For those hit & run people...

I did a quick look at my stats, wondering how I'm doing in "long" (lol) 10+ hour sessions. I have a lol sample size, but so far, they clearly state I would be WAY better off playing 10+ hour sessions.

1/3 NL

Overall Stats (which include my 10+ hour stats, so removing them would create even worse results):

810.8 total hours, $25.02/hr winrate, 70.25% session winning percentage, with average session length being 6 hrs 40 minutes (again, keep in mind these stats include my 10+ hour sessions)

My 10+ hour session stats (all sessions between 10 and 12.1 hours):

138.3 total hours, $47.24/hr winrate, 92.3% session winning percentage (12-1)

My 2nd, 4th and 5th largest winning sessions have also come in these 13 10+ hour sessions. Only 1 losing session, and only 2 other session where I didn't quite match my overall winrate of $25.02/hr.

Keep in mind I don't drink, plus I'm always home before 10:00pm (with perhaps one slight extension or two). i.e. I'm never drunk / super tired in the early am. Also, each of these long session I basically just played to a set time of night; i.e. no "hey, I'm up and doing good, I'll play a little longer", just simply "I'm leaving at 9:30pm, win or lose".

Having said all that, that's based on lol 138.3 hours. Maybe I'll have something worth discussing when I reach 1000 hours worth of 10+ hour sessions. But, still, so far my "long" sessions have proven to be ~twice as profitable as my "shorter"/"average" sessions.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think 2/5 short is better too if you're good at it and the game's about as good.

Also I think you should think less staticly about how many hands = enough data to be safe, but just realize that the more data you have the more likely your data is meaningful. 500 is where it starts to be meaningful in the sense that it's probably, idk just throwing figures out there, like 90% likely to be within 10bb/hour? Just an estimate. Obviously the bigger your winrate the smaller of a sample you need to be sure.

After reading all these great posts statistically speaking, I attempt to even things out a bit. After crushing over 300 hours at 34$/hr at 1/2 this year, I've come down to life, on 5bi downswing since. Largest downswings for you guys? And is 5bi cause for concern? I think I made maybe 2 minus ev calls equating to 1bi, I take blame for this. I'm always taking ownership for a leak... Student of the game as usual.

5bi is not much. I just had a -10bi session. I've had a few at 1/2, but my overall winrate is 30bbs+. It depends a LOT on how deep and aggro your game plays. In fact, some very deep games are played super passive.

Contrast it with your biggest wins. If it's not more than 50% of your biggest session/upswing then it's probably fine, though do watch for leaks during this period.

Largest win at $1/2 was $1200 this year, so its 1/3 of my biggest session. Biggest upswing about 3k, also consistent with 1/3

Sol from what I've gathered is your very solid. Don't you play for a living?

I would say 500+ is good to determine if you are a winner/loser and to give an indication how well you are beating the game but if you anything "outlier" in nature, such as running really hot or running really bad, you just don't have the volume in to hammer it out.

I posted mine a few pages back (post#2582) after originally questioning canoodles claim that he's never gone on a 3 BI (I'm assuming BI = 100 BBs) downswing. After looking at my records (two 4.57 BI downswings plus only one other 3+ BI downswing), I don't think his claim is as unbelievable as I first thought. But I'm assuming he plays in the same type of game I do (i.e. a lot of players with ~100 BB stacks, not too many deepstack situations, unlike ^^^ sol above).

Hang in there. A few weeks back I was stuck near the tail end of a session, and combined losses from previous sessions had me stuck at that particular point just over 5 BIs. However, in the last hour I managed a comeback to actually eke out a decent profit in the particular session (thus not officially setting a 5 BI downswing), and in the next two sessions I logged my 4th and then 2nd biggest wins, totally turning things around.

My year as a whole also got off to a rough start. 4 session losing streak for 4.57 BIs (both tied records) and well into May I was up a grand total of 1 BI ($300) for the year. I've gone on a crazy heater since, and I'm now up over $7000 for the year (recreational once-per-week player) and my 2012 winrate of $23.33/hr is just slightly off my overall winrate of $25.02/hr.

i.e. Hang in there. If you are much better than the majority of your opponents (you are, right? they're basically ******ed, right?) then things will turn around.

