I'm enjoying it. He came through like a bulldozer. I've never played with most of the posters here and don't play limit Holdem very often. But a lot of the action in these threads is a little spewy imo.

Some of this has to be negative EV. But even if it is pushing a tiny edge, we are not machines. Very few players play as well when they are getting their teeth kicked in.

I actually think getting killed out in Vegas (in games with Mason) was a turning point for me as a player, where I went from believing I could steamroll fish to becoming much more conservative of a player. Now my natural style is quite tight, which I think sacrifices A game EV by ensuring I'm always on my A-/B+ game. It only makes logical sense that when you're playing poorly, hands at the bottom of your range begin to become losers. When some of those hands are losers to begin with, you set yourself up to get creamed.

LHE is essentially a game of pushing thin edges and winning at showdown. Unless you're a god at the former, you focus on the latter.

Hi Puckster:

I would actually dispute this, I think there are a number of excellent posters in this forum.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi ScotchOnDaRocks:

Very soon my next book Real Poker Psychology will be published. And while I agree with this statement, I point out in the book that this is not the case with the experts. That's because they know exactly what the right plays are and know not to deviate from them just because their recent results have been poor.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Donkey:

While your statement above is absolutely correct, I also think it's wrong in many cases. Based on my observation, which is just the games at The Bellagio the past few years, in the full ring games, I see lots of players who play their hands well but are raising too often (in my opinion) in the early and middle seats and are three betting too much. So at best, for this group of players, they're adding nothing to their EV (and are probably losing a little and sometimes a lot) but are increasing their standard deviation by a fair amount.

So, and I'm speaking hypothetically here, if you're a player with a good but not great long term win rate but have a high standard deviation, the high standard deviation may be an indication that you are playing as described above and should tighten your play a little in these spots.

By the way, many of these same players, again in my opinion, are sometimes a little too tight when first in late and don't defend their blinds enough against a late position raiser.

So is this consistent with what you observe?

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason, I'm sure they don't really know for sure the plays that are on the fringe. No one can really say, as they require assumptions that are not set in stone and require precise simulations. Many threads on here seem to be right down the middle in terms of posters advocating a certain side.

I agree with you that lots of decent players get out of like pre. But I'm
not talking about them. I'm talking about very good-expert players that have played millions of hands online against the best in the world and will have little trouble crushing live 40. Most of which have win rates approaching or exceeding 1 bet and hour and all of whom will have a standard deviation well above 9.

You keep stating the players you observe make mistakes, but you likely have an extreme biased example of who you are observing.


For starters, you say you mostly play 20 becusse of waitlists. It seems obvious that the better players will likely be playing bigger.
I can't comment to much on the Bellagio player pool but I know you have at least people like ZOMG and IJ who both play extremely well. as well as other excellent players that don't post here. Not having to deal with them on a daily basis will help both your winrste and standard deviation quite a bit.

I think it's pretty absurd all of the people with the mentality that despite these players having skin in some of the toughest games that existed for years, they likely don't understand the basics of preflop. And what appears to be pushing small edges to them is actually rather large mistakes to me.

It's very likely, that you are correct in that lots of people are making mistakes pre-flop and they will have larger swings with no gain then they should, but I've never disputed this claim and you are just talking about players that others would consider bad-average to begin with.

All of my comments, perhaps unfairly, presuppose that people are very good and not making the mistakes pre-flop you are talking about.

I would certainly agree that decent players often are too rigid to make large deviations in their preflop play when they should. I have seen plenty of guys I would describe as generally nitty fail to find a fold w QQ or something pre in the rare spots where it seems clearly correct to me as an observer. And for sure they fail to adjust loosely enough to a maniac, or a kill pot or poster or anything like that.

I have read this thread couple of times and i find it great.
I never really bothered with anything about SD and WR ( beside only moving up when i am around 1000BB).

So badically SD is the number that reflects variance ?
I only play SH table online ( without a HUD), what would be a "normal" SD for 6max online?

Because i do not have a HUD, lot of statistic of my play are unknown to me.
Anyway to have on idea on what my SD is ?

Let say i play .5/1$ table and i know from experience that it is equally likely i end up from a 50$ stack, down to 35$ (lost of 15BB) or up to 65$ ( win 15BB) after 1 hour session ( around 100 hands played).
What would be my SD ? 15 or 30 ?

Can we make a corrolation with WR and SD?
Like if i have a very low SD with poor WR it means you are probably playing badly and if i have a good WR with a high SD you are a "good" players ( or you are in a great easy game )?


