Thanks! Yes they were absolutely brutal. Luckily I've got some experience in downswongs.


Something seem off with them?


There is always a devastating run waiting for you around every dark corner. Many of my friends who don't have much of an online background tend to play pretty under rolled and massively underestimate the damage that a bad run of cards can do. (see my 2008 thread)


I did spew a few times and make some bad plays no doubt. I remember one specific hand where there was a 9 way strattle pot and I called out of the big blind with Jh5h. I was $800 deep with a guy and called off my stack after he shipped over my c/r on a J95r flop. It's a spot where I needed to make a tough laydown against this particular player but since I was in the middle of all this bad run I snapped him off. I could probably think of a few other examples.


My swings are somewhat bigger because I play a pretty high variance style for a live player and I try to find the most loose aggressive, deep stacked games. I think in hindsight I should have "nitted it up" a bit and found some lower variance games when I was in such a bad run. At least for a few sessions to get my head on straight.


My advice is that you take 5-7 days off and think nothing of poker during that time. Come back with a fresh attitude and look to play shorter sessions in lower variance games. After a handful of these sessions I think you should feel a LOT better.


Everyone is different though. I've gotten a lot better at handling downswings over the years but it still takes work.

It was about 250 hours of breakeven if I remember right.

It's hard to imagine that a downswing can like that can happen to a winning player. I can believe it, but having not experience one like it yet it's just crazy. But seeing you recover gives me hope in surviving one if (or when) I hit one.

You just gotta keep plugging along and play your game, I guess.

Play with a big bankroll and it won't hit you nearly as hard. Seriously. I can't tell you how many players neglect this.

In my last 1,000 hours I had a 400 hour break even stretch at 2/5

Gross

ewe. I've seen many of your strat posts so I know that's prolly variance given the quality of your play. Sample sizes are so ridiculously small in live poker so I sorta just chuckle to myself when I hear other regs around talk about how such runs should never happen to people crushing the game. They are in for a treat at some point in time if they stick around for long enough.

It seems like it would hit you harder w/ a large bankroll. It just wouldnt hit your bankroll as hard.

A clueless noob reaches 1200 hours of live 1/3 NL:

$34,964 over exactly 1200 hours = $29.14/hr

163 sessions = 119 wins (73%) vs 43 losses vs 1 tie

I sorta feel like I'm not playing so good right now, making too many big hand mistakes (which can really destroy a session). Also feel the tables aren't as good sometimes (especially table selection as it often seems there's only one, maybe two tables running); last week I even did something I can't ever recall doing, which was simply racking up and leaving the lone bad table with a couple of possible hours still left in my session. That said, the stats of my last 200 hours say things are going swimmingly ($30.15/hr over the last 198.3 hours), so whatever, I guess.

I will say I don't really have much confidence in my winrate, as I think a fairly recent crazy upswing has really skewed results. I also booked 6 $1000+ wins in 27 sessions within that upswing, but I haven't booked any that large in my last 27 sessions. Having said that, I still haven't gone on any downswing whatsoever in these first 1200 hours at live 1/3 NL, as I've yet to book a 5 BI (i.e. $1500) downswing.

Cliffs:

- doesn't feel I'm playing particularly well
- summer month tables don't quite seem as good
- not particularly confident in my game at the moment
- my stats all suggest otherwise and that everything is a-ok

GcluelessNLnoobG

GG everyone knows you're just a fish on a heater

he means emotionally and having a large cushion makes great falls all the softer.

My guess is that eventually my stats will converge to confirm that.

many of them won´t probably play long enough to experience these kind of swings though. tbh, i´m quite jealous if your biggest losing stretch is such a nice little breakeven time
1000 hours, how many hands are that? 30k? 50k?

judging from your holdem graph from 08 you have experience with downswings though, so i guess it didn´t bother you much.

dont really get the emotional part.

as far as a cushion goes, i suppose it could provide that if youre living out of your bankroll. But if you segregate it, the larger cushion would come from the income you realized before the beginning of the downswing -- which would be more if youre playing a bigger game (and consequently playing a smaller bankroll)

IMO at least some of your concerns are winrate MUBS.

though, if youre in vegas, i agree that summer tables aren't as good, especially below 5-10.

The fish go to the lake, have cook-outs, go on vacations, etc during the summer.

And the $1/2 (3) games in Vegas during the series were awful at just about every casino I played at, but in particular at the Venetian. You would have to do a lot of table selecting to find a good game. Because even if they aren't grinders, they came to town with a grinder that taught them something about the game.

What...games at V are super soft.

Last time I was in Vegas during the WSOP, both Caesar's and Mandalay were super soft. Especially Mandalay...I was out there for a Cisco conference, and the tables were so juicy. Conference crowds are ++EV.

Lol, losing 10% is much less of a mind **** than losing 45%. I don't see how you can't understand this.

No whey mon

You know that saying about "if you can't spot the fish in the first 20 minutes ..."?

Last time I was out during the end of the series (during ME) the games were soft everywhere I went. Hell, *every* time I've gone to Vegas the games have been soft.

Thing is, the grinders come out when the fish come out. So even if the traffic is slower at Noon on a Tuesday as opposed to Thurs-Sat night ... there's still a lot of weak players. Older 'recreational' players come out during the day. The 50-60 year old guy in the sandals and polo shirt is there to relax during the day. His type doesn't attract the real tough (semi-) pro type players since he doesn't splash around enough money. You only get the comp-grinders at those hours. So the whole table is weak passive and you can just rob them blind.

The young, drunk, Ivey wannabes don't come out until later at night. Pre and post clubbing, post pool, etc. They're throwing money around and they attract the better of the local pro scene (as far as LLSNL pros go). Those are the really juicy games.


Either way, there's always a game, and it's always weak somehow. The adjustments needed to crush it just vary a bit from hour to hour.


(Damn, why am I not flying to Vegas every other weekend )

GG- I honestly think you need to move up. Mostly to keep the feeling that poker is a "fresh challenge"... although IMO you will crush 2/5 just as much.

2/5 ever run in your secret lab?

This is really solid information. The games will be changing a little with the end of the WSOP, but still very beatable.

Yea, I hear **** about some of the local rooms in Detroit all the time "that casino has no action", "this charity room's too crazy", "this room's too nitty", etc.

It gets really frustrating hearing people that never play in more than one casino talk **** about the action in the other rooms. They're all very beatable, they just sometimes require different adjustments.

+1. I've found that the easiest crowd at my regular casino is Sunday afternoons. You get a lot of old-timer/rock types that are so easy to exploit with very little variance. Raise the limpers, take down small $10-12 pots 3-5 times per hour, and it's an easy $40/hr game. No rush from scooping a big pot, but profitable. And in my book, profitable>>>entertaining.

Nah ainec. Ill take 30/hr having fun over 40/hr bored any day. And ur crazy cheap/lame/square if you say otherwise.

Edit: people play poker for a living because its better than a real job. Anyone capeable of beating poker for a liveable wage is smart enough to get a job making 100k a year. Its about freedom and fun.

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