GcluelessNLnoobG

These last few pages seem to have some reasonable numbers. I quit looking at this thread several months ago when it became a lie-fest....who could make up the biggest lie about thier win rate.

Taking big downswings suck. During the summer of (WSOP time) 2011 I made a gross amount of money playing 2/5 & 5/10. Maybe its just human nature to think history will repeat itself, or becuase if you *think* you're a pretty good player you should someone "deserve" to win, or think it will just happen, NOT.
This past series I made about 40% of what I made last summer, still a nice shot, but disapointing -plus had higher varience than I'm used to.

After taking most of August off, I buckeled down for some old fashion hard work and long grind session during Sept & October and near instantly found myself just over 4BI down! The largest downswing I've taken in 2 years of live play.

I've been playing a gross amount of hours, my hourly win rate for the year is very modest, however the irony is that my overall "net" income dollar amount will prolly be higher than my historical average as we close out 2012.

In Vegas, hourly numbers that I'm hearing from the best players (top 5-10%) are; $1/2 & $1/3 =$20-25 per hr, $2/5 = $35 per hour, and $5/10 = $45-50 per hour, $10/20+ = ? all over the map. Kindly keep in mind these are honest numbers and reflect tougher games, and smaller player pool as the stakes go up.
And although I'm not much of a $1/2 or $1/3 player, some of the larger buy-in $1/3 games can get so juicy and so easy, it actually easier to make more money in some of these smaller games, consistently & without much risk, than playing in tough $2/5 & 5/10 games. In the last year the 2/5 and 5/10 games in vegas have become tougher than ever..

Thanks for your input. So are you saying 4bi downswing is your largest, or is this 4bi dswing over those 2mths?

Four buy-in down swing was my largest ever. Not fun for me as I'm not used to losing that much or taking such largish swings....

My general play style is a fairly snug - low vareince style of game. I'm playing today, and tomarrow, and the next day, and the day after that.......and I don't have to take a lot of chances and put my stack at risk in marginal situations or, generally speaking, have heart burn over losing a bunch of money and try to justify it to myself as "run bad" or "varience".

I simply cannot believe people have never had over a 4 BI downswing, just seems absolutely ludicrous or you are the biggest nits ever

My largest drop has been 3.5 BI but I'm a nit.

As I've opened up my game my swings are way larger, with overall more $$/hour. I am however going over a lot of marginal +ev spots w friends to keep sane when I continue to lose these pots often to make sure it's correct.

I used to have a 3bi dswing as my largest ever, but winrate was much lower bc I used to nit nut peddle. Now that I go after alot of small +ev spots I win more long term, but larger swings...

Have to work on that part of my game. Missing out on long term winnings by playing too nitty.

It's so rewarding when the lightswitch clicks... Challenge yourself.

I think I am a fairly top tier in terms of live players, especially at the stakes I play. I used to play pretty high online, but dropped down to play live a lot after black friday and have enjoyed the change of pace. Since then I've played a lot of live and have been doing very well. I was doing uni before, so I'm going pro tentatively.

I've given this advice a lot, but I think one of the keys to having a good long-term relationship with poker is to a) have a fulfilling life outside of poker b) find poker interesting. If the only thing you think about is poker, you'll get burnt out soon, so you need other healthy things to do. Having other diversions also means that over time you will miss poker, so every time you have a break, or even just spend time exercising, playing games/sports, etc, you actually get back into the grind with the right attitude. Not playing poker when you don't feel like it helps you from associating bad feelings with poker.

Finally, having lots of people to discuss high/interesting levels of poker theories is important as it keeps the game fresh; learning new poker variants online can also give you a fresh change, and sometimes allows you to keep in touch with poker while also not doing the same thing over and over. Playing some MTTs online or headsup gives me some fresh perspective between live grinds. Playing and bricking a billion MTTs in a row in general makes everything else feel more fun, so that's also a boon.

From my experience, I'd say that managing your lifestyle in those ways is most important.

Obviously working on your game matters a lot too, and keeps things interesting.

