+1

Everyone will come to understand variance and downswings in their own time. You can't really convince people until they experience it themselves.

I think the "short term" in poker can go on for years, and inevitably some people will just run far above expectation for the duration of their poker career which clouds judgement. I used to be a sun runner who thought I ran "average." My comments regarding variance ITT circa 2015 were/are pretty comical looking back.

There is a certain hubris that comes with running good that I was certainly guilty of and see in many others, but at the end of the day it's not worth thinking too much about. Now I just try to make the best decisions possible and hope the pendulum swings back.

Definitely true, which is why it is so crazy that my winrate is at high as it is right now. Honestly, part of it is because I smoke a lot of weed when I play, otherwise I can't put in any hours, and it makes me spazz out occasionally.

I also go for thin value a lot with hands like this: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...range-1628324/ where I have KK and sometimes I'm too thin (like in that hand)

and lots of leveraged bets like this:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...73/?highlight=
and I'd probably benefit from playing more reg/TAG. But I enjoy exploring different lines so plenty of times I take non optimal lines because I'm trying something out and I'm wrong. But I'm not a pro so it is not a problem.

But also some just complete screw ups - where I squeeze 53s vs a loose, new opener and get called and end up bet/jamming turn with a gutshot and getting snapped by the nut straight and 3 outs to chop.

Lots of nit regs dislike playing against me because of the variance so they table switch away or play super tight which benefits me. And the battle regs battle with me, and plenty of gambly fish love playing with me, to the point where they seek me out and are happy to have me at their table.

So basically - you are right it's -ev, I've done it my whole poker career, always been a winning player but not massively so, until recently at 2/5 live (used to play NL200 online). It's a leak that I live with because money is only a part of why I play poker. I've also started playing much tighter preflop then I used to, which makes it a lot easier to be super aggressive in some bad spots and still win






tldr: sometimes I pay attention to this advice I got 4 years ago, and sometimes I don't

I havent self "selected" myself as anything- my results and what i know about the game in all kind of ways proves that i am a pretty decent player. Ive been winning steadily from the first time i sat down at a live poker table, wich is like 7-8 years ago. Most of the volume ive played over these years ive been one of the biggest winners in my playerpool. That is basically telling me all i need to know.

But its interesting that you and other posters argue that because of variance and "that we dont fully understand variance" (i guess its strictly players with smaller winrates or that have blasted through downswings in the 20-30 buyins area that really understand variance), cant tell if we are skilled players or even long term winners. So what you are saying basically, that due to variance wich we are supposed to never reach longterm- that we cant seperate winning players from breakeven or losing players. Everbody is apperantly just as good or just as bad in this game, and all on the same skillevel and we all have the same knowledge.

Most of the people that talk about never getting to the long term in Live Low Stakes simply aren't as good as they think they are and want to justify their mediocre results by blaming it on lol samplesize. The really good players are the ones that have recognized they have major holes in their game and have worked to address those holes rather than looking for ways to justify their mediocrity.

You think guys like Matt Berkey and Gman are just sunrunners that caught the good end of variance in live poker? GTFO of here with that bull****. Those guys busted their ass hard to get where to where they are at. Way harder than you or me. I don't know exact figures, but Phil Ivey regularly plays 18+ hour days. During his deep WSOP run he would play the main event all day. Then he would go play in Bobby's room, and then he would go play online. Most players don't have this sort of commitment to the game. You wanna know why your results are less than stellar? That's why. Bust your ass and get better or just keep telling yourself that you're simply doomed to run bad forever and ever.

For sure +1, well put. Most players are delusional when it comes to gauge their true skillevel and the majority vastly overestimates themself in their own head. When the results isnt up to par, and sunrunning doesent save their asses anymore when they make spewy plays,bad reads, make losing stackoffs, 3 bets light into a nutted range pre or whatever- then they get desperate to find ways to keep fooling themself and to find ways to explain their sub par results.

"If you take away a persons delusional pictures in life, you take away their whole life"- H. Ibsen

Warning: Not using the names of the players you are referring to does not mean that you are free to slag them ITT. Nothing has quite crossed the line yet, but it's getting very close to the sort of pissing contest that made us shut this thread down before and only bring it back with strict rules.

When your results aren't as good as you like in poker, it may be due to bad play, variance or a combination of both. Since you can never be sure, you need to be as as honest as possible with your self in order to assess your game.

People arguing that people who haven't experience large downswings maybe sunrunning do have a point. Moreover, people love having the illusion of control and feeling that our results are a function of our skill and beyond that our choices and hard work. But if there's one group on earth that should understand that this isn't always the case, it should be poker players.

