so here are my 2017 results. I was a blackjack pro but games became unplayable, so got my hands on live poker late 2015, was a losing player in first 12 months but decided that poker intrigues me so much that im going to play through whatever is ahead. became breakeven for a couple of months towards the end of 2016, did some studying, and here are my 2017 results. I must have one of the weirdest winrate in terms of 1/2 and 2/5. Here in my local casino there s a huge difference between 1/2 and 2/5, 2/5 is usually the highest stake running and therefore where all the pros are (but games only run when there are spots). My low winrate at 1/2 is simply because I bluff way too much (most of my 1/2 volume was in the first half of the year, I felt that I improved massive since), and also ran amazingly bad in some big pots. But on the other hand I was running insane at 2/5. Obviously had a good year £££ wise but not sure how much of this is sustainable. would be glad if i can hit even half of my last year's 2/5 winrate in 2018.

Look meale, i follow your thread in the pokergoals underforum- and you seems like a smart well reflected guy with lots of good thought about poker/life.

Are you trolling regarding the variance post from DGAF that Johnny quoted? Like "fold pre", is that your only response when you read that kind of stuff from a guy who have played close to 20 000 hours of livepoker and is a well known high stakes pro for years?

Yes, I was being facetious.

Mike, you say that is your standard deviation, but what session logger are you using? All the ones I've seen show it in BBs & it doesn't say per hr, so I don't know if that's per session or what.

My avg win is 91.34BB & avg loss is 91.12BB but I've won 65.75% of my sessions. Since the avg session was probably 4.5hrs over the last 13 months, I've played ~357 sessions. This is probable, because I live 15 miles from casino, will play during day & come back at night quite often. This is all 1/2NL, as I keep other limits on another session logger.

357 sessions * .6575 wins * 91.34BBs = + $21,440
357 sessions * .3425 losses * 91.12BBs = $11,141.

That shows me with a net profit of about $10.3K but I won over $20K. So either my avg session is shorter, or, I'm not considering something else.

I only had 1 losing month in the last 13 & that was for $14.00. I had 6 months that were under $12.00 per hr & 3 of those were under $5.00 per hour. However, I've had 6 months that were over $20 per hr & every month [except 1] was over 100 hours.

Now here's a small sample: Since 1Dec2017, I've played 162.5 hrs, won 77.27% of my sessions & am averaging $33 per hr playing 1/2NL.

I have had these kind of heaters in the past & they are always followed up with a cold spell. Almost every time I hit that cold spell I weather it better than the times before. For instance, in 2016 I had more losing months & that was primarily due to going on entitlement tilt during those cold spells. Last year I stayed more mentally on point & grinded my way through the spell.

I'm better prepared for the next one [mentally] than ever before....my Shrink gave me some great meds!

I couldn't imagine having to play poker for a living.

Wow great results dayurou!
Where do you play?
I started playing some 1/2 live and was doing really well pretty much not bluffing at all- for some reason I changed and started bluffing a lot and my results went terrible, small sample but would you suggest hardly bluffing at 1/2?
Take it your bluffing works at 2/5?

Good luck for 2018 will be interesting to see how your 2/5 winrate changes

i play in London. I would suggest in general never to bluff in 1/2, unless you are playing exploitatively against a very specific type of villain. ive learned that people at 1/2 care much less about your image than you think. i.e. they are almost as likely to pay you off if you've been quiet all session vs you showing the bluffs. I adopt a much more balanced approach at 2/5 to not get exploited by fellow pros. I still play exploitatively vs fishes in 2/5. another thing to add in 1/2 is that i stopped 3 betting wide especially vs people who have a wide limping range but suddenly decide to open. I used to do that a lot because I believed in my skill edge post flop and often how easy people are to read and play against in 1/2 especially when you are in position. but i stopped doing that with the bottom of my 3b range as it is simply not worth it vs their opening range. it comes down to the basic 101 of 'whats his range' but I didnt think I gave enough thought into that when I was losing at 1/2.

to add to the above, I used to sometimes simply want to outplay a fish so much to the extent that i start assigning ridiculous hands to their range just to justify my call downs. big mistake. they snap fold their blocker type hands on the river 99% of the time, and turn them into bluffs 1% of the time without realising what they are doing. tl:dr, fold to them, dont bluff them, dont go into battles with them.

When I play I play in London too

Ah nice point about 3betting hadn't thought of that a great deal but seems a very good point if they are going from limping to raising. Impressive how you seem to be crushing poker after just a couple of years.

With me it's the opposite I don't really care about outplaying the fish as they do some daft things..... It's the nits or good players I end up trying to outplay and get myself in trouble at the moment.

Again when I first started I would just pretty much give nits/good players no action whatsoever and concentrate on playing the fish which was working well but I changed and have been losing a lot to them recently....... Find them frustrating to play against (nits)

I use the "Run Good" app. I dont know what you mean. The App shows the StnDev per hour and per session and both are listed in $$/hr. I converted it to BB/hr myself.

The App shows $269/hr playing 2/5 which is 53.8BB/hr.
My per session StnDev is $514 or 101BBs per session.

I'm trying to consolidate our two numbers... Mine just says "Std. Dev. 206.331bb", are you on average playing sessions half as long as me or?

@MikeStarr: Got it. I thought the $514 was $51.40 My Std. Dev. is 116.69BBs which is close to yours.