It might be dumb for some of you but for me, understanding this might fix a lot of things with my tilting issues....
It would probably help preventing tilt by knowing what is a normal lost due to variance and what is due to bad play based on playing badly vs bad opponents or playing bad because i am on tilt and it would be time to leave ...
Anyway i understand what i mean ..
Thx

I think there's a free tracking DB (maybe on the software forum). Honestly, I'd just buy HEM4 for just the self-analysis piece. Take all your HH and look at your own stats. Then you'd have SD. IMO, the HUD is the less useful piece of DB software -- knowing your own game and looking for your own leaks is much more valuable.
It depends on how much table starting you do and how often you play. Let's say you don't religiously play full 6m tables, use 18BB/100 as a starting number.
Math is fun has a nice explanation.
No, for reasonable players. If you play every hand, your SD will be high and your WR will be low. Win rate has to do with how well/poorly you play. SD -- actually, variance is used in RoR formula, which is SD^2 is about swings. It is based on a sum of squares, so big events dominate. Thus wild games with big pots will give every player a higher SD.

You can slightly decrease your SD by playing a more nitty style than optimal. IMO, you can't reduce your SD that much -- I think those same nitty players tend to skip shorthanded games, and so their reported low SD's also reflect that they stop the dealer when the table gets down to 6 or whatever. By "passing up marginal spots" you may be able to slightly reduce variance. Be especially careful of this idea playing online shorthanded -- the variance in these games is actually already low compared to live, due to many fewer pots seeing showdown and many more hands that are HU. Your edge in a 6m game is due to better blind stealing and defense than your opponents, and correct aggression is key. Thus, if you start researching SD and WR and then read stuff from a live player who wants to "minimize variance", the things he suggests will probably just make you lose in an online 6m game. There are spots in live games where being tight/slightly-passive live are good strategy. Online, it will just make you lose.

Go look up how to calculate variance by hand. Play around. Get an understanding.
If you uses risk of ruin math, this is most likely an insanely large BR unless you're a pro who can't move down. As a rec player, you're trying to have a sub 1% RoR. That seems silly when you could just play lower if you lost.

I used more the 1000 bb rules to make sure ( or close to it...) that i am a winning player at that limit and not for the RoR stats.

So the free tracking software DB i can use if i ask some hand history from PS and put those Hh in it and i will be able too see my stats about SD ?
That is great !
Thx

I think you maybe made a mistake when you said :" the variance in these games are already low compare to live, due to many fewer pot seing showdown ...

I guess you mean it is already high variance in 6 max compared to live ?

If you played live shorthanded you'd have much higher variance than 18BB/100. Live FR has a typical variance of 12BB/HR (so, per 30-35 hands) while online FR would have 11-13BB/100. It is an aspect of more live hands being multiway for multiple streets, the pots are large. You don't see many hands online with 3+ people at showdown.

The reason that online bankrolls are typically so much large in BB is that the games are tough enough that you can't get big win rates. A live player claiming 1BB/HR is saying he makes 3BB/100. Nobody gets close to that online. Again, win rate matters a lot more than the variance. Thus, live pros get to have smaller BR in BB. Take this to the extreme of NL play where the huge WR means you get to see smooth graphs.

I'd add that (through inspection, not yet regression), SD is heavily driven by VPIP and WTSD. Which makes sense: when your VPIP is high, you'll have a wider distribution around your per hand results and "fatter" tails, if we were to convert all your hands into a BB won histogram. When you showdown more, the final pots are bigger, which adds to your variance.

The main reason why SD is important to know is that it allows you to estimate your risk of ruin. Say you have two guys who win at 1.5 BB/100, so pretty strong. One plays a low variance style (17 BB/100), while the other plays a high variance one (23 BB/100).

To grind 6-max LHE with just a 1% RoR, the first guy needs just a 444 BB roll (according to this), while the second guy needs 812 (almost double the roll).

Now, having a huge variance isn't a bad thing (and I'd argue that the guys in my games w/ positive win rates and huge standard deviations are often the toughest players), but it does mean that you have to be more strict on your bankroll requirements.

In talking to other people who had 6 to 7 figure databases, I haven't seen people that had SD that different once you filtered for number of players. Maybe I'm just wrong, but I don't believe that you can change your SD by 6BB/100 while keeping your WR reasonable.
lets say someone has a 1 or .8 BB/100 WR, it is way easier to drive his WR to 0.5 or 0 BB/100 than it is to reduce his SD from 20 to 15 (or whatever). I don't think you can just "play a low variance style", win at the same rate (or at all), and play with a much smaller bankroll. I've seen no evidence of it, looking at stats of a decent number of winning players.

good post, one prerequisite that you forgot is "Getting Started In Hold'em"

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Starte.../dp/1880685345

I just want to add to the chorus of those saying 15k is a ludicrously small bankroll for 40/80. I know a very solid former pro who posted on this site who is now busto after getting hit with a 28k downswing at the Commerce 40.