Also, let's not forget this. Variance affects people in different ways; by default and expectation a small minority of players should experience results that are extraordinary. For example - and I am using this to illustrate the point, the numbers are ballbark- if you have a true 10bb/hr winner, 95% of his results over a given sample should fall between 7 and 13bb/hr. But 5% of his results could fall outside that range. So you could have a small minority of 10bb/hr winners who are either winning at an awesome clip of 13bb/hr plus or winning at a subpar clip of 7bb/hr and bellow.

Since this is the minority of cases, people experiencing such numbers should first focus their attention on their play, because that should be the no 1 explanation of this happening. But all of this being variance shouldn't be precluded as a reason.

The same is true of downswings and upswings. Within a population of 10bb/hr winners, the vast majority of the downswings should fall within a particular range. But again, by default, a small minority should experience swings that are outliers from what is expected and experienced by most other players.

You're not really considering the effect of different playing styles and game conditions on downswings. Using Mike as an example, it seems unbelievable that he has only had two >= 6 BI downswings in the time he's played so far, but he reports an absurdly low standard deviation, like 50-60 BB/h IIRC. He's not even getting those 80:20 all in spots nearly as much as you, so of course he doesn't have the chance to lose them. It's a bit annoying when claims are made that no good player should ever experience 10 BI downswings, but it's not surprising at all that he hasn't experienced them himself, and may not for a long time.

Just checked. My StnDev right now over all is 52.6BB/hr.

Its actually down to 48.4 in 2017.

Im sure I play more pot control than most other good players so that accounts for most of my low variance. But my position is, if I can still win at a nice rate by playing low variance, why wouldnt I?

I am sincerly not sure if this is aimed at me or others: but let me clarify that i am honestly not referring to spesific posters or spesific players at this forum in my recent posts ITT.

My posts are written for the most part as a general thoughts on this topics from my years of playing, and with many players from my regular playerpool in my mind that i log countless hours with from month to month.

+100000000000

You are in a for a very rude awakening if you think 1000 hours of running hot proves anything. I have played roughly 10000 hours of poker, with about 4000 of those hours at $5/10 NL and higher. My lifetime profit from cash games is in the high 6-figures and I have supported myself purely from poker for a decade, so I am not a "marginal winner" that you sunrunners are making fun of.

That being said, do any of you who have never had a downswing (800bb is not a downswing, I've had sessions worse than that) know what it's like to routinely lose 80/20's for 400BB pots, and to constantly run overpairs into sets in 3bet/4bet pots? To have most of your flopped sets run out 4-liners or 4-flushes by the river? To brick like 80% of your flopped straight flush draws or combo draws in big pots? How about when fish just keep hitting whatever cards they need, but then magically never have anything when you make the nuts? I could go on and on but I think I'm making my point here already. Now imagine a combination of these things happening, for MONTHS straight. Don't think it can happen? Well you are wrong, because mathematically it is a certainty that it will happen to some people, and if you play long enough, it will probably happen to you too.

Think you play well enough that you are immune to run bad? LOL that's hilarious, have a session where you lose two 400bb pots and then tell me how easy it is to win for the session. Then multiply that by 20...

BTW, if it sounds like I am complaining about myself, I am not. I am just stating the things that can happen, and DO happen to people, including myself at times. I have had months where I had fish constantly handing me stacks and I couldn't lose, and I have had months and years where I couldn't do anything to win. My biggest downswing came at a time when I was putting in the most work away from the table to work on my game and to improve my play, so don't be delusional and think that if you just play well you are guaranteed to win.

<mudslinging scrubbed>

There are clearly many different type games that we all play in. Ive been in a grand total of 1 400BB pot in my entire live career that totals about 2200 hrs since I started playing full time and maybe 3-500 sporadic part time hours before that.

Im sure that very good players that play in deep games can easily have much bigger downswings than Ive had. On the same note though, those same very good players should have much higher win rates if they are playing in deep games and have a huge edge. If they arent winning at rates over 8-10BBs when playing deep, then they may not be all that great.

An 8-10BB win rate in 100BB capped game is very very difficult to achieve. It should be easier in deep games even though variance is also clearly higher.

I mean tbh I kinda get what the other side is saying too.

If you are having a huge downswing at lower stakes, it's probably not ALL variance, just because if you are playing $2/5 you are probably still doing a lot of things that are bad but you don't know are bad. The player pool is bad enough that you can win despite having these leaks. So when you are having a downswing, perhaps some of that is due to bad play stemming from tilt or a lack of fundamentals, which I agree with.

However, I can guarantee that the people running hot at $2/5 are also not nearly as good as they think, and have a lot of leaks that are simply not being punished because the player pool isn't good enough to do that.

Not sure why my last post was removed but this was pretty much the response I was looking for from you. 5/T games play much differently and are much more difficult than typical live low stakes lineups.

Deep games are often at higher stakes where the edges are smaller (fewer fish, average skill level of winning players is much higher).

