One Big Session

[knockonwood]

I accidently posted this in SSSH because i was reading the forum there. It was meant to be in the micro's.....

How many posters in this forum really look at their game as 'one big poker session? While I've read about it and knew it was right on a conceptual level, its only lately that its really started to sink in. I'm feeling more relaxed and confident about my game and the results are showing. I've played close to 100,000 hands now and through the variance I've experienced, I'm starting to to see why 2000, 5000, 20000 or even a 100000 hands can be insignificant in terms of your long-term win rate. The tricky part of this long-run variance is that there are so many fits and spurts in your development as a poker player, between 1000 and 10000 hands, 10000 and 50000, 50000 and beyond. I guess the constant battle as a poker player is to realise that variance is very real and so are leaks. Being able to seperate the two is going to take a lifetime

[disco_stu1978]

your the same ID on stars right knock? I think I have played with you a bit. about 500-1000hnds sample.

I think getting to this frame of mind is one of the hardest things to do, once you get it though.... a lot doors start to open up. I think that point is the first point when you start to see pro playing for what it is, and understand a lot of the struggles it takes to be a player like that. At least it's like that for me [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

it's also when you start to see why plays are made a certain way, and start to actually see long term results from certain plays. That is a huge boost to your play when you can see the physical expectation of your lines.

just continuation rant. I like inspirational posts like this [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[TomTom]

Playing for the long term is the only way to look at the game. How any one hand plays is irrelevant. Sucks outs happen, but that’s how we make our money, by getting people to chase hands they don’t have the odds to make. Even long shots make us money, when we’ve got a 1 in 10 chance to win a pot, but it will pay us 11:1 we make that bet every time because long term it pays us off. It may take months to get that payback, but it has to get back to us.

One way I think about it is to ask myself the question: Do casinos gambol? If I set up a slot machine and let people play it, am I gamboling? Slots are always –EV (for the player that is), everyone knows that. So by being the house you’re always making the +EV play, even when you pay off a spin, even if the first spin hits the super jackpot.

When I started playing for the long term, not concerned with the immediate outcome of any one hand change how I play (excepting the reads I get, of course) my win rate actually became a WIN rate (and not a break-even rate).

Just keep making the +EV plays and the rest must follow.

[disco_stu1978]

I actually wrote a huge article about the simularities of a casino owner and a poker player for another forum. It was an interesting article to investigate. I would post it, but I think it is a little long winded for this forum...... (as in extreamly long winded)

comparing a poker player to a casino owner actually puts a lot of the game into perspective really.

[Vern]

So the rake that a poker player pays, is sorta like the taxes a casino pays?

[disco_stu1978]

I need to find something witty to respond with here, but I just can't dig it up. I even went so far as to try rounders quotes, it just isn't working. I blame it on me running bad.

[KurtSF]

I also really put this together around 100k hands. Hmmmmmm.

But I consider it a huge breakthrough in my game. Moving from 'conceptually' knowing that its one long session and short term results are not important, to knowing through experience and in my gut that even when I'm playing great I can lose, A LOT, and just keep playing. I'll get it back.

In fact, I just realized it while writing this post, but I'm in the middle of my biggest downswing ever (by $$) and I don't give two [censored]s. I lost about 25% of my roll last week, but I'm so cocomfortable with variance that I just studied up and kept playing. No angry outbursts, no beating myself up over it, no smashing anything. I just started reading some new books, hit 2+2, shifted my money around to get a new bonus, and kept on playing.

This was one of two big breakthroughs I had in the last month regarding my game. The other was finding real leak for the first time (not learning new concepts, strategies, or skills and incorporating them into my game, but actually identifying a sytematic flaw in my game that was costing me EV). Truly understanding the luck involved I consider to be, by far, the biggest advance I've made so far.

[Smurph64]

Yes and no depends on my experience. The problem for me with the one big session scenario is that it has a few assumptions which are false.

If I were a robot, playing other robots, playing at 100% capacity and concentration then sure its one big session.

The fact is that sessionally we can be very inconsistent. We pick the wrong table, we are distracted, we are in the wrong seat position, we are at the wrong limit, all have a very real affect on the first x amount of hands where x is a function of knowing when we actually start thinking about them as variables that we can control.

Many players sit down and say, ok I need to have 40k hands at $1 to know if I am any good....they build a bankroll through bonuses etc. and multitable afterwards for lets see what would be the amount of time.... 70hands per table per hour*4 rounded down 250 hands an hour so after 160 hours of play they think they have enough hands to consider their skill factor as relevant. But how can it be relevant if you are making around 6 poker decisions a minute?

At that speed you have no idea how much table selection plays a factor in your results, or how many decisions were wrong not because of skill but because of time.

The fact is that if you look at anyone's play there is a point where they stabilize and get to their peak, before that they are in the minor leagues.

So knowing that, I take my one big session with a grain of salt because the first 60k hands, which took 770 hours(77 hands per hour) to play, over a period of 17 months studying at least twice that amount during those 17 months, I played were training for me.

So I ended that database and started a new one because now I believe my skillset is such that while still improving is consistent enough to consider the one big session theory as relevant.

I am only into hand 10k now here and I have a lot to go but it's now it's a lot more encouraging to think of the one big session scenario. Now I am not afraid of variance because I know my game is good enough to beat it. Now it gives me comfort knowing that my pita 38% success rate with JJ is going to change. Now I know that when the Aces get cracked that it was bound to happen because I was running at 96% win rate.

I think now the big session scenario helps because I don't need to see it to know I can beat it first. I can use the big session thinking to stop myself from tilting with great wins and great losses.

So the big session theory is good but only in the right context.

[Absolution]

There is an article here somewhere in the magazine about the stages a poker player goes through. I think it goes something like this for most people, although I skipped stage one:

1) Get to know the game, play too loose, call down too much and eventually start to lose money.
2) Start to study and understand why you are losing money. Tighten up and start winning a small amount.
3) Continue to study and loosen up a bit to push marginal edges and make more money.
4) Start to think you're an expert and loosen up even more, thinking you will outplay everybody post flop. You realize that poker is one long session and that you're just having a bad run. You continue to lose.
5) You realize you've gone too far the other way and go back to studying and tighten up again.

[KingOtter]

When people say 'poker is one big session' it doesn't mean all conditions have to remain the same for it to be considered part of the same session.

One big session is really just a way of saying that each hand is unrelated to the previous. It doesn't matter if there were 5 minutes or 5 weeks between the hands, they're unrelated. Since each hand is unrelated to the previous one poker is one big lifelong session, probability-wise.

One big session really only considers probabilities, IMO, and has nothing to do with short-term considerations like environment, skill-set, etc. While those things can negatively impact your win-rate, they still have no bearing on how often you'll get AA, how often it'll get cracked, or how often your flush draws will hit.