I've had a few $1500 downswings in a deep action-filled 1/2 home game I play in that happened in $300 or $400 increments. On the other hand I've had a few $4000 upswings and run pretty good in general so I can't really complain.

I immediately love Smokey! So cool.

The biggest questions I have are these:

To what degree do you think poor play made your downswing worse than it otherwise would have been if you were not on a downswing? Were you really playing your best the whole time? What makes you think so?

In what ways do you think your play and decisions were affected while on the downswing? How did you play differently while losing than you do normally or while winning?

What was the reason(s) for the downswing in your opinion; i.e. dollar wise, what made up the downswing (AA over KK coolers, river draw outs made by fish going against the odds, being way too card dead, nobody having a hand when I did have a hand, playing oop too much, playing weak cards too much against fish only to run into the top of their range, the level of thinking you were on not being right for the game/situation/opponents, etc.).

What kinds of hands did you lose most of your money on? One pair/overpair hands .vs two pair or better? Chasing too many or the wrong kind of draws (what kinds of draws?).

Did you lose most of it calling bets or making bets? In or out of position? Any particular types of starting hands (small pairs, suited connectors, etc.)

Any guess on how much $/BIs/% poor play/decisions cost you during your downswing?

What did you do differently to try and minimize the losing (if you did anything)? Play tighter? How much tighter? Preflop or throughout the hand? Choose which situations and opponents to play against before entering a hand?

In short, I'm wondering how much of the downswings we all experience could be reduced by modifying our play in certian situations and how much is just built into the game.

IMO actual steep downswings that occur from concurrently stacking off four or five buy-ins in completely standard situations where you can't do anything else aren't too difficult to handle since you could chalk it up as an unusual streak of bad luck. Ideally if you're playing live your edge should be so massive that that's more or less the most bad luck you'll ever get in a row barring some once in a lifetime cold deckage.

However, it's the longer-term, fifteen or twenty session long slightly less than breakeven stretches that can really mess with your head and make you second-guess anything. Getting coolered four times in a row is something you can probably laugh off after a day to regroup - being card dead and situation dead for ages is what can drive you insane. An extended absence of good luck isn't that uncommon and thus what usually constitutes the majority of a downswing.

Great questions, and a very good perspective. Wish I had good answers!

One of my biggest hurdles to overcome as a poker player is trying to figure out just how much my results are the result of skill (or lack thereof) and luck. Often, for me at least, it is between extremely difficult and impossible to tell. Sometimes, of course, it is easy. i.e., I hit a lot of good cards in a row against players that will pay off. Or, I should never have even entered the hand to begin with - that many times folding is the best option preflop.

Other times though, and especially over a period of time (long sessions and multiple sessions) - I have a real problem with objectively trying to figure this out.

Only thing I know to do is to keep studying, keep reading, keep thinking about the game, keep playing, and keep improving. Doing all the above definitely has a long term positive impact on earnings.

Lee

Live poker requires a greater amount of self control.

Why?

There is no PT3/HEM database telling you $X was lost due to poor play and $X from running bad. It is impossible to remember every hand for the last x hours/sessions so people are free to say whatever they want about how they lost.

I doubt you'll get very many solid answers on what youre looking for.

Personally, I am happy if I walk away from a session thinking about marginal spots.

Outstanding questions, and there are many answers, but none absolute. All these can contribute.

During my recent swing, I tightened up too much and became timid. I started to see MUBs, and feel every board had a draw which could take my stack. A trip to the woodshed by a angel named Tommy put me back into my aggressive game, and a couple of wins has me back in top shape.

Downswings can play havoc with your mind. Having just experienced a real doozy, I understand if someone is having a hard time. It's a game of mistakes and when their mistakes are rewarded over and over, it can cause you to start making your own more often.

The best thing to do is take it down to its simplest form--each street on each hand. Make the best decision at that time and let the rest take care of itself. If you make the right decision, the math works out. Trust the maths.

I'm nearing the point of quitting live poker.

~97% of this is £1/2, with about 1% each of £1/1, £1/3 and £2/5.

I have bought in for the minimum (£50) at the start of every single session, topping up as and where appropriate, and rebuying for £50, £100 or sometimes £200 if the game is good and I'm feeling good.

I play a relatively straightforward tight, aggressive game, very rarely outright bluffing, but semi-bluffing aplenty.

