Around $650 at $5 ABI

I find it hard to find out my winrate! I havent played that many games (around 3K ish, at least that´s what I have in my database), breakeven ish, but I feel like I´ve ran insanely bad (especially in important spots, FT bubbles etc..) I have a total bb/100 for holdem, reg speed 11.85/100.
BB/100 with different stack-size:
0-20bb: 11.7bb/100
20-30bb: 11.7bb/100
30+bb: 17bb/100

Should that indicate that I am at least a descent winner? I play around $15 ABI! I´ve worked hard on my game and feel that my game is sharp. I have taken some shots on higher ($109-$215), with no huge scores.

The reality is that everyone seems to think they can make it. I'd guess that over 60% of people who play for a 'living' are wasting their time. If you've not been consistently beating the games at decent stakes over a very long period of time, then unless you are extremely intelligent, you would be better off doing other things with your life. This thread is full of perfect examples.

I would say the "extremely intelligent" people are the ones that are sacrificing the most life potential by choosing poker as a career, rather than using their intellect in a plethora of different fields with a much higher ceiling potential.

I used to think that downswings were for "other" players.
Now that I'm in a downswing, I know that there are no "others" -or I am an "other" too.

You play good, but still you get more than your shares of badbeats and suckuots by oppenents.
You lose most of your races.
Your play begins to deteriorate trying to plug leaks and when you can't get results you get more leaks.
You begin to question yourself, "Was I really a good player or a fish on a damn heater".

My current downswing has been going on about 150 tourneys with the same limits I always play (€5.5 - €22). So I'm about $3.000 down in profits now.
Time span of this is 2,5 months.
Giraffe below:

At this point over an entire 150 tournaments you have to consider the fact that you're leaking severely and it's not just a downswing. Regardless, I feel your pain.

Decent troll

lul

^

Bb/100 is obviously the best indicator. Not sure why you think it's a troll

150 tourneys might be too low a sample for people who play 20-30 tourneys a day, but as I said this has been going on for a few months now, while I play 1-3 tourneys per day.
And yes, I got some decent leaks too.

Will give you a hint: it's not a downswing

Maybe you guys already know about this "variance calculator", but this thread seems like the right place to post it:
http://pokerdope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

It wasn't a big dollar figure, but I recently went 28 tournaments in a row without cashing, playing $11 to $22 buy-ins, also some $7 zooms.

pls stahp

Is there a rule that says how many games should a downswing be over?
If not, please stfu.

Ad thanks for it sir!

The amount and size of downswings depends upon the size of field, payout structure, and your roi.

If you are really good, 40% roi, and playing 1000 seater tournaments with a typical payout structure the approx. chance y of seeing a downswing of Z BI's in x games is shown on this plot.


How long it takes to jump out from the bottom of a downswing is also dependent upon your roi. If you are at the bottom of a 75BI downswing but have a 100% roi it will take you on average 75/1 = 75 games to dig your way out. With a 50% roi it takes on average 75/0.5 = 150 games, if you have 40% it takes 75/0.4 = 188 games etc.

The lower your roi the deeper you tend to fall into downswings and the longer it takes to climb out. Watch out for tilt as some players spiral down instead of climbing out.

The problem with all I've said above is it is really difficult to have any idea of your true roi at any point. If playing 180 seat ones (I haven't done it for larger sized tournaments) and you had a 40% roi, every new block of 1000 games played would come in 90% of the time between 8% and 72% roi, a very wide range that is usually too wide to notice early if you roi is actually slipping. The spread would be bigger for larger sized games.

Actual results for large field tournies don't help that much in nailing your true roi - you need some other method. Perhaps if you work hard on your game you can stay ahead of the population or a coach may be able to give some feedback on your quality.

From the original graph ~800 is much too small a sample to get any real confidence. You could easily be on a heater at this point this happens to many players. Some will get lucky in the first 1000 games, some the opposite. The ones that get lucky early will tend to have too high an opinion of the quality of their play - the early unlucky tend to think the game is unbeatable.

Keep playing and time will tell just remember to work on your game - ether way the work should help.

Roughly 100-150 BIs at 9ish dollars, down from 2.5k to 1.2k

Here are some highlights:

HU I lost $100 over 5 matches losing 3 66/33 situations where I was ahead
In cash I lost with top two pair when I got it all in on the flop good until he turned his flush for $200
Lost 88 v KQ on river for $75
Lost AK v QQ twice today to go from making $30 to in the hole $50

And I went back and looked over the last 100 tournaments, here are some of what has taken place to give people an idea of what it is like to try and do this (my cards are the first ones):

1.jj v aq v aq rivered flush MONEYED but would ve been huge chip leader if you want hat one had over 70 bbs

2.88 v AQo would had 40+ bbs MONEYED

3.Aqo v A10s near the money woulda had 25 bbs

4..55 v a10 for 30 bbs

5.AKo v AQs woulda had 50+ bbs relatively deep 1/3 the field remaining

6.AQs v 66 for 30+ bbs

7.99 v 45s you had 5 bbs this time

8.88 v 76s, you shoved utg he called on button for 15 bbs

9.88 v aqs in 888 5k woulda had 45+ bbs nearing cash lost 34/35 previous hands going from top 10 to barely top 100/250

