I've played about 1800 hours live and that's yet to happen.

at 2/5 or 1/2 and 1/3?

Actually to be exact its 1924 hours, mostly 1/2 very little 2/5. My games play medium sized

I don't know anyone that's lost 8 buy-ins in one session. Seems like that would be awfully hard to do.

it is hard to judge my DS because the buyin is 75% of the big stack but I'm in a 6k DS and breaking even over 350 hours. of course I run good at 1/3

no I mean peak to peak as in like over several sessions

Sounds pretty standard then....my biggest downswing was 10BI ($300 @ $1/2 x 10) over one month.

yeah and i mean obviously in a more aggro game your std dev will go up and your swings will increase

I find it impossible to go on an 800bb downswing in a 100bb cap game in live poker.

You would have to be mega-tilting if your winrate is around 10-15bb/hr

can't run the poker variance calculator but you are like 100% for sure going to take a swing like that, and the reality is people over estimate their winrate/skill edge and the better games you are in the bigger swings you will take. Like if you are in a 2/5/10 game your winrate will go up but your swings will increase dramatically since you won't play the most profitable street, the river, very often.

like a week ago I lost 1k without ever seeing a turn and playing quite well, hard to win when you 3bet AK, get 2 callers and the flop comes Q98 2 suit.

SABR told me that his biggest swing was 12xBI or 6k at 2/5 100xbb.

there is a reason why we have a bankroll my man. It is to sustain when a firestorm of crazy events happen that is completely beyond our control. I like you dont tilt in the monkey sense. I may play sub optimally but w/e. This past summer I had some of the most insane things happen in a 10 day span. People were desperately trying to give me their $ but for some reason got their miracles. 1100bb down swing (no biggie 5.5k)

point is downswongs are out there

you buyin for 1k?

generally 500

I got KK cracked by TPNK AI OTF and middle set vs top set AI OTF in a straddled 3bet pot and lost like 2.5k in one session.

It can be sick man.

I hope I don't go on a 10 BI downswing, as that is all I keep in my BR. But I am not a professional and would be able to reload from my day job (eventually).

Good point, but that reminds me of another reason I practice bankroll management that I don't hear many people talk about. One of the biggest enjoyments I get from poker is simply "being a winner". When you practice bankroll management, you're much more likely to be a winner than if you splash money around at any stakes you can afford or with money you happen to have.

It's comforting to know that it's almost impossible to go broke if you follow bankroll management. You may have to drop to 1 cent, 2 cent blinds, but if you follow it, most people can win at some level.

This is what everyone says who has yet to experience negative variance.

I hate to pile on, but your posting a graph with a $60-something win rate followed by "I run pretty bad" was pretty ridiculous.

You could well be a $60 an hour winner at 2/5, I'm not saying you're not. But if you are, that means that you've played a small sample at or near your true win rate, which, by definition, means you haven't run bad over that sample.

If you're not tracking your variance, then you really have no idea how you're running. It's really hard to tell in live poker for several reasons. One is the slow motion aspect of it--at the end of a year of full time play, you have maybe 60k hands, which is the lower bound of what I consider likely a reliable sample when I do online database reviews. But it's hard to imagine that you ran hot or cold or whatever for a whole year, so it's natural for a year's results to feel reliable to you.

But in my experience, a 60k hand sample is usually influenced by some sort of variance--not necessarily so much as to be useless, but enough so that it I have to go through it carefully adjusting for variance to get an approximation of the player's true win rate for the sample. Samples below 40k are useless often enough that I won't even waste someone's time trying to analyze them--I've set my minimum at 50k hands because of that.

As for -8 buy in downswings being impossible for solid winners, well, that's just wrong. In a big enough sample, it's guaranteed to happen. The fact that you haven't had one just means you haven't played a big enough sample, or that you're running good.

If you go and check out robs (robfarha) thread in poker goals and challenges i think you will find he's confirmed crushing live 2-5 ... Plus apparently hes internet famous now hope to (not) meet you at the 2/5 foxwoods tables unless it for lunch

Comparing online to live poker is fundamentally flawed, with the exception that they are both played with cards they are completely different.

Me saying "I run pretty bad" was a joke. I posting shortly after that I am likely on the positive side of variance, if I'm on the negative it is not by much.

I also think you, like many other people do, are using the term "downswing" incorrectly.

Saying I went on a x buyin downswing should mean that you lost x amount of buyins in 100% of situations that are completely out of your control, or that you had the best hand/an unavoidable cooler in each spot. It should also reference that the size of your bets is close to optimal in situations where you need to be getting value from the best hand.

Losing 2 buyins set over set, then tilt shoving 2 draws in terrible spots is not a 4 buy-in downswing. It's a 2 buyin downswing with you donking off 2 buyins as a result of previous negative variance.

I shouldn't really use the word "impossible" because it is certainly incorrect and overgeneralizing. I will reword it to highly, highly and unlikely, and if it does happen, chances are there are spots of bad play in the 8 buyin "downswing", whether or not you can recognize this, or how to recognize this is a completely different discussion.

Fwiw, my live sample is 1200hrs total. I am running at 66$/hr over my last 600 hrs, 50$/hr over 800+ hours of 2/5, 260hrs of 1/2 and <100hrs of 5/10.

actually what you said is untrue since tilt/poor play etc... is all included in your win rate

That's a fine response RobFarha, I agree with it as well.

It is indeed.

My point is that people don't stop the bleeding if you will.

Losing a few flips or getting coolered in standard spots can trigger bad play in terrible spots.

When people are on these 6-7buyin "downswings", you don't hear about how they checked back top pair vs a fish, or how they 3bet with A10o and double barreled with little FE and lost.

You hear about the coolers and losing flips in big pots.

All I'm saying is that I don't believe it to be that common to lose 800bb without making mistakes you don't normally make along the way.

^^^^

Ya, like I haven't played a single hand of on-line, and only have ~900 hours of 1/3 NL to my name, but I'm the worst reg poster on here and yet I've never even had a 5 BI downswing (plus noting 2 BIs in my worst downswing were the direct result of tilt). M, don't you think that comparing on-line stats to live stats plus sample size might be apples vs pizzas?

I like disagreeing with one person in one thread and then agreeing with them in another, just so it balances out.

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+1

in the last 6 years of live poker i have never had a $1600 downswing at 1/2
or a $4000 downswing at 2/5

i think my worst was something like 80 hours of breakeven at 2/5 (luckily i ran well at 5/10 that month)

i don't have all my old online databases but i am pretty sure i had several big downswings - but my live winrate in bb/100 is WAY higher than my online winrate so that is to be expected

you are making a semantic argument that isn't technically correct, like yes you obviously don't hear about people spewing but that spew is mathematically built into your winrate and std deviation so if somebody has a lower winrate and a higher standard deviation they will always have those larger swings.

you are making the argument that you could build a robot that would always make "the perfect play" it would never go on a 10xBI downswing and I think that is just utter nonsense and if it hasn't done it will happen it is just a matter of statistics.

There was a guy who used to play 30/60 LHE at the dawn of online poker who just played awful who ran above expectation over millions of hands and at the time people thought maybe he had somehow discovered a new way to play the game and win. Eventually his run good failed and he is some busto eastern european. I will try to uncover the story when I get home later. Like I know a guy who ran at 20xbb/100 at 5/10 over 25,000 hands and he isn't very good. Imagine running like that live, you'd be a ****ing soul crusher.