The games I play in are supersoft. I have tilted a bunch but can count on my right hand the number of pots over £100 that I've lost due to tilt, and I either had equity in those hands anyway or was sucked out on by the river and couldn't get away from my hand. I have just played bad in a few pots as well.

I try to do all the standard live game stuff - don't talk in the middle of pots, push my chips out the same every time (I'm hardly ever bluffing, though, so it shouldn't really matter), trying to pick up tells by looking at hands rather than faces, and looking to my left. I take regular (at least once every two hours, usually once an hour) breaks. I drink lots of water, and even sometimes exercise in the middle of sessions. I *never* talk poker strategy, or at least not good poker strategy, at the table. I don't berate other players and if other players berate me I usually just shrug my shoulders and smile.

Overall, I've been running pretty bad, and am quite near the point of quitting live poker.

this is a joke right? a scummy attempt to get soft/******ed live players to donk off money in horrible online plo games. ive seen you post halfway lucent stuff before so this post has to be some sort of ..ugh..hate to say it...level

No level, unfortunately.

Wazz,

Is this PLO or NLHE? If this is the NLHE games at the Vic then you're probably doing something wrong. Maybe you need live game coach haha ... but no seriously live big bet poker is the like the least swingy game around unless its deep stacked PLO in which case it becomes more swingy than LHE for the win rate if the players are decent to good and slightly swingier than NLHE if the players are bad.

Granted when I lived in the UK I played in Birmingham at the Broadway and occasionally at Walsall, star city, barry's, or the Vic but the only game I remember as having the properties of being swingy was the 2/4 or 5/5 uncapped PLO games at the Broadway and the 5/5,5/10 PLO or higher games at the Vic. Plus your expenses are lower because you don't have to pay taxes or tip!

I'd read most of Stewart Reuben's books as they describe essentially a very successful style against many of the players in the UK.

I should add the type of win rates/variance I think are achievable based on my data

PLO 5-15 big blinds per hour standard deviation of 2.5 buyins

worst loss should be around 4 to 5 buyins

NLHE 5-10 big blinds per hour standard deviation of 1.5 buyins

worst losses around 3 to 4 buyins

About 75% of this is nlhe, 25% is plo.

I have a live game coach, curry lover. He's been making a living from live games for > 5 years now and has been beating online for the last year as well. Unfortunately we don't live in the same city so he only gets to watch me play once in a blue moon. When he has watched me play he's said I'm doing nothing wrong.

EDIT: I should add, btw, that I quit weed 100% at around the start of collecting this data.

Sometimes your downswings are caused by making mistakes in your game. Can you win all the time in poker? NO - But there should not be 8 week, or months on end downswings for a solid player. If you have read any major pro's books - They all admit to bad downswings, however, most all have said that they blamed it on luck or variance - But when they really took a look, and asked for advice from a fellow pro, they were told they had been playing badly and making bad decisions.

Point is - Take a look at your game objectively, and you can limit your downswings. Cant stop luck or variance - But you CAN limit it if your honest about your game.

LOL!

I have had downswings and once in a while having like 4 or 5 bad sessions in a row is not uncommon but I try to gather my head before that happens. The worst session I ever had was at Borgata in a $1/$2 NLHE game where I ran through $1300 in about 2.5 hours. That really sucked.

Since the topic seems to be on standard deviations at the moment, I'ld like to know just what a standard deviation means in terms of "involvement" or playing style. I'm not sure what the correct phrasing is.

For example, I use StatKing to keep track of my play. According to the program, I have a standard deviation (playing 2/5 NLHE) of $199.23 with a Coefficient of Variation of .04.

This is for all 2/5 results this year - 68 sessions totalling 311.9 hours.

Last year, my 2/5 results were a standard deviation of $174.72 with a Coefficient of Variation of .05. This was for 280 sessions totalling 1412.7 hours.

According to the "Sklansky Professor" (this is for the 2009 results):

"This means that you will occasionally experience fluctuations as large as $524 in a single hour. At a glance, your standard deviation appears to be extremely high. You may be erring on the side of involvement."

But - I don't really know what this means. In a 2/5 NLHE game, fluctuations can be - and are - sometimes larger than $524 per hour. Stacking, or getting stacked by, another player has that sort of result.

And, if $174.72 is really high - then what would a more "normal" number be?

On the plus side - I'm making money and getting better as I learn more. :-) According to the Professor, I'm 96.43% likely to be a winning player at 2/5 NLHE. :-) My results certainly support this - but they are very up and down. Lots of winning sessions followed by lots of losing and/or flat sessions. Repeat. I would certainly like to flatten this out and even the win rate!

