Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 46
What is pretty odd to me is that even some experienced players think that you can see how you run by looking at your EV graph. Of course, looking at negative EV graphs is one way of justifying your bad run, but there's of course a lot more to it.
What happens sometimes to some players is that they run like 20bb/100 for 20k hands and they feel like crushing. What happens next is that nothing seems to work.
One might not get suckouts, but might feel like he's getting bluffed constantly. Or that people just don't fold when he tries to bluff. Also, people seem to raise his cbets when he has nothing or a very mediocre hand and they always fold when he has a hand he wants to stack off with.
The fact is that the "run" is everywhere and you don't realise most of the positive run very easily. You might get one buyin very fast just by cbetting the flop if your cbets work. If they don't work, you might lose one buyin.
The worse thing is that once people play back at you every time you don't have a hand and fold when you have a hand, it's easy to think that they are trying to bluff/float you and that they have some supernatural reading abilities. This is pretty common especially when you've used to be the god of cbets for the last 2 weeks. You end up losing more, just because you don't run that good anymore, you just don't see it.
Here's a simple example that might help you understand how run affects your winrate even in flop cbets. This example is of course very simple and imaginary, but it still gives you the idea.
Let's say you see 50 flops as the preflop raiser and get one caller. You cbet 37 out of those, 22 as a bluff and the rest of the hands you just give up. So you cbet 37 hands, 22 as a bluff, 15 for value and 13 flops hit villain's range so well and you have nothing so you just give up.
You take it down 17 times you are bluffing and get 10 calls on the flop when you have a hand and then they fold on the turn. If the pot is 7.5 on the flop (you raised preflop to 3 and got a call + blinds), you bet 6 with a hand and 4.5 as a bluff, you have gained total of
(17 + 5) * (3+0.5+1) + 10 * (3+0.5+1+6) - 13 * 3 - 5 * (3+4.5) = 127.5 bb.
[22 bluffs + 5 bets with a hand that didn't get calls * (the blinds + your open) + 10 bets for value that got called * (blinds + open + cbet) - hands you gave up on the flop * your open - 5 * (open + cbet)]
On another day you make the same 50 raises, cbet the same 37 hands from which again 22 as a bluff. You again bet 6 to 7.5 pot with a hand and 4.5 when you are bluffing. If you get called when you are bluffing, you give up.
Now, you get called only 5 times when you have a hand and they fold after the flop. And they call you 15 times when you are bluffing and you give up.
Now you have gained
5 * (4.5+6) + 7 * 4.5 + 10 * (3+1+0.5) - 13 * 3 - 15 * (3+4.5) = -22.5 bb.
What this tells is that there's 1,5 buyin difference in running good and running bad in cbets in this example. And it could be even bigger.
What this means overall, is that there might be pretty huge variance even in these small pots depending on the dynamics between your and your villain's hands. Imagine what happens when you go to further streets.
