Came out of a breakeven stretch and minor downswing and back to pwning donks. Scored a +1179 win saturday night and a +249 win sunday night. Trying to prove some 2p2ers wrong about being a luckbox donk myself.

Total sessions: 27
Total Won: 7452.50
Hours: 207:08
Average/Hour: $35.98

Best/worst hand I played:

1 limper, I iso w/ Jd9d on the BTN, blinds call. Flop: 7c8dKh

I bet, blinds fold, limper c/raises, I 3!, limper 4!, I 5!, limper 6!, I 7!, limper tries to 10! but dealer tells him he can only 8!, I call.

Turn: Tc.

Limper bets, i raise, limper calls.

River: Kx

Limper checks, I check behind and beat out 87o.

7betting for a free card never failed so miserably.

Just so I've read things correctly, we have a gutshot, right?

Gwtf?G

Not really going to accomplish this by posting that hand

+BDFD

But yeah really spewy.

And WTF bet the river.

Did you notice that you barely posted during your breakeven/downswing stretch? You used to post 2-3 hands per week when you were running well; I thought maybe you were on an academic schedule and got busy during September.

Your last update on your status was that you were up "29 racks" ($5800) in "100 hours". So since then you've done +$1600 over 100 hours - still nothing to sneeze at, but I suspect it hasn't occurred to you that your "downswing" has lasted as long as your rungood. Do you see why people laugh at +5 BB/hr being sustainable?

From a mathematical perspective, why do you consider your first 100 hours to be your long-term winrate and your second 100 hours to be abnormally low, rather than the second 100 hours being representative of your long-term win rate and the first 100 hours abnormally high?

And since I think the "luckbox donk" comment was aimed at me, let me just state that it's not what I think at all. I think you're a long-term winner in the game who's grossly overestimating win rate and as a result you're stifling your growth as a poker player. You've won enough for a 15/30 bankroll, and if you posted more hands where there's a real decision to plug your leaks, I think you could easily move up. The Oaks 15/30 is a pretty awesome game from what I've experienced and heard (someone called it the best 15/30 in the country, and by my calculations the rake is proportionally lower than 1/2 online with approximately the same level of competition), so not wanting to play it because you think you can maintain $50/hr at 6/12 is ridiculous. Even $30/hr at 6/12 may be ridiculous, $15-$20 is probably reasonable, and $10-$15 is realistic (all IMO).

Look at Gary and Ron. Do you want to be like them when you're 65, playing for peanuts in your golden years? They're almost certainly long-term winners but they have leaks in their game, and basically can never move up because the rely on the weak field to win while losing to even the semi-decent players (something both of them have semi-admitted to me). Heck, I'm pretty sure that the Oaks raising the rake from $4 to $5 will kill their games and that's gonna happen sooner or later.

callip - in response to your post, I do admit very honestly that I think I can beat the 6/12 game for quite a lot. And I'm setting out to prove it if I can, but when I entered the downswing, I just quietly took it as it inevitability. I also wanted to see for myself what my true winrate would approach; atm, it's at close to 3BB/hr. At ~30 hands/hr and 207 hrs, I'm at about 6k live hands. Something else I've noticed was the importance of game selection; the difference between playing on a Fri/Sat night and a Wednesday morning is the difference between winning at >3 BB/hr and losing > 1 BB/hr. I haven't been posting in the limit forums, as I've also been playing more NL tourneys online as a result of college and gf demands.

I didn't bet the river with the Jd9d, because villain's range after going 7bets with me on the flop is 2pair+, all of which fill up except 87o. This is the first time I've aggressively tried to take a free card, having read a post by Jesse a while ago about 5betting for free cards. In the heat of battle, I thought villain would slow down with all but KK, so I thought it heavily unlikely he'd be shoveling so many bets with less. I wanted to give off the image of aggressively defending my positional advantage on the BTN. I prob should've given up after villain's 6th bet instead of the 8th bet, and ppl can spend all day arguing how spewy it is but I make up for the spew with future value bets.

callip, I've looked at others' winrates, and I don't think my edge is that big in the 15/30. I sat in on the 15/30 sunday night, and it was awful. Given how keen I am to loose-passive tendencies, I'd have to rework my entire game; forsake thin value-bets, rework the % at which I call down turn raises (baluga theorem), rework equity considerations (e.g. raising/isoing a EP limper with something like A9s), contest more 2-3 handed pots (where more bluffing likely occurs) instead of just simply having an equity-hog hand in mass multiway pots). I have endless notes on 6/12 players, due to the large number of hands going to showdown; that gives me a very complete picture of how players play and think. You just don't get that in 15/30, where ppl are mucking the losing hand a ton. In order for me to show a greater profit atm, I'd have to beat the 15/30 for > ~1.4 BB/hr.

