A poker fiscal cliff story...
I have been keeping records of my play since the summer and have 34 1-2 sessions tracked by the hour. (I keep a note file on my phone for each session and at the dealer change at the top of the hour, I note what I have and any big hands from the past hour.) FWIW, I am averaging slightly more than $10/hr and have won 22 of 34 sessions with 2 breakeven (+/- less than $25) sessions. So I am winning decently and consistently.
What I have learned from the hourly tracking is probably more interesting. I play almost exclusively Friday and Saturday nights, usually from about 8 to some time in the middle of the night. My hourly breakdown is as follows -
8pm to 9pm: $20.26
9pm to 10pm: $5.22
10pm to 11pm: $30.03
11pm to 12am: $17.75
12am to 1am: $37.07
1am to 2am:
-$42.79
2am to 3am:
-$14.08
All of these, except the last one, consist of at least 24 hours, so small sample size isn't a major concern here. Furthermore, I have been up in 18 of 28 midnight to 1:00 hours and up in only 9 of 27 1:00-2:00 hours so it is not a case of hitting a couple of huge hands in the former time frame and a couple of coolers in the latter. It is a consistent pattern of falling off the cliff at 1:00.
So why is this happening? Fatigue could be part of it, except for the fact that my loss rate declines in the 2:00-3:00 hour and I actually am profitable after 3am (but sample size gets smaller there - 18 hours, then 12 hours). Also, my winrate for 7+ hour sessions is slightly higher than my winrate for shorter sessions. (Looking at the rate by hour of session is all over the place - hours 3, 5, and 8 are all over $30/hour while hours 4, 6, and 7 are between -$10 and -$15/hour.)
I think the bigger factor is that the room composition changes as the night goes on. There are usually about 10 1-2 tables running in the room from about 9 to midnight and then they start breaking. By 2 am, there are usually three or four tables going. In other words, the fish get busted or just go home after midnight and the average table gets much more competent as the night wears on. The tricky thing, however, is that the later it gets, the more likely the random drunk wanders in and sits down, so I think that I am falling for the illusion that the games get easier as it gets later but we are actually trading five sober fish at a table for an occasional drunk spew monkey and that is a net -EV trade. And our room is not one where there is much drinking (no free liquor
and a 2am cutoff
) so drunk tourists are never a factor in the games.
So what is my tl;dr point? First, if you are not tracking by the hour, it is probably worth doing for a while to see if there are any hidden cliffs in your stats. Second, has anybody else out there done hourly tracking and found the same thing?