The thing that bothered me is that this was just one session. Perhaps after you hit a certain point you were not playing your best game. You might want to consider setting some loss limits and coming back to the game after the sting where's off.

[Al Mirpuri]

[ QUOTE ]
I like the 21% on 4th street and that is where I am usually at. The Showdown numebrs are very low meaning you either went too far with a lot of hands, you are misreading your opponents hands, or you ran into a string of suckouts. The thing that bothered me is that this was just one session. Perhaps after you hit a certain point you were not playing your best game. You might want to consider setting some loss limits and coming back to the game after the sting where's off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for your reply.

People came and went. I do not tilt. I am too proud of my game. Players who claim to be good but tilt are not good players. Poker is more than technical skills. Mike Caro even thinks tilt the difference in earnings between various players. One of two plus twos authors, either John or Al has talked about micro-tilt when you are subtly affected. That is possible. But I know a suckout when I see one.

I maybe paid off two or three times perhaps 15 big bets but that would only account for $30 when I should not have. However, if you peruse the post again I mention the times I was either outdraw or sucked out on. Two boats lost to quads. One I did not mention was a king flush that lost to a Queen straight-flush.

I played my best game 98% of the time (maybe my best game ain't that good [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

There are reasons for leaving a game and Mike Caro has enumerated these but having a stop loss is not one of them. That idea is theoretically flawed. Mason has written about the stop loss idea as well I believe. You should investigate this and discover why for your own benefit.

As for the 'sting', well it stung enough to produce my post but not enough for me to bemoan my fate and rant. At no point, did I call anyone a 'fish' or 'luckbox' or anything like that. I was truly bot-like in my attitude. Perhaps, I am a bot? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Once again, thanks for posting.

[ill rich]

seems like a pretty bad losing streak.

you should probably rethink your playing style over 1000 hands with no profit, and that kind of terrible negative bets per 100 hands seems like a freak for "the best player"

how well would you rate your skill?

factoring this in, what is your per 100 hand rate?

anyways good luck in the future

[PoorLawyer]

You can't control the dealer unfortunately. You sample size is small enough, that game is wild enough, and you VPIP is normal enough (maybe even too tight in that game) that I don't think any conclusions can necessarily be drawn here.

[Al Mirpuri]

[ QUOTE ]
seems like a pretty bad losing streak.

you should probably rethink your playing style over 1000 hands with no profit, and that kind of terrible negative bets per 100 hands seems like a freak for "the best player"

how well would you rate your skill?

factoring this in, what is your per 100 hand rate?

anyways good luck in the future

[/ QUOTE ]

I have read all the books (including the whitemeat relating to seven stud in the Poker Essays series) and I have been around long enough to know pretty much all the tricks.

I am not Chip Reese but I am not Chico Marx either.

I have beaten this game consistently I do not track hands religiously (maybe I should) but I have consistently beaten this game.

I think the fact that there were a number of skilled players and being sucked out on and throwing in a few bad bets accounted for it. I am self-aware enough to know that running bad and playing bad go hand in hand but if I had not played as well as I played and I played well it would have been much worse.


Yesterday, I played 460 hands and won 6 big bets at $2/$4 but played over 1000 hands at the $1/$2 level breaking even.

I can play.


I am satisfied that it was a freak occurrence.