Swift, I tried to think of a nicer way to say it, but I couldn't make the wording right. So I'll just speak straightforwardly and trust that you believe me when I say that my goal is not to offend you, but is in fact to help you get better at poker.

Pretty much everything you just posted doesn't make any sense.

I think it's probably representative of a skewed/incorrect thought process that you have toward limit holdem. I didn't want to address every one of your points in one long post, but would be happy to do so if you would like. Or we can talk more via PM if you'd prefer. It's my feeling that improving your thought process and approach will greatly help your progress as a player.

Listen to Babar, because he's totally right. Just about the only part of your post I agree with is checking your J9s hand on the river for the reasons you stated.

I can understand if he doesn't want a public discussion, but posting it in the forum helps other people too.

At 200 hours and 13.5 BB/hr SD, the error on that win rate is about +/- 1.8 BB/hr. By your own admission, you ran well (not neutral) for the first part, so it's more likely you're on the lower end of that range, but I think that you still think that your true winrate is at the higher end of that range.

As an aside, the proportion needs to be higher than 12/30, as you need a larger monetary winrate at the higher stakes to offset the increased variance. Based on the Certainty Equivalent, you'd need to make about 0.54x, BB-wise. So if you really think your 6/12 winrate is 3.5 BB/hr, you need to win 1.9 BB/hr at 15/30.

You're absolutely right that if your 6/12 winrate is 3.5 BB/hr, it's probably not worth moving up. I just don't think your 6/12 winrate is 3.5 BB/hr. Drop it to a 1.5 BB/hr and a 0.7-0.8 BB/hr win rate at 15/30 is better, which is definitely doable.

Meh, whatever. You know what I think and you're a big boy. Good luck to you.

We should meet up sometime. I might do the mntndrew and actually try and go once a week for lunch.

callip - that's strange, I don't remember your face at all, and I remember a ton of 6/12 players' faces. I'll definitely look for you some time.

BBB - ouch. I'm willing to hear your criticism of why you think my post is inaccurate.

Swift, just want to point out that 207 hours/6K hands just isn't a sample size. I've run for 2+BB/100 over 65K hands and broken even over 80K hands. And that's just from memory, I'm sure if I actually pulled up my DB there would be other crazier stuff going on. The long run is really really long. Keep working to improve your game and keep your head in the right place and you'll be fine.

No ouch intended!

dosxx - i realize all of this, and even before I say anything further, I will get heat for "thinking" (or claiming to think) that I know anything about what I'm saying in terms of long runs.

All I have to say is this. The games I play in are excellent; filled with terrible players that can be easily exploited, whether too loose pre, too much of a calling station, etc. I don't claim to be perfect in my poker ability (read the Jd9d hand), but I do know this: if you are capitalizing on every poker decision, I can't imagine why it would take 100K hands to estimate your ability (forget exact winrate, just whether you are winning or not).

It's much more likely that what we "claim" to be variance is simply a reflection of our edge; when our edge is minimal (or non existent), we will inevitably find ourselves in many more "breakeven" stretches, losing streaks etc. I have a big edge in the 6/12 games I play, and it's only been increasing over the course of 6 years that I've been playing. But that's because I table select; the moment I find myself at a table that's not full of terrible players, I get up.

Dos, I think of it this way. Even though my sample may only be 6k hands, the # of decisions I am making is many times greater. On any given street, I can choose between calling, raising, or folding. Compounded, that could be anywhere from 18k-30k decisions in the course of 200 hours. Maybe this logic is incorrect, but if I'm NOT beating a game full of terrible players, I immediately first reexamine my game for leaks rather than chock it up to "long-run" effects. The conditions just simply may be different for you; I can't imagine one's edge being that big in say, a 20/40 or 15/30 game. You're just not getting 9 way capped pots that the 6/12 games are getting, along with an inordinate amount of straight forward and predictable players. In tougher games, your overall edge may be incredibly small.

It's rare for me to ever sit down in a 6/12 game and not think I'm the best player at the table (not-so-thinly-veiled-brag). With an edge that big, how could I not think I could beat the game for a significant amount?

On a side note, couple of random hands (open to criticism as always; omitting reads due to cluttering):

Hand1:

3 limps, BTN opens, I call with 96s. Flop: A92. Checked to BTN who bets, I call, 1 call. Turn: K. BTN bets, I call, limper calls. River: T. BTN bets, I look over and limper looks uncomfortable, I call, limper folds. MHIG.

Hand2:

3 players limp, I raise A9o from sb, BB calls. Flop: QJ9. Checked around. Turn: J. Checked to the last player who bets, I call, rest fold. River: K. I c/c, MHIG.

