Yeah, Upstairs, I agree. I try to analyze my live hands right afterwards and share the big hands with the poker buddies that I trust. I feel like I make the big, obvious mistakes a lot less than I used to so a lot of these spots where I am losing money feel very marginal to me. The big glaring mistakes are easy to learn from. The closer calls are the tough ones, definitely.

Also, sometimes I run into sessions where **** goes so poorly that I just want to go home and go to sleep that I sometimes don't put in the time to do a session recap. This is something that I absolutely have to commit to changing.

Finally, I agree, playing microstakes MTT and SNG on Carbon has been a place where I have been practicing a lot. But that is so high variance too because of how bad the players are at those stakes. But that shouldn't matter if I am just working on my game. Still frustrating as all hell though when I am running bad live and online, especially when I was running like god at the beggining of the year.

I'm a stats junkie, so I give myself a score 1-10 in how well I think I played and how well I think I ran. I try to be as objective as possible, but an accurate adjustment might be to subtract one point from how well you think you played and add one point to how well you think you ran.

Be as honest with yourself as possible, and try not to fall victim to selective memory.

When factoring in EV, keep in mind that being a 70% favorite means 70%, not 100%. So you actually have huge positive variance if you have a long session and never get sucked out on.

Don't fall victim to "Oh, I got it in with bottom two vs his top pair. Then he paired his kicker. What bad luck!"
But you've also been flopping a monster every 20 minutes and getting action. What about all the other times you got it in with 65% equity and won? You didn't consider yourself "lucky" there, did you?

Was that a good bluff that just happened to get called that time, or was it spew? When I value owned myself would I have been ahead of his range most of the time?

I also consider average distribution of premium hands and how often I hit the flop hard in a particular session.

Looks like you are totally on top of it. So one suggestion I will make: There never was a problem, don't bother about it. So you play the occasional bad hand and make up some excuse while analyzing. It's only a problem if you're losing money overall. I doubt you are.

now if you really think it is a problem, then I would suggest you keep making your excuse. Write it down. Then review your "excuses" once a week or so and take it from there.

Generally opponents who play poorly are easier to read, easier to get value from, and easier to make good folds against, therefore the variance is lower.

The math can be wrong. For example, if we make a mistake with it, or if the assumptions it is based on are wrong.....and I can't think of any more cases.

Define "bad" and "variance", please.

3bet pre - balance this part though.
1/2 pot size OTF
2/3 pot OTT
Shove river....

But don't it everytime, just when you miss the flop and you're gonna go with it.


Do we gotta give you a chart? ON WHEN TO GET IT IN?

^^ I like it. I think we've all been here before, I know this certainly hits home for me

Trying to "justify" to yourself, or freinds, why you shoved w/ xyz hand when there was a good chance you were beat, but you're not being completly honest with yourself as you tell the story, or review it in your own mind. This seems to leed to a slippery slope in which the OP refered to when opening this thread....is it just [bad] varience, or bad play.

As many have suggested, I have found that making accurate and honest reports to yourself, myself, has helped me later more accuratley review the sessions.
I log my info into blocks of time, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. It has been very helpful for me to be able to extrpolate where I was, what stakes, how many hours, how much I made/lost, ... then compare this to a similar situation a month later.
Historically I have been a bad loser, not going on tilt, I just really hate "losing". I still struggle w/ the emotional side of my percpetion of losing, but being able to relfect back on accurate info from a year ago sure helps me sluff the "loss" off to only a slight varience. And being able to better cope w/ a few losses here & there (varience) allows my little mind to think about more important things...such as how to become a better poker player, focus on the weak area's of my game.