I mean I know the literal meaning, but what does it really mean?

A. Is it the delta between All-in equity adjusted BB/100 and actual winrate?

B. How does cooler situation factor into this?

C. What about random factor such as opponent makes a bad play on you?

The reason I ask the question is because I just finished a super swingy 12 hour 12 table session where I set over set and stacked my opponents 3 times, ran into quads twice with my nutty hands, nut flush got stacked by runner runner full house, KK ran into AA with >200BB effective twice and overall ran 4 buy-ins below ev (about even). My actual winrate aside, was I running good or bad?

Running good and running bad does not exist.

Make the right plays and ignore run good/run bad. But if you let the bad beats affect your play, then you're not helping your cause.

Running Good: You´re winning hands/pots you were suposed to loose
Running Bad: You´re loosing hands/pots you were suposed to loose

This is very common for small samples and/or short term play, over big samples and/or long term is all about the EV you generate (How good you really are as a poker player).

Dont know what you mean by this.

Cooler reduces your EV cuz you have a strong hand that normally has 70%-75% equity vs a random hand/average villain range for a particular spot but u ren into a better one and yeah it sucks.

This is great cuz overall you will have more equity than the hand that villain will take to showdown.

Short term variance man this is pointless and irrelevant, i had AA cracked twice on back to back hand on a turbo 180 FT just last week, shake it up and move on.

Run good/bad doesnt exists but at the same time you advice him to ignore it? Not because you choose to ignore something doesnt mean it doesnt exists. And FWIW i agree with you that we need to focus solely on increasing the EV our decissions at the tables generate us regardless of the outcome.

Thanks for the explanation. What I meant by my first statement "delta between actual WR and All-in adjusted WR" is that assuming all-in adjusted WR is your true EV (under a statistically significant sample), the difference of your actual win-rate per 100 hands and your EV per 100 hands is the definition of running good or bad.

Here's an example, say you won 100k BB over 1 million hands and your EV for these hands is 10k BB, the delta (difference) is positive, you are running hot. Vice versa, if your EV over 1million hands is 100K BB, and you won 20K BB, you are below your ev and therefore running bad.

The definition of a cooler dictates that you have made a play that generates EV in the long run but in the short term (This single hand) it results in a decrease in your overall EV because of an unlikely situation. The takeaway is volume IMO. Because with a larger sample size, you are more likely to reach a volume that shows your true EV.

This is my interpretation of running good/bad, it's based on a more statistical sense and upon further reflection I think should be separated from the traditional BBV "run good"/ "run bad", which is more of a perception and not the reality. An argument can be made that this type of perception about run good/ run bad does not exist.


Here comes the million dollar question then: if you will NEVER reach a pure, statistically significant sample size of hands when playing poker live, especially live tournaments, is it even GTO to play live poker? You will be in a good place to win money statistically if you are a winning player, but wouldn't the edge be almost completely neutralized statistically because of the tiny, tiny sample size?

I don't think there is any sensible definition of 'run good' except perhaps to say that you got lucky overall - but then what does 'lucky' mean

There are too many ways to actually 'run good' to define it:
Get dealt better than average starting hands.
Hit higher than expected proportion of draws in run outs
Get dealt really good hands in position
Get dealt dominating hands
Hit the flop well
Best opponent at the table gets dealt bad hands
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I think run good can only be used in a very general way.

"I had a good month but I was running well, I didn't seem to be on form".
"I had a bad month but I seemed to run badly".

It is a term that is basically without definition but perhaps useful in conversation.

If I was speaking to a clever, good poker player I would know by 'run good' they felt they got better cards/run outs than expected but it is a short-hand term and if I wanted to know more I would have to ask.

If I was speaking to a less experienced player I wouldn't pay much attention to the term at all.

I think I am more likely to hear "but I was running badly" much more often than "but I was running well". Very few players bother to mention 'run good' but so many, including me, do go on and on about some form of 'run bad' and often it's an incorrect perception.

Personally I think running good or bad means when your winrate deviates from the norm purely due to the cards you are dealt,playing while tilted,tired,drunk etc. doesn't count for this purpose (it's almost impossible to know what the norm is but that's how I look at it).

For example if I was a 10bb/100 winner and had a 50,000 hand streak winning at 3bb/100 then I would class that as running bad while a -10bb/100 player who goes on a -2bb/100 streak is running good.

It's a deviation of variance in the positive or negative end


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