I'd guess 1 stddev on his 2-5 results is very roughly 4bb/hr if my back of napkin math is good.

Keep working on your game and the results will tell you what to do.

But to answer the original question, heck yeah the transition can be difficult.

So this thread is basically just Alcoholics Anonymous: a support group which uses variable phrasings of platitudes to encourage confidence.

Winrate thread is more effective

Another reg move...

Reg just slowrolled the whale. He would've rebought AGAIN, but walked away instead. Reg just laughed. (Whale had slowrolled someone else earlier.)

This is such a great post, bip! Well done.

It's worth noting, by the way, that if the last fake crusher starts winning at hour 1001 at his true hourly, at 1500 hours he'll still be reporting a 7bb winrate, and still look at himself in a horribly false light. At 2000 hours he'd still be at 6bb with an achieved win rate three times what his true edge is.

All of this just emphasizes how ridiculous it is to look at these win rates in small samples without also adjusting for variance.

If, after 2000 hours, that fake crusher came to me, with recorded hand histories, I'd be able to tell him that he was just actually on a heater, and extract his true win rate from his data, more or less. But these are the guys who, when the heater ends, mainly stop posting and start forgetting to log losing sessions and such like. Not wanting to know the truth here is very common.

Thanks mpethy.

The truth scares the **** out of me. I have almost 1200 hours with absolutely crushing results. Results that all more experienced players tell me is unsustainable. So I keep dreading the return to the mean.. and if I am indeed running incredibly hot - then incredibly cold is going to be a nightmare.

Spewwrex!

You're too smart not to be a dominant player. The truth might not be "obscenely crushing," but merely "crushing." I predict a pretty soft landing if you really are winning at an unsustainable rate. We do, after all, have a bit of control over the variance.

So basically if you lose over 1200 hours, you're a loser. If you crush over 1200 hours, you're just a loser who has run hot and the downswing of your life is right around the corner. Lol. I find it funny how some posters think this forum is far too optimistic about attainable win rates, yet don't realize how unreasonable their pessimism is.

100% certain I am a winning player bub...

I also have access to more data than just my own and I have witnessed some remarkably tough stretches for very good players

Fwiw, I am awesome and I know it.

I couldnt agree more with this. Ive noticed my winrate steady vs the meh regs compared to the aggro fish. Omc always tells me when he has a hand as do 95 percent of the regs. Typically a midmorning to dinnertime session is a steady climb without ever really putting my stack at risk. So much so ive begun a 9am to 5 schedule

Well since we're using patronizing nicknames now... I thought it was pretty obvious that I was being sarcastic bro. I wasn't challenging your data supporting you being a winning player. I'm challenging the posts before it, belittling pretty much everyone who has data supporting that they are a sizable winner as fish on a heater.

I have been on this LLSNL forum for years and I am probably the most consistent poster since I was introduced to this place, and I can honestly say that there are very very few posters who are just scratching the surface of this game.

It leads me to believe that most people are really not as good as their posted numbers seem to indicate.

mpethy posted some very humbling numbers, and maybe those are the real numbers of someone who's actually beating this game?

Haha I found this funny as hell man because I am naively optimistic about what I think is an attainable win rate and what I think my future in poker holds. I'm sure I'll look back in a few years and say "wow I was dumb and had no idea" but I feel like in live poker you either manage the ebbs and flows or you go bust.

I haven't had a soul crushing negative variance streak yet but I've had two bad months in 2015 that eventually I crawled out of. Same with positive, I've had good streaks here and there but nothing I felt like is a never ending heater.

I've never really played online but I feel like live gives you opportunities to manage and dig yourself out.

This is an endless argument because a lot of context gets lost as pages scroll by - but I was not challenging people who post results here. I was challenging those who were saying tons of tight players at 1/3 are crushing the game with no evidence other than assumption. My point was that there are an exaggerated number of big winners over few hundred hour samples.

Re your last para: because if you're winning, your edge is soooo much bigger than online. My WR live, which I am not happy with at all, is eight times what my WR was online.

When I started tracking, I would post my results in minutes played...

I have posted in and read this thread for 3 years now and the number of graphs/results posted for large samples is tiny. Only recently am I realizing it is not because those posters move on, but more because the results don't hold. Few are inclined to post numbers worse than earlier figures, even if the net goes up - because they are attached to that previously posted WR number.

This is just a spur of the moment analogy but I feel like playing live, every hour or two one opportunity will present itself that if you are paying attention, like spotting an Easter egg in a movie, you can net yourself a quick 5, 10, sometimes 20-25 BB's in a situation that would NEVER happen online for obvious reasons and that can end up really buffering your win rate and make losing sessions/bad streaks much more bearable.

I also log most of my hours between 9pm - 5am so take it for what it's worth given the circumstances and how people play at those later hours.

So staying and hoping a weak player joins the table is a better strategy than finding a weak player and going to his table?

That's the Clint Hurdle strategy. Just don't do anything to improve your circumstances and just pray that eventually your OF is McCutchen, Marte, and Harrison. And in the meantime just hope nobody notices that 8 of your first 9 seasons were below .500.

Bip show him the line that goes up and to the right

I've recently started play 1/2 life at the Cincinnati horseshoe casino. I started off a $1000 bankroll and although I know 5 buy ins is not recommended but 1/2 players are so bad I didn't run into any problems. My plan is eventually move up to 2/5 and I'm wondering what the recommendation BR to do so is. I know 2/5 is rougher than 1/2 so I probably want more buy ins just not sure how many I really need.

20-30x buy in assume you're buying in at cap/100bb (?)

Prob more if you're going to play short stack strategy.

$1000 roll is pretty small. This is generally what I bring every time I go play.


I would look for a job first and once you get a 10k roll you can quit it if you want.


If you have a job you can bust your $1000 roll and you won't care as much