Everyone knows this, but it's best to see life as one long session and to avoid thinking about results much unless it's actually relevant. It's obviously useful for certain things, like analysing edge and knowing how much money to keep in br/bring to casino. In fact, for the former, I would argue that having a good player you know to analyse your game and edge is a far better way to do it than through results.

I might sound hypocritical since I post a lot in this thread, but in some ways there's no point even estimating one's own winrate. I mean it's useful when you're not sure, to gain some reference points, to discuss with other regs, but you should spend too much time thinking of it. The only reason to really think about winrate is when deciding where/what stakes you play on, and whether you can afford your lifestyle. I think basically all pros are recommended to be extra safe with their budgeting anyway, since they can't get insurance as readily, so as long as you do that I am sure it's fine.

fwiw I've known some pros who used to beat the games by a lot and didn't save up, and now can barely beat 1/2 online. As long as you're not wasteful I doubt it'd be an issue.

Yeah, that's more than fine. If your downswings are smaller than your upswings I can't imagine it being a huge problem, because in general you will have more upswings than downswings.

It becomes a problem when your downswings are bigger than your upswings, which can happen when you play in a game with lots of regs and 1 or 2 fish that aren't too deep. You're not getting stacks from the regs that much, and if the fish don't reload too much, you're rarely winning that much, and the only time lots of money changes hands is if the fish stacks you. While we all like to not tilt, a situation like this could create a super high variance situation as you try to make pots vs fish bigger and other regs also pump up the variance to get a piece of the fish money.

And obviously in these situations, even if you win the stack back you might still be down or just even (since other regs will win some of that money off the fish too).

So in these games very often you have lots of small-mid wins, and occasionally some big losses. If in these games you unluckily get some big losses strung together, it can hurt a lot.

But doesn't this also have to do with the types of games you play in? My typical table is <= 100 BB stacks / I-can't-raise-cuz-I-only-have-the-2nd-nuts. If your game is 500 BB stacks / I-think-I-can-push-him-off-2nd-pair, my guess is the swings could be a lot bigger.

You have to be running like the love child of steve prefontaine and jesus christ over the Mediterranean to not ever have a -4 BI session. ****, I've had like one or two -2k sessions where I get coolered once, lose a flip, have somebody suck out and none of my cbets work.

One session I raise pf, 2 callers, cbet the flop with bottom pair and a bdfd, call I know the guy is stabby with TPNK so I ch/ship the turned pair+nfd and he tank calls and theres -1BI. 2nd hand I flop TPTK vs a big aggro fish, I cbet the flop he calls turn is a brick and I ch/ship on him and he turns 2 pair. 3rd hand I have KK, flop an overpair and get it in vs TPNK and he turns 2 pair.

Thats like 3 BI's in about 2.5 hours. ****, my last big DS I got set over set with 4 BI's in front of me in a straddled 3bet pot. Thems the breaks.

What's your buyin structure 11t?

I've only had one session where I've lost more than 3 100BB BIs (I've had one other where I was just under 3 BIs). My record is 4 BI loss, where I stacked off twice WAY too loosely / tilty. Course, I've only been bringing 4 BIs to the casino (up until bringing 5 BIs recently due to knowing I'm going to play 10+ hour sessions), so I can never lose more than 4 BIs anyways. Lol sample size of around ~120 sessions (session count is off the top of my head, don't have my stats in front of me, but it's pretty close).

I dunno, at the tables I play, plus with my conservative style (which undoubtedly reduces my potential winrate), I think it's pretty difficult to lose 3+ BIs in one session.

GfishonaheaterG

It is literally impossible for me to have a -4 BI session because I don't bring that much money to the poker room. You can call me Jesus Prefontaine if you want.

-4BI downswings, though, not sessions.

I have a 2bi stoploss per session... Thinking of increasing that to 3 because I've left in the midst of a juicy.games where I was unlucky, but ran out of money, etc... Fwiw I have.little/no tilt problem.

My largest form of any tilt is raising pre a little lighter/wider, which is bad bc this means I have a losing image

Having a friend who's close enough to give you opinions on whether to quit or keep playing is useful sometimes, but obviously you need a close enough reg network. Works online though.