At the risk of sidetracking a stats thread, I'm always surprised that people are surprised at this. If stacks aren't short and the field isn't 3betty, hardly anyone is making much of a mistake against us and our face up hand.

G/derailG

2022 by stakes

Back to zero today, lost an all-in with 88 on T-8-6 flop that ranout T-8-6-T-2 where V had T-2. Thinking I'm done with live poker. Any insights?

Rough stats:

Stakes: 1/3$
Cumulative: -9$ (includes drinks, food, transportation to casino)
Hours: ~300
Hands: ~6000 (assume 20 hands per hour)
Sessions: 68

Well, you posted some punts in the LLSNL channel that were truly atrocious.
So hands like those is where most of your potential profit went. Frankly, I’m surprised you’ve played BE poker.

My insight is stop punting away your potential profits and stop pretending that it’s actually from hands like the one above you posted with graph that are completely inevitable.

It's 30 hands per hour, more when the table is tight less when the table is loose.

9000 hands isn't much.

lmao

Breakeven is still better than the vast majority of your opponents in a raked game.

300 hours isn't much of a sample size and it's not impossible for you to just to be on the bad (or good) side of variance. But also a decent chance it is what it is.

Are you enjoying this hobby and your attempt to try to get better / win? If so, and your bankroll can comfortably manage the losses, then no harm in continuing. If not, then yeah, not much point in playing if you're not enjoying the pursuit plus not going to make any real money.

To attempt to get better, I'd just recommend the typical rinse and repeat cycle of reading, posting, playing and thinking.

FWIW, a typical 1/3 NL 10 handed table typically gets far closer to 30 hands per hour.

ETA: I also just took a closer look at your actual graph. Wow, you must play a very high variance style of poker as you've shipped a $3K downswing and a $2.5K downswing at 1/3 NL in just a matter of 300 hours. I've also booked 2 downswings between $2.5K - $3K at the same steaks... in 5589 hours.

Ggoodluck!G

300 hours is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Variance is playing way too big of a role in such small samplesize. Even confirmed very strong winners over thousands of hours go through breakeven stretches of 300-400 hours.

That doesent mean negative variance cant be brutal,because it certainly is. If you cant handle it mentally, and it impacts your life in a very negative way the best decision for you might be to quit.

Thanks G. Yea I guess I just feel like the wide variance makes the game less fun. I don't have days upon days to commit to the game either, just once a week type deal, 8 hours is a long session for me. One of the best players in my room last night was down 2000$ at 1/3 and openly admitted it to me, not sure what his win-rate is but it just feels ridiculous if that guy who usually crushes can lose 4 BIs...meh. I guess one element I find is that it's not only enough to be better than most or all the other players at the table but also to be SIGNIFICANTLY better than them and CONSISTENTLY in order to beat the rake.

How much would you estimate that food/drinks/transportation cost you? If it's something like $20 a session, that is $1360 of profit. Drinks are free at the room I play and I generally only spend comp dollars on food so that would be a significant difference in our results (I've also played ~300 hours live, so we are in a similar spot).

$1360 would be 1.5 bb/hr or almost 5bb/100. If you are beating the other players and the rake for that much over your first 300 hours of play, you are doing pretty good.

I'm also a once per week purely recreational player. And my only "study" is reviewing HHs while taking breaks at work (which I'm doing right now) to keep my poker brain semi-sharp between my weekly sessions.

But, while variance is obviously a thing, there are ways to mitigate it (although some will say at the cost of a bigger winrate, but that shouldn't be much of a consideration to losing/breakeven players at this point). I recently lost 3 sessions in a row for a total of $1127 (the biggest reason being 1 outed in an $800 pot after the money went in). That's my largest "downswing" since the fall of 2017, so about 5.5 years (admittedly lost close to 2 years due to Coronaids). My guess is that you can (and should) be playing a much (**much**) tighter game than you're playing now, and while that won't lead to crushing results, it will lead to consistent winning results with very few big hiccups in the giraffe.

ETA: And yes, table selection is huge in high raked games. If I'm not in the top two players at the table, it's going to difficult to win a lot of money unless the bottom players are really punting hard.

ETA#2: Regarding being significantly better than the other players at the table, this is really what opened my eyes in 2017 when I transitioned to my Super Nit method. I really honestly asked myself what I was doing differently than the run-of-the-mill reg at the table. The less differences you find in your method, the more you're just going to lose like everyone else. The biggest takeaway I concluded is that I was simply playing far too many hands from far too many positions, just like everyone else does. You might want to ask yourself if you're doing the same thing; it's not the be all / end all, but it is a very good starting point.

GimoG

You can lmao if ya want, but like it or not, it’s literally the insight you need.

300 hours is really nothing, variance can be felt even at 1500 hours

Obviously work on your leaks too but as long as you study, take the game seriously and don’t punt your already better than 99% of the 1/3 player pool

I finally reached a guy who had asked for coaching by tell him, what matters is not how much you win, it's how much you don't lose.



EVERYONE gets sucked out on, but not everyone feels a need to play hands where their strategy is hoping to hit a lucky flop.

About to head out for the last day of April.

Barring any huge win/loss, here’s how this month went. Pretty good month:

Forgot to post march. Was a slow month.

Bring just 1 buyin with you and no cards or cash and watch your winrate skyrocket.

Stats. are whatever, 300 hours isn't much ... but that graph looks like degen. gambling flips. You can't say you've had a downswing, or upswing.


Just looking at the graph I'd say: Fold more pre, don't bluff it off so much when you miss, don't hero call one pair all the time. Probably in that order, but who knows.

Banana it does seem like you graph has a lot of peaks and valleys. Mine has less sessions than you but a little more of a trajectory. Hit a bad run around Feb so I took a few weeks off as I believe I was playing just too loose. Tightened back up and things started going back in the right direction.

Well, luckily we had a good enough session that we need to update April.


April final:

Yogurt, from your posts it seems like you play in an extremely deep 1/3 NL game? What is it, like $1K / match-the-stack or something?

Gnicegiraffes,gogogo!,imoG

Normal game is 1/3, 1k cap. Match stack.


I always make sure I cover table. And most of the time, people are in the $3-$500 effective area. It's semi-annoying as it can go from 200 eff to 1k eff in the exact same hand once people fold out. But we make up for that when people make large mistakes.


Typically don't have pots where its HU and both are getting in say 800+ over the course of the hand (obviously happens sometimes). But the mistakes are when they are sitting with say $1200, and it's a paired board and flush draw comes in. They are will to call off large bets with their flushes because they have such a large stack. If that makes sense.



I typically treat the game as 2-5 mostly, and 5-10 if it gets deeper. Though many times it's a legit 1-3 when most of the table is playing 75-100bb.



It's pretty dynamic game as far as stack size.

Do winrate calculations require us to pay our transport to the casino out of our bankroll? This point raises the theme, discussed by Miller poignantly at the end The Course, that winning poker all depends on your goals. I don’t have the goal of paying for my transport from my bankroll. I spend 3 BB hourly on tips to the dealers and waitstaff because their good mood enlivens me. If I’m having fun and breaking even or even losing 5 dollars per hour, I’m playing for me winning poker.

1/3 1k buyin with match is a pretty deep game

Only if enough buy in deep. Hit or miss.