I wonder if LeBron knows how many little bumps are on a regulation basketball.

Are you saying discussion of stdev is unimportant? It's probably THE most important thing when it comes to winning long term?

ha! you make fun, but this stuff can be important. Should I play on Mondays? Why not turn pro? Should I move up?

This whole last bit of this thread has been sooking about this great big abyss of live variance but what if it were entirely avoidably by playing a lower variance play style? Not saying it is, not by any means. But it could be.

I'm just going to assume that you're trolljng and consider this your 1 warning.

ninja edit bc the king has spoken and I respect the king

For those who think JB is Debbie Downer about variance, he used to be the exact opposite. I remember back in 2014 he would argue that edges in live were so big that variance didn't matter much.

By mid-2015, he was starting to see it intellectually, but didn't really feel it:


By the end of 2015 he was talking about quitting his day job, and folks ITT tried to talk him out of it.


It starts to sink in:
JB is the voice of experience on this subject, folks, and one who came to it the hard way.

Hell, even I've glimpsed the abyss, and I was playing $1/1 at the time. I remember APD calling me at 3am to make sure I was OK after seeing the look on my face after an Nth ridiculous session in a row. And that was only a $750 loss, but I was near my breaking point after what seemed like 497 ridic bad beats in a row, and the biggest fish in the game folding to my opens when I had AA, even though he'd just called my 25BB open with 75o a few hands before, called my c-bet with nothing, and then turned bottom pair and rivered bottom two to beat my TPTK, etc., etc., etc.

The abyss is real, folks. And my SDev/hour is even lower (by a tidge) than MikeStarr's is.

Just because another rational person has a different opinion than you doesn’t mean they are trolling.

Understanding this stat at least on a basic level is extremely important and not optional for anyone serious about any form of gambling. It’s required to answer many common questions. What bankroll do I need to play this stake? Is this runnad normal? Am I a winning player and can I make enough to go pro?

The Lebron analogy is terrible.

However, I still believe the statistic is difficult to accurately measure for live players.

Not trolling. Go and look at how simulations change with different stdev numbers and tell me it's not an important factor to maintaining your sanity if you're playing live.

I had about a year to 18 months of run bad until around Thanksgiving or so. Was it The Abyss? No. Particularly as I wasn't playing full time. But it was a decent impersonator.

I traveled a lot. I went to NE and was blown away by how good the games are. I piled up a $1500 win in 1/2 or 1/3 my first day, toyed with the idea of moving there even, and returned down for the trip. Something similar happened in the south. There, my last hand was a big 4 way pot where I shoved my set on the turn because I wanted to take no chances and got instacalled by a gutshot.

Anyway, it sucked and I had to do a lot of square work. Then my entire BR, and more (money I was holding for other people) was stolen by someone I trusted completely. One interesting aspect of this is that this person was stealing any money I had. So, say I'd run great and moved up in stakes and done well there. Now it would all be gone anyway.

So my networth was well negative, but I did have a few hundred bucks. I decided to try to try my luck, knowing I would most likely lose it, but what difference did it make?

I ran good initially. Got up to about 2k. Had a 1k downswing in 2 days. Since then: crush, kill, destroy. I've paid down some debts, and all my expenses and have a viable BR for 1/2.

I took a day off to play a special low limit game and lost a couple hundred and then started off losing at 1/2 today. I figured it was finally over, but I got back to even then promptly had AA hold up in a 4 way pot with everybody all in on the turn for 450BBs.

If you can pinpoint a few hands that were that detrimental to your wr, then it sounds like you were never properly rolled to begin with -- dunno if id call that running bad for a year.

I'll pretend that I was tired and clearly missed the point.

Suffice to say I think there are many more important factors including win rate, mental attitude, and actual ability to play.

Is it unimportant? Probably not. Is it the most important factor? Absolutely not.

Most of the time, I do stuff other than poker. Sometimes I'm properly rolled and sometimes I'm not. My autobio is complicated but not all that interesting.

However, even if you have $200 a week to take to the casino from your fulltime job and no separate poker BR, I think you can still run bad or good just as much as anyone else.

I think I mentioned one hand. It wasn't that hand that determined my win rate. It was just one of those spots where you think "this is FINALLY over" and then get fisted.

The point of the story was more that poker variance exists in a bigger context. A great run earlier would have been rendered meaningless, as it might if you had legal problems, a divorce, etc. Even my bad run wound up being pretty much moot.

Now I'm running well and (hopefully) it winds up having a much more significant impact on my life as a whole. But I don't even know that yet.

If you mean financially, then wouldn't working a p/t job be more prudent than trying to supplement your income at a 1/2NL table with an extra $200 you scraped up having spent any past winnings.

Well, as I said, I do stuff other than poker. I think that virtually everyone should develop other ways to make money, even if they are awesome players (not me) and the other income doesn't seem like a lot.

I enjoy poker sometimes and it's less draining than a lot of other jobs. I also like the comps. So, it was worth it to me to try to get a BR together with a decent run instead of taking a crappy job. If I went bust, Pizza Hut would still be hiring.

I have applied for a couple of jobs that I would not mind and I might land an awesome job. If any of that happens, I'll be in nice shape.

I think I'll always play part time. For now, it pays a decent hourly rate and has a flexible schedule. I'm pretty well rolled now, so poker is a viable part time gig, just when I needed one.