Some people have different skill sets. 20 is like a disaster and I have skills.

38 for a different skill set is doable. Stampler said 60 sessions BE is doable.

Anytime I have gone through a stretch of bad poker, I have critically analyzed my play and have found leaks in my game that contributed heavily to my downswings. Given that most players are losing players (and most players believe they are better than they are) you would have to be brain dead to assume that a breakeven session covering the majority of the hours you have tracked is simply variance.

Just reading your initial post, I see one major leak in your strategy and that is that you have spent twice as much time studying as you have spent playing over this time period. That is completely out of wack and at worst you should be playing like 80% of the time and studying 20%.

Your thought process is completely off base. Play 80% study 20%. You should be studying more then the amount of hours your playing. Have you ever played sports?

I guess most have no idea how much they should be working on your game. Live is so slow its hard to learn everything by playing. I thought that was normal stuff. But I guess I'm way off base on what people know on these forums.

Oops. I guess i'm doing it wrong then. How dare I listen to advice from Dusty Schmidt "leatherass" who is one of the biggest winners in the history of online poker.

BTW, yes, I played sports and practice makes perfect...not reading books. I used this strategy to beat low limits of online poker 6-max and I have used this strategy to beat live poker as well (1/2, 2/5, and 5/10). I never truly felt comfortable at live poker until I started putting in a ton of hours playing. The more you play the better you will feel at the table, the less the variance will affect you, and the more of an edge you will gain against your opponents. All of the top players play a ton. If you are studying 20% of the time then you are studying way more than the vast majority of players and have a major knowledge edge.

I think posters arguing over the number of sessions at break even, which may or may not be acceptable due to variance, is nonsensical. And this is obviously my fault since this is how I phrased the thread. I should have written 130 hours breakeven. I play short sessions. And this actualy may be a leak in my game. But that fact remains that the numbers of hands many people claim I've seen during my break even stretch are off base.

Uh, almost no one anywhere plays 1/2 NL full time, so this isn't a fair way to address the issue.

I like how you mention that "38 sessions" is not a lot" and then use "dumping your winnings after running bad for like a week" as evidence of it. How does 4-6 sessions = 38 sessions? Or 30-40 hours = 140 hours? Makes no sense.

OP I think having short sessions hurts a little bit too because you have less reads. if you lack tilt problems you can take advantage of people who start making poor decisions as their sessions goes on futher. Just for food for thought (assuming you can handle and focus in long sessions)

I'm not sure I can handle long sessions. I don't think I play badly from behind, or during some longer sessions. But other times I find myself up $200+ after a couple hours, and a big hand goes down that I'm not involved in. Then when they showdown I have trouble rehashing their play in my head (I.e.- which one raised PF? How much? How many limpers in front?). When this happens once I redouble my efforts and take it as a wake up call. When it happens twice I rack my chips and go home. I live about 15 minutes away from my casino so it's easy to return fOr a night time/late night session. But so often I don't because I'm happy with my little victory.

just ran a simulation assuming: 10bb/100 wr, std of 80, 4200 hands. 25 of 800 simulations came in with a wr of 0 or below. so pretty rare, 3% of all 4200 hand samples will be break even or worse.

So there's 3% chance that you're not a break-even player, and 97% chance that you have leaks.

Interesting

Hours:184
SD/hr:135
Hourly:$10.01

P.s.-I'd really like to post my full poker journal results but I'm not sure how to. I've seen others do it in their threads.

Well. There's a 100% chance he has leaks.

30 out of 800 trials were break even or below.

Its probably something higher than 30/800 that an overall winning player could breakeven over that stretch though. If you are running that bad chances are you are playing way below your "A" game.

I think the most important thing to focus on when you are running like that is to make sure you are playing as close to your best as possible and when you aren't try to take a break or leave or something.

Hmm. The simulator assumes you are always playing at the win rate you input. But a win rate derived from a big sample (OP's is not) will contain periods of sub-optimal play. TBH, OP's sample was so small and his std so big that I don't think he can be confident yet that he's a winning player, let alone that his true wr is the $10/hr we used.

For everyone saying that 38 sessions spanning 140 hours can be classified as a downswing and not be evidence of someone being breakeven/losing, I'd like to hear some numbers as far as at what threshhold you can stop chalking it up to variance. I'm curious as to what numbers you guys would come up with, because if you keep making vague statements about the long term, you could pretty much name an infinite number of sessions as being a downswing.

I mean, 200 hours? 400 hours? 1000 hours? Where's the cut off? Or can someone terrible who has lost consistently since 2004 simply claim that they're running bad?

Right, my point is just that you can be a winning player and play poorly when faced with uncommonly bad luck which the simulation doesn't account for.

Either way I think the answer to this question is 1) yes it is possible but 2) its relatively unlikely and more likely that his winrate is lower than you think and he should work on his game a little with that idea in mind.

Thanks for all the input guys. I'm gonna take a break from the game for a week to clear my head, and then return with a note taking vengeance. Lots of HHs to come.

Winning at $10/hr at 1/2nl is not a breakeven stretch imo. I have 522 hrs at 1/2 and 1/3 and my winrate is exactly $1/hr. Though those hours are over about a year and a half and the hours in the beginning were played by a much worse player, I'd say other than the first 100 hours I had at least a 5bb/hr expectation.

Your sample is also too small to draw any major conclusions. You should always be trying to improve and be reviewing your play but a 38 session BE stretch consisting of 184 hours is not a good reason to change your play.