Hello!

I've been playing the 6 max turbo sngs on Pokerstars for the past few days. Things started off really well, but today I've somehow managed to lose 11 buy ins, cashing in maybe two or three of my games played.

Here's my poker tracker graph:


Is this normal, or does my graph show that I'm simply a bad player?

I should mention that this is at the $3.50 level. I'm no longer rolled for them so I'm going to drop down to the $1.50 ones for now whilst I go over some of the games I lost.

You may be a bad player, but losing 11 of 14 turbo tournaments is going to be a frequent occurrence in the format you've chosen to play.

Okay, thank you for the insight. I guess I'll just keep studying and grinding.

That sort of downswing is very ordinary.

Always remember "the long run" is far longer than anyone can perceive in an infinite universe in which an infinite number of monkeys will write the complete works of Shakespeare in an infinite amount of time.

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This is a joke. And I don't mean that in a mean way. I mean I'm answering your question. It's not even close by any stretch of the imagination to even call that a "downswing" really.

Here's a graph of my play when I used to play a lot of SnGs. This is a downswing.



I've got little blips that barely show up on my graph that are bigger than your entire graph. So when you get up close to about a 1,000 game losing streak, come back and let us know! (In other words, you can't tell anything at all from your graph yet.)

Ouch! It hurts just looking at that!

Thanks for the responses guys.

You could be a good, average, bad, or totally sucky player, but after 122 games.....no way to tell. BUT....that is not close to what would be considered a bad run. 'the_spike' gave you a much better version of a bad run. I went from early January of 2016 until late July of 2016 without sniffing the cash in MTTs. I was down 30K+ online and that was only 6 months. Phil Ivey went on a two year run of disaster.

If you want to know if you suck or are getting slapped around by variance, look at how you played your hands. If you played them correct but got outdrawn, you're okay. If you are consistently chasing draws....then you are not so good.

I dropped down to the $1.50 ones whilst I went over some of my games. Found where I made a LOT of mistakes, especially around the bubble. Think I need to study ICM a little harder.

I am up 37 buy ins over 145 games at the moment though, showing an ROI of 26.71%. I'm going to keep playing these until I'm back to 50 buy ins for the $3.50 ones, then I'll take another shot at the $3.50 games.

Right. Here's what I did during my downturn. Because believe me, I was throwing things and started doubting everything I knew. I made a chart of all possible categories of my all in hands. For example, pair over pair, pair under pair, 2 over cards vs. under pair, 2 under cards vs. over pair, high and low card vs middle cards (A2 vs. J7), dominated (AK vs AJ), dominating, etc. etc. etc.

Then I used a hand calculator to determine my equity for each of those categories. Then I tallied every hand I played for each category and scored win or loss.

It turns out I was so far behind the quotas, it was sickening. For example, for pair over pair, I was supposed to be winning 80%, but I was only winning 50%. For AK vs. 99 I was supposed to be winning 45% but I was only winning 20%. I mean I was getting hammered. Maybe in one category I was break even. Really sick.

Of course I studied during that time to try to improve as well. But if I studied all in hands (which there were a lot of during those turbo SnGs), then I would know it had nothing at all to do with my decisions. For example, if someone shoved on me and they had AA and I called with 72o, you could say objectively that it was a bad call, but the fact is it doesn't matter because the math says I'm supposed to win that 12% of the time. If I'm losing that more than 12% of the time, then I'm running bad regardless of how good or bad I'm playing.

Once you know your quotas are correct for all those hands, then you can start to get an idea if you're playing bad or not.

There are two trains of thought of trying to break a bad run. Tighten way up or drop a level and loosen up like mad. Wealthall recommends the second. There is some validity in that approach. You play hands you are not supposed to be in and sometimes dumb luck falls in your lap and you win a big pot or two, like spike mentioned with 7/2off vs AA.

Variance and bad runs are like psycho exes stalking you. You get it in your head that you expect to get beat, so you play differently than you should. Fold in advance of expected loss and call down because 'you are due'. They take a toll psychologically and Nick's idea of dropping down and donking around some can shake the mental fatigue. Although, the run can continue.

You're premium hands are going to lose sometimes. Variance is one reason and knuckleheads calling PFR raises with garbage that slam the flop hard is another. I was in the big blind yesterday and there was a 3-bet raise to 6x the big. I had chips and figured I should call, after all I DID have 4/7 off. I swear the flop was 5/6/8 rainbow. I checked, 3-bet put out 1/3 pot and I call. The turn was a king, I wanted to rep the king hoping he had AA, so bet the same amount I called. He shoved, I called. His trips kings went to the rail when the river didn't pair the board. No "nice hand sir", lol, but I am sure he was none to happy to see his well played PFR was called with garbage that flopped the second nuts. I'm known as a nit/TAG type and when sitting with other regs, I have to play and pray with crap at times to insure my action is respected. Would you want to hold KK vs 7/4 off preflop? Every single time. It does lose sometimes, though. He played it right. Donkey call plus variance netted me a huge pot and him an opportunity to rebuy.

122 games is not enough to say a bad run or even quality of play. Do as spike mentioned and look over your hands. If you played them correct, then its just poker biting you in the ass. You mention ICM. I had the chips and the call was a very small percent of my chips. I could afford to take a shot and it just happened to work out. The reality is, I will lose that hand almost every time. ICM, although early in the tourney, or SPR would allow me to play the hand into the flop with very little downside cost. If the flop was 7 high....that would have cost me chips, at least into the turn.

If you take out a trial for HEM2, you can utilize the basic version of LeakBuster and see some of the obvious mistakes. If you are serious about your play, get the full version and it will analyze your hands for you. DriveHUD also has a lot of ways to look at your hand history. I'm not really a software user, so cannot offer to much in suggestions on which ones are better vs others or the best way to set them up.

Small sample size. Don't forget to do your homework and study your hand history during this period. Then u can figure out the reasons for the "downswing" yourself

The second option is ridiculous. Variance does not care how long you have been unlucky. Out-lucked players are not "owed" to become more lucky the more whacky hands they play to compensate. That "solution", in fact, akind to lottery or playing roulette, but with poker hands - playing with known bad odds in the hope you will win 'big". Running bad does not mean your odds to be running good later magically increase. That would be gambler's fallacy.

"Regression towards the means" is that over a statistically infinite number of runs, the end results will tend inexorably to approach the average according to probabilities. Note the two words in bold: No one will ever play statistically infinitely, ever.

For example, over a statistically infinite number of runs AA vs KK will inexorably approach 78% of wins. That is mathematically easy to demonstrate, just run the Monte Carlo on your Equilab. But you may very well lose against KK a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times in a row because in the grand scheme of things, your play remains a sample. Life is, by definition, very finite, AA vs KK will not becoming that often, and when they do cards' order remain submitted to randomness. For some people, it does mean they will never play enough samples in their lifetime to reach that average. If I play AA vs KK ten times and lose eight times then stop here, I lost money even if my expectation of profit is well into the positive and folding AA vs KK heads-up with almost 50% pot odds is an obviously losing move.

However, if we tabulated every and all AAs vs KKs of every poker player, living or dead, over the history of humanity, the odds would approach much much closer to 78% vs 22%.

I argue with your points Drakken. I think what Nick was getting at is the psychological aspect that gets to people. He suggests playing down so the loss isn't much of anything and trying to turn your personal outlook around. It wasn't meant to be a strategy against variance, at least from how I understood him to mean.

Looks normal to me. And it's actually a good sign that you were winning before the downswing.

Ugh, typo....I AGREE, not argue....