Hand3:

2 limps, normally-nitty BTN that's not being very nitty opens the BTN, I 3! 22, 5ppl to the flop. Flop: 2QT. I check, checked to BTN who bets, I raise, he 3!'s, I call. Turn: J. I lead, BTN raises, I 3!, BTN folds (and talking to him later, turns out he had AQ).

This tells me that you're results oriented - "rungood is inevitable, downswing is inevitable." Whatever was the most recent thing that happened to you is how things are going to be going forward.

You're making conclusions based on a completely meaningless sample size. 6k hands is just nothing. I know it takes forever to get a sample in live poker and I feel bad for live players grinding it out, especially when they don't run well. I think you need a better understanding of statistics, variance, and the long run. Have you ever had a 200 BB downswing? 300? 500? In a low-stakes highly-raked live game I would be very surprised if a winrate over 1 or 1.5 BB/100 were sustainable by an expert in the long run.

I definitely agree that game selection is a big deal.

It doesn't really matter what you did on the river in this hand, because the flop play was very bad. You're playing low-stakes live poker vs a cast of villains whose main trait is missing value and being passive/MUBSY a lot of the time. One of them finally wakes up with a hand he's excited about and starts putting in money, and your thought process is to keep raising back until he stops? You have a gutshot and probably zero pair outs. You're lighting 80 or 90% of every one of those bets on fire. All the streets in a poker hand are connected. It doesn't matter if you got a "free" card on the turn if you paid some obscene number of bets on the flop for it. It's expensive now, not free.

With respect to Jesse, and I'm not sure what post of his you're referring to, but you should base your play-style around sound logic and strategy that applies to the game you're in. Just because something happens in another game, done by another player, doesn't mean that it's necessarily right or correct to do in your game. Getting him to "slow down" with KK isn't a victory for you --you and he have ended up putting more money in than he would have if you'd played it normally. That's bad for you. I'd say working more to understand the concept of equity would be really useful for you - I alluded to this in your Q9dd thread as well.

This spew is not made up for by future value bets. Your opponents are poor and will pay off your value bets until the cows come home regardless of how you played any one particular hand.

I'm not sure your edge in the 15/30 would be that great currently, but that's more a function of making your own game more solid, and not that all the 15/30 live regs are world-beaters. All this stuff you just posted doesn't make any sense. You don't have to re-tool your game to move up from 6 to 15. You don't have to change your value betting ranges. The Baluga theorem is an NL concept that I don't think even applies here. You'd have to contest more 2-3 handed pots because there are going to be more 2-3 handed pots, because it won't be a 7-to-every-flop limpfest. This shouldn't be something daunting to you -- it should be exciting and a challenge to try and figure out how to use your aggressive nature to your advantage. All you have to do is play solid TAG poker, figure out what people do poorly, and try to take advantage of it.

It's awesome that you have good reads on the 6/12 regs, but you can achieve these reads on anyone you play vs. You're clearly motivated and think a lot about poker and I have no doubt you can shore up your leaks and become a really solid LHE player.

I'd be happy to continue this discussion. Please don't think I'm picking on you specifically - I see this as a learning experience for everyone here.

BBB

You just posted 3 hands where you played poorly. It's nice that you won them but that's not the important thing. You are being results-oriented.

I think the problem is that you are overestimating your ability to accurately judge your own skill level. Everybody has this problem to some degree, it's pretty much why poker games are good at mid stakes or higher, it's a game of incomplete information. In reality, the single greatest factor for whether we win or lose over a small sample is whether we realized our 33% equity on a 9 way capped pot. How many bets are those big pots? Now, think about how losing or winning an extra 1 or 2 over a small sample can skew your results drastically.

I do admire your ability to avoid complacency. It's something everyone could work on more.

Ah, but you are not simply claiming that you're winning. You are claiming an exact winrate. You posted a four sig fig winrate with no error bar.

Didn't you just start tracking your results recently? If so, how do you know that you have had a big edge if you've had an edge at all, and furthermore that it's increasing over time?

It's not just for midstakes or higher, the entire poker economy revolves around people overestimating their ability.

I know this is one of DougL's favorite things to point out so apologies for stealing his thunder, but current poker players are self-selective for people who ran well initially. It's rare to find someone who lost a ton of money initially but enjoyed it so much they actually stuck with it - most players (fish or otherwise) in the game started off by running well and believing it was skill. Then, over the course of time, they think they're running bad compared to their initial burst, when in actually they're actually running neutral.

Even at small stakes, most people believe they're currently in a downswing because they're decent players who are running bad, and that if they play enough, they'll return to their glory days.

