Ok. I think it's very hard to explain even in my home language and as you know english isn't my native language.

Anyway, my question is about PokerEV graph. There are blue line (SD winnings) and red line (expected). Let's say, today I played 5000 hands. My red line shows 500$ profit but blue line only 100$ (I run 400$ below expectation). Now let's say somehow we can repeat this day (these 5000 hands - the same tables, the same players, the same seats, the same situations - only coming cards are different) over and over, millions times. So in the long run our blue line will be the same as a red line? I mean in the long run we win average the amount what red line currently shows (500$ in example). Or there are some special situations where blue line run always below red line because of playing style?

I am asking it because on the 7-th february I changed my game. My main target was non-sd pots and more improved postflop play. I put more effort on non-sd pots (more 2-nd barreling, more check-raise bluffs, more thin vbetting, less folding to the river bets etc) and from this day I have only one day above expectation (it was 60$). All other days are waaaaaay below expectation (currently this month ~15 BI below expectation). And I start thinking maybe my new style cause that and running below expecation is normal.

The red and blue line will constantly pass back and forth through each other but will never seek true convergence. However, whilst they don't work towards an eventual convergence they don't diverge either. You could play a billion hands and have them both show the same number which is nice and neat after your billion hand sample. You'd then think that things have 'worked out' as they should. However, the next day you run bad to the tune of $2000 and suddenly it appears that after 1billion and 2 thousand hands the maths haven't worked out.

I'm sure someone who knows maths will compress all of what I've said above into one sentence that explains what is going on.

No style can cause you to run above or below expectation. Your expectation is your expectation. That's why even if a 90/0/0.5 fish comes on here and says that he's down 20bi on expectation you can't use the fact he's down as the sole criticism for his play. Yes, he'll almost certainly be putting his money in bad over and over again and thus is a losing player. However, his expectation was still to lose but not by the extra 20bi that he did and in short he was still running worse than he should have.

I get really frustrated when people question the fact you are 'X' amount down on all in luck by saying, "you must be playing bad too!" It just shows their ignorance as to what that graph shows. You could be playing the very, very, very best poker in the world and still have no control over what happens with your all in expectation.

I believe pretty much what acevader says.

However I've seen some posts (here by SammySG, and other forums by others) suggesting that expectation and showdown (red line and blue line) will not track each other and will diverge over time. I'm not sure I understand the math to figure it out.

If you suck at extracting value on your winners or inducing bluffs, etc etc then you will still struggle to win.
Poker isn't all about "getting all of it in when you're best" and seeing what happens.
Bluffing and semi-bluffing and sizing your bets right and knowing when to make value bets, etc make a difference too and I believe that many of those 'little' aspects, which aren't really that little, are kind of missed in those EV type graphs.


The EV graphss are all nice and pretty when you want to comfort yourself that it somehow isn't all your fault after you've dropped 25 buy-ins or whatever. But no matter how badly you were running, you almost certainly did a significant amount of that to yourself.

And I say that as someone who has taken some awful beats lately and dropped a bunch of buy-ins. Getting my AA's busted is not the only reason I'm losing though.