Thanks in advance for any input.

Lee

are you serious? how have you not won longer then a 3 session streak over that many sessions..i'll tell you straight up right now YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG!....now its just a matter of figuring out what it is, do you drink at the games? I used to think that i didnt really tilt but just didnt see that i was slightly at tilt, you dont always have to be completely steamed to be making horrible decisions. if you were my coach i think id find a new one with those results.

btw what iphone app is that?

I had a beer last night before playing a session. Before that I played one drunk session after the 2p2 pokercast meetup back in september (I won decently). Before that, I haven't had a drink before or during playing for more than 2 years.

100%, I'm doing stuff that's wrong. I'm reasonably sure, though, that I'm doing far far less wrong than pretty much every reg in these games. If they're stronger than me in some area, which a lot of them are, I have other things I do much better than them. Which one has more value than the other, I don't know, I just know that I play better than pretty much everyone else in these games.

Poker Journal

Maybe so but you should try to find a softer game....I know there are certain games I cannot beat so I never play in them.

There is one game I can beat consistently so I try to never stop playing in it.

I don't know if you have much selection where you are, but try to find a game you can beat...JMO

Lovesantiques,

Ignore everything that Statking tells you other than your standard deviation, which is measure of the "normal" amount of action you put in. Sometimes you put in way more in a single pot(as in NLHE) and sometimes you put in more frequently(LHE) and sometimes you do both(PLO).

Especially ignore the Sklansky professor's advice. It was originally the ridiculous conclusions it would draw from my data that NEVER described what type of swings I went through that led me to write an article about variance a few years ago that basically said calling results normal wasn't very accurate.

I use a much more intuitive method now that it took me a while to derive, but has proved very reliable in directing my choices.

The things you'll want to know.

1. your standard deviation
2. the type of game you're playing and the range of your results
3. your worst loss ever
4. your edge in $ or £ in relationship to your standard deviation in $ or £
5. number of sessions

Take Wazz's sample(I may misread some of this from the graph so correct me if do)

1. Standard deviation is about £250 per session
2. NLHE, PLO and range of £3505
3. worst loss = -£1100
4. edge is negative but I can price it still in case he is losing player that wants to "budget" for playing live games
8/250= 3.2% disadvantage
5 68 sessions

I'd estimate a good budget for for him over a 68 session period to be
£8900.

Assume instead he was a winning player at £8 an hour he would need around 8900 over a similar sample period to feel comfortable at handling the swings to ensure his advantage.

So if he is winning at that rate but his losses are down to variance he is still within the range where that could be a possibility, but I can tell from this sample that you that Wazz is not a 10 big blind an hour winner, however with slight possibility could be an 8 or 9 bb/hour winner.

10 bb an hour is achievable for the best players so if your coach can find no faults then he may be a good player, but probably not one that can help you achieve this rate.

JFK2LAS, the games I play in are supersoft. I mean, mindblowingly soft. In the £1/2 PLO game I played on saturday night, there wasn't a single pot under £1k for the first hour and a half, and most of the pots were 5 or 6-way all-in pre.

LA, my biggest loss is £800, I usually have a stoploss of £400.

I could easily (and probably should be) a 10+ bb/hour in these games. Bear in mind that I've only been buying in for the minimum to start off with, and because I've been losing, rebuying in for the minimum. If I were to go on a decent run, and either rebuy, top up, or spin my stack up to having effectives of 200bb or more, my expected winrate will probably go up. I will agree though that if I'm buying in for 50bb and leave before my stack gets > 200bb (which I don't, it's just that I've run so bad that that's happened 8 or 9 times over the last 6 months, and co-incidentally every time but one I've run my stack up even bigger), I can't expect my winrate to be higher than 4 or 5 bb/hour.

how frequently are you bluffing in your nlhe games? what percentage would you say you bluff vs semi bluff? and what percentage does your range lie in? I play in soft live games at the fallsview and casino niagara and i pretty much just play a patient but selectively agressive game, and semi bluff into pots that give me the right drawing odds.
and i rarely have long losing sessions. I always buy in short my first bi as well but mostly just to feel out the table and learn whos who. if i lose that bi i buy in full and work from there. I will make continuation bets when necessary but will rarely bluff at low stakes poker it just seems very spewy and imo is -ev..

cant really comment on pl omaha or nl omaha as i dont play it often.