You could probably poll everyone in a card room and find a very high percentage of lifetime historical winners. The lifetime historical losers picked a new hobby.

This isn't completely on point, but I think it's close enough to be somewhat interesting (plus a lot of you probably didn't see it since I first posted it in the Micros).

Posted 12/24/08 (Full thread here):

I'm one of very few who have a semi reasonable sample size for a live game. Just this morning I generated my lifetime 20/40 graph; I'll be posting it tonight after I get my 200 some hands to add to it.

I believe a true expert could beat that oaks game for close to 2 big bets per hour with exceptionally nitty game selection, constant focus, and general bad assed ness. But that level of game selection is never practiced, and that sort of work ethic ensures you'll crush the 15 within 6 months.

I always assumed the small stakes games revolved around people making GAMMBOOOL, not really thinking they are 1BB/100 winners, but that they liked to gamble and sometimes suck out.

They don't think they win. They think they break-even and are average. Which at 3/6 where something like 25-40 bets leave the table every hour is hilarious.

Also I would assume a lot of losing players think they are breakeven/unlucky/etc

BBB - I am truly grateful for your genuine criticism, and I want to respond with unaltered true feelings/reactions.

"I am results oriented." There seems to be this taboo on 2p2 that being results oriented is inherently bad. My feeling is that it's not. I use results to aid in being rational and logical. I might've come off as defending the Jd9d hand as being well-played/not-that-bad/etc. That's not my intention; hand was botched. However, I disagree on it being simply atrocious based on lighting the majority of each bet on fire. It's much more complicated than that. For example, BBB, if I have AK and attempt to raise for a free card, I am also "burning money", but the benefit of getting a free card may outweigh the initial investment. Here, I didn't weigh the fact that a c/raise from a LP (he was actually kind of aggressive, but no point splitting hairs) is too strong to attempt free cards and should simply peel and attempt to hit my straight.

"'Rungood is inevitable, downswing is inevitable.' Whatever was the most recent thing that happened to you is how things are going to be going forward." - You're sort of twisting my words here. I'm saying that for all players, we should all experience some form of rungood and downswing. The exception would be some extreme type: imagine a player who simply called all streets and folded 100% on the river; this type of player would never experience rungood. Point: It's a probability phenomenon and not all that important; I'm simply taking my lumps when I go through downswings while sharing my joy at being able to use what I learn on this forum to maximize in periods of rungood.

"Meaningless sample size." - It is. However, I've been playing poker for 6 years now, the 6k hands are only tracked over a 2 month period where I took up the suggestion to be brutally honest with myself. I realize I'm making a big claim to winrates, and I'm fully prepared to be completely wrong. But I like making big goals, and in the meantime, I'm just posting updates on how I'm doing.

BBB, I want to talk more about the Jd9d hand and what I was thinking about at the time. I'll make a post about it and post all my thoughts in there. In the meantime, lets talk more about the Qd9d hand; I'm curious what your thoughts are on it. You sort of make open-ended responses and not suggestions on whether to bet or check the turn. I checked but could easily understand the merits of betting. This spot is slightly different than the one in SSHE saying to sometimes continue betting "strong draws" on the turn; (pg174; turning down free cards). In SSHE, the example has hero holding AdTd on the BTN on a board of J332 (with two diamonds). We instead have Q hi here.

BBB, I want to ask you defend some of the claims you make, because I otherwise just don't agree with them:

"You don't have to change your value betting ranges." EP limps, prop limps behind in UTG+2, I folded but was thinking about ranges. If I were the BTN in this hand and it were folded to me, what would be my iso/value-raising range? In the 6/12 game, I'd very happily iso/value-raise with any two suited broadways, A7s+, K9s/Q9s, 66+. I suspect that this is simply too wide to be profitable in a tighter game. (and again, might be results oriented, but it makes me nervous to see prop show up with 99 here, as this is a hand I'd easily raise with.)

"The Baluga theorem is an NL concept that I don't think even applies here."
I might've quoted the wrong theorem. The one I'm thinking of is exploiting LP's general turn raising range; one pair hands are often in trouble when raised on the turn in small-stakes games. For example, if I have TT on a board of 983; if I raise pre, bet flop, and bet turn when an overcard hits (J/Q/K/A), I am folding an inordinate amount of the time against a c/raise. I don't think that's necessarily profitable in the 15/30.

"It's awesome that you have good reads on the 6/12 regs, but you can achieve these reads on anyone you play vs." BBB, I addressed this but I think you completely ignored my point. I get to see a lot more hands at showdown in the 6/12 game, whereas everyone is very careful to muck losing hands in the 15/30. Overall, there is a lot less leakage of information and reads to pick up on.

I'll post in response to the other 3 hands I posted that you also thought were so terrible.