My current winrate in BB's is probably lower than some $2/5 players who play in soft games and aren't remotely close to my skill level, but I play much higher so that's okay.

And the games will only continue to get harder, across all levels, starting from high stakes but slowly trickling down to the lower stakes, as mediocre pros start moving lower in stakes. So enjoy the soft games while it lasts.

I would like to point out this is a low stakes forum but yes, there is a very large gap between 2/5 and 5T.

I'd actually argue that the gap between 2/5 and 5T is growing faster than how "tough" 2/5 is growing. Alot of it stems from just the size of the player pool and the amount of work that it requires to break a certain threshold of skill in poker.

This will never happen. 2/5 and lower will always be recreational, because it cannot sustain a reasonable income (or if it could those players would be doing something better with their time). Their is a natural equilibrium in this environment, bip! talked about it alot back in the day.

The live low stakes games are dying slowly from their peak, sure, but that's from fad decline, whale decline, etc. They'll eventually just go back to something larger than 1998 levels but smaller than 2005 levels. And they'll still be very profitable.

100% disagree with you.

Primarily because people are getting better at the game across the board, but also because rake will be harder and harder to beat.
If for no other reason than the fact that rake will keep going up but the stake will stay the same. And people won't realize what it's doing to their win rate and people will go broke.
Many 1/2 games in the country right now are charging you 2bb per hand to play. That's pretty hefty.

Or maybe I should say I disagree with you for 40 - 70% of the current winning population. Of course the top will always survive because they work harder, study more, have better mental game, etc. but large chuncks of the poker playing population will chose to / have to find something else imo.

Edited for poorly explained.

Well rake is a different topic and Id agree that it is in fact the biggest risk games face (educated player base being like #7 or #8 on my list of concerns).

Our 1/3 $300 max BI rake of 10% went from a maximum of $5 in 2015 (which it had been at for quite a few years), to $6 in 2016, to now $7 in 2017. Our poker rooms are finally realizing they can increase it yearly to whatever they want and have no affect on their traffic. Pretty sure each $1 increase has a much more devastating affect on the player's bottom line than anyone realizes, and probably won't take more than a few more dollars increase to make the game almost unbeatable to anything other than popcans/hr (especially when added on top of all of the other declining conditions).

Gsky75%falleninthismarket,imoG

Does anyone have an excel formula for calculating hourly std dev if you track hours/session and net/session?

There are a ton of different ways, YouTube is your friend

Alright, time to re-rail this train.

I was digging into my results a little bit the other week, and now finally got around to finishing and posting some figures now that May is in the books.

First off, the overall winrate data:


The "other" is a mix of PLO, RxR, some PLO Hi/Lo, a little bit of $1/3 or stupid tournaments too.
4330.9 hours of $1/2, 650.5 hours of the other crap.

Pretty clear that sitting in those other games, even if they are drooler filled home games, is a bit of a leak. I know the variance in a PLO game should be higher than NLHE, and that the 650 hour sample might still be LOL small for it too. But there are too many spots in PLO I just don't know how to approach on a short roll. :shrug:

Since I don't see this from anyone else, the trailing sample winrates for $1/2:


I haven't been getting to the Casino as often in the last year or so, but playing in home games or charity games without the ability to table select much, and I think that shows in a recent drop in WR. All the big action players have moved to PLO too.

Then in case anyone cares:


Overall 2017 has been a mixed bag so far.

+$1212.5/158.6 = $7.65/hr for NLHE
-$875/98.3 = -$8.90/hr for PLO/RxR type games.

I need to A) Get better at PLO and B) play more NLHE to make up for it.

There is certainly something to what D.C. Is saying imo. It's part of why there is a pool of losing regs.

But to deny that significant stretches of negative variance exist is naive.

I mean a guy who has ****ty results for a significant stretch and claims he's now worked hard, has it all figured out and is seeing good results might be bull****ting himself up every bit as much as the guy who you point to that was a winner and is now in the abyss.

By definition the outliers can't realize the long run very easily. Are their more people claiming to be outliers than statistically should exist? Maybe.

I recall Limon saying he had a break even year about every 5 years when he looked at his long term results. I'm assuming he didn't totally suck but if you shuffle the deck and put that first break even year 3 months into his pro career or so that would be pretty ugly? Caro wrote about it. We may have never heard of the guy who would become the greatest poker player ever because he ran horrifically bad at the beginning of his career.

Obv I want bad players who are losing in my player pool to think they are unlucky. I also want bad players who are sun running to think they are awesome. But outside my player pool, unless I personally know and care about someone I really have no reason to discuss the subject... but it took me writing this to figure that out




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Yeah, and that great pearl of wisdom helped convince his good buddy Trooper that he was just running bad when he lost $8k+ over a 15 month period playing 1/2.