10.AJs flopped nut straight, he called 2 streets with backdoor flush with 710s on 10jkq then went all in on river j and you called Mistakish play on my end

11.QQ v AA flop came j4246

12.k9o in bb called min raise 678 flop checked over guy went all in he had aa you missed your straight

13.a2o 345 flop he called 109s in sb to min raiser 2utg turn gave him his flush, woulda been massive chip leader in satellite

14..QQ vs j8 woulda had 100+ bbs at 75 150 flop came 697 you shoved after 3 betting he called hit his str8

15.A2s v 84s satellite

16.A8o v A3o satellite same day as above

17.AKs v JKs satellite next day

18.KK vs AJ and A8

19.AA v 67 and AJ guy hit his str8, early woulda had 60+ bbs

20.Ak v ak v qq ace hit queen hit on river

21.99 v AK, woulda had 65+ bbs

Also I've probably lost something like 10-15+ crucial 66/33 where I was behind, the ones I've won have been relatively pointless in magnitude.

Actually the last tournament I did well in where I got 4th/600+ and won $500 I won AJs v AKo and QQ v KK.

I think the worst part of this is that my downswing has correlated my heaviest dose of studying where I invested in Doug Polk's MTT course and Matthew Janda's books, so as my strategy has gotten better my results have gotten much much worse.

To be entirely honest for the sake of this thread, I am likely going to quit after I go broke as I dedicated my summer off from school to do this and in many ways it's been a total failure so far.

These samples are pathetic guys get a grip

Not everyone is a high volume player Big Mick. I'd say 1.2k at $9 abi is significant. The good news is dude that if ur working hard on your game , the chances of you continuing to downswing that hard is very slim. I'd drop your average buyin down to $5, pick out some soft mtts and hopefully things will pick up.

Some people are just bad at poker no matter what, not sure if I'm too stupid or if I just can't apply what I've learned.

I played a few thousand hands at 5 cent 10 cent and lost like $30 today before I proceeded to go and lose $90 at 15/30 cent.

This should be a good lesson to people reading, even if you try and learn as much as possible, it's still entirely possible you'll be a loser and lose at all your games.

My BR is almost entirely at the point where the only reason I even have around 1k left is because I did two stupid heads up where I played for $500 for my entire bankroll twice, fortunately I got lucky and won both, but it's incredibly clear that I do not have what it takes to be even a decent poker player.

In general this is true, though there are enough players with a very good bb/100 that suck at the later stages / with shorter stacks. A good bb/100 is in no way a guarantee a player is winning.

I thought I would try to put a graph together to try to help beginners realize how much more gamble there is in large fields compared to the likes of STT's.

I have used very common actual tournament costs and payout structure from poker stars. $7 STTs,... $2.50 180s, to $11 ($10 + $1) the 'Big 11' (there were 1010 players in this one but I took this as close enough to use it as the 1000 payout structure.)

I set the finish distributions to be exactly flat and to give an roi of exactly 20% in them. This is extremely high for STTs but then this is the MTT Community forum and 20% is not so unusual in bigger fields. I would say any beginner having a true 20% roi in MTTs is unusual - it takes some work to get that good compared to the current population and you do need tens of thousand of games to get a decent estimate - by then they aren't at beginner status.

Here are the Normal 'Bell Curves' for these games:
[IMG][/IMG]
As you can see for 1000 tournaments the 'bell curve' for the 1000 seater is still very flat. Half of the players with 20% roi that play 1000 games will earn above 200BI's half below. Even after playing 10000 tournaments the 1000 seater 'bell curve' is still pretty wide. It is easier to see what the chances of getting below a certain amount of BI's is by using a cdf plot and so here is one using the same data:
[IMG][/IMG]
From the 1k game plot you can see that nearly 20% of people playing these big MTTs will earn 0 BI's or less if unlucky but the players with the opposite luck will earn 400 Bi's or more and show an roi of 40% for that 1k batch.

From the 10k game graph 1 in 50 people get really unlucky and only earn 5%, a paltry 500 BI's for all that effort but the lucky 1 in 50 player hits the big time and scores 3500 BI's or 3500 * $11 = $38500. These big field games have a lot of gamble in them. Compare this to the 9 seat STT the worst an unlucky 1 in 20 does is about 1700 BI's and the best only 2300. It's much less of a gamble playing STTs, you don't hit the big time but you don't hit such big lows.

Any player consistently hitting 60% or more over thousands of games with large fields can be chuffed with their ability but even they can't avoid variance and if you moved the above graphs so they centered on 60% roi it would be pretty accurate for what happens to them.

@BaseMetal2:

Thank you very much for the explanations and the effort you put in this.
I play smaller field tournaments (80-300).
My bb/100 for the "downswing" part is +12,6 with EV adjusted it is +17,9 bb/100!
I work on my game every day, spend more than 60 hours per month studying the game and reviewing my hand histories. I will keep studying harder.

For instance, in the last 2 days I had AA for 4 times, and lost them all. Yes it can happen but it gets frustrating, especially when I had flopped a set on 2 occasions and lost to runner runner straights, and then quads.

In addition, I lose other hands where I have 98,3% equity on the flop. These usually happen at the later stages of the tournaments, hence the big bb/100 wins while still I am losing in the bottomline.

Even if this isn't a "downswing" by mathematical standards, the best word I can come up with my issue is an "anomaly".