I have another friend who is still a pro that won at 2bb/hr at 40 for 500 hours then broke even for the next 1000 hours.

How are you guys calculating your standard deviations? Back when I took this seriously I thought you had to either log your results once an hour or use a lengthy math formula after logging session results.

I think the easy solution to this wonky argument is the following: what is the max winrate attainable in a 40 game with a stDEV of 9? I would assume Mason is assuming a higher winrate than everyone else. My gut says the 9stDEV player would be lucky to be winning half a bet per hour in most 40 lineups, but my opinion on this matter is pretty insignificant. I'm curious what donkey and jon think.

Not disagreeing with you at all, but I wonder how many BBs went into the odd 60/120 or 100/200 shot when the games were great. There's always the additional circumstances. Still since they always happen, having extra $ in the roll helps with all of it.

I think even though the answer would be easy to arrive at, it would be a useless answer.

Setting your SD and trying to maximize your WR is a really bad thing to do. It's a very common thing to do but it's very bad.

Most relevant statistics are much more dependent on WR than SD. You'd want a WR of 0.6 and SD of 12 over a WR of 0.5 and SD of 10, and the way rake works, it's far more likely that your WR scales disproportionately high to SD.

You have to drift pretty far from optimal play to get your SD down that low.

This is why I think 15k for 40/80 is just not doable. If you play correctly, the stDEV is too high for a 15k bankroll. If you play in a way that your stDEV gets down near 9, you stray so far from optimal that you don't approach a winrate that can allow for the equation to make sense. The implied winrate with the stDEV of 9 (which is lower, in my opinion) needs to be priced in so the bankroll requirements can be recalculated.

Maybe you could be so good at showdown that you save a bunch of bets because you hero fold enough to save that last BB in a lot of close spots and reduce your variance (full BB swings)? I don't really buy it, but I'm a high WTSD% guy so maybe it just isn't my style. Is there something there? Seems much more likely in NL where the river bet is some decent % of a pot sized bet and the villains are so much less likely to put in thin value bets (or actually pull the trigger to bluff).

I say all that, I'm totally with you, Clayton. You're just not going to have a decent WR with a really low stDEV. Not in anyone I've run into. Maybe we're all those over-aggressive monkeys?

You can have a hi wjnrste and very low standard deviation if you are a massive nit/bumhunter and only play short handed for example with 3-4 people that open limo the button...etc.

thats why it's so wrong for people to obsess over their winrate or standard deviation. I could beat 20-40 or 40-80 for 1.5BB/hour if I wanted to, but the amount of hours I actually get in over a week, month, year would be quite reduced.

Sure, I may never have a 15k downswing but I'll have less money as well

Fortunately, with the advent of the abacus and the discovery of electricity, lengthy math formulae are quite manageable by even math neophytes these days.

You are in for a lot of suprises after your senses wake up from decades of suspended animation. Prepare to be blown away!

I missed the part of this thread where someone argued for a $15k bankroll for 40/80

That's just absurd. I had an over $13k downer in just 4 sessions of 40/80, that probably totaled around 2/3rds of a week for a full time player. That's practically busto in 3 1/2 days of play. And I've a fairly good win rate at 40/80 in 2015.

Though I have addressed my opinion on a 9 BB/hour standard deviation; that's just completely wrong. Like JL said, you can be a total nit and total bumhunter and probably pull off a high WR/SD ratio, but that's not the goal. The goal is to maximize $.

Maybe you can maximize $ by playing a lower variance style, allowing you to play higher on a lower bankroll. But I can't imagine you're playing anywhere close to optimal if you're constantly ducking high variance spots.

Edit: I did kind of generalize; the motivations are different for everyone. Maybe some people seek to maximize their "sharpe ratio" of poker (aka maximum WR/SD) as essentially a low stress side income. Maybe these guys can take those super underrolled shots at 40/80, since they're naturally low variance and only playing in pristine spots. Just that if you're a pro who has to play 40/80 even when the game isn't great (maybe 8 handed with two other 2+2'ers, 2 other pros, 1 TAGfish and 2 spots), you just are exposing yourself to way too much risk. I wouldn't even think of going pro at 40/80 without at least $40k of immediately liquid BR, and probably wouldn't be mentally set without at least $80k for a roll.

One more side note: even if you're immune to the swings and constantly play your "A" game, running bad for a stretch means your frequent opponents are running good on average. Since people tend to play better when up, your WR won't be as high, so this could make downswings worse than what your expected WR and SD dictate.