You really like that whole "force variance on them to force a fold thing".

What are your thoughts on this...

I let people in my game know I'm on a short roll and that I want to avoid going broke.

Then I merrily call the aggro players down till they twig that I'm not actually weak/tight.

I have mixed feelings about aggressive shot taking. On the one hand, you can move up rather quickly without taking a whole lot of risk. On the other hand, once you move up, it's very difficult for one's ego to move back down, and one's hourly may be higher at the lower level.

I think I'd advise experienced players who have had success at the higher levels before (but aren't rolled for it right now) to take aggressive shots to move up. However, for newer players it's probably more beneficial to put in lots of hours at their current stakes and build their roll up first (because they will become a better poker player in the process).

^ sounds sensible to me.

Yea, it's interesting to see players that "play $2/5" and refuse to sit at a $1/2 table, or do but bitch and then leave as soon as a $/25 seat opens, even if the $1/2 game is *significantly* better. A smart player would be stake agnostic and just pick the juiciest table with the biggest whale.

In Kill em all they use the "bubble factor" which is a ratio of prize money won : prize money lost for a given spot in the tourney. Bubble factor is then applied to the hand to calculate an adjusted EV.

There's a good concise post with the math here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...25&postcount=4

Riding makes you live longer and look better tho.

Bip needs to provide this thread with the appropriate detrending algorithm.

Assuming that game conditions will remain approximately the same, and/or that your skill will improve enough to maintain the same edge (or close to it) is pretty reasonable IMO. It makes a lot more sense to make an adjustment or two and make the calculations (like take 80% of your winrate if you think the games will get tougher, or you ran good, etc) than to just say, "Well, this is all useless anyway."

Like anything in poker, honest introspection and reasonable predictions will help in this area - but obviously not everyone is capable of those things. Just one more skill to have in managing one's poker bankroll/career/hobby/whatever.

You want to live for ever?

Thought not.

Looking better has merit though, I'll bear it in mind

This foe is beyond me

I used to be agnostic, esp if a whale is sitting $1/2 or if stacks are super deep. However the rake in my room is the same for $1/2 and $2/5. So it generally will take a unicorn event to get me to stay at a $1/2 game. The rake and stack depth will have a much greater impact on whether or not a table is profitable or not.

Not to mention sitting at most $1/2 tables everyone is miserable and not social, which negatively affect profitability. You'll of course encounter this at $2/5 but my experience is generally $2/5 games are more social, with $5 blind PLO being most social.

One does not have to take -EV lines to give someone the opportunity to fold +EV spots.

True in finance, too.

It takes a lot of humility in poker to say; "I've been on a sun run"

Going up 1G per night 2 weekends in a row at 1 3 has some luck in it.


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Monte Carlos aren't that complicated to model using normal curves (a bit harder if you have a fat tail observation like finance). If it's impossibly complicated, it's probably broken.


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I think a realistic hourly SDev for poker is going to be a min of 100bb, prob more for those w higher W/Rates (as it's unlikely a low Vol style is as profitable in the current environments of midsttakes)


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I really hate thin EV spots for this reason. You really don't know if his range is what you think it is, etc.


I like far better EV of river value bets where were pretty damn positive we are murdering their final holdings.


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Someone had to know I would pop in right about now, right?

My win rate after 1100 hours of 2/5 is 8.3 BBs/hr
My StdDev is 50.5 BB/hr (calculations verified by Bip!)

I find it hilarious that people tell me over and over that my lines arent good and at the same time people tell me low variance style poker isn't very profitable.

Low volatility style can be pretty profitable if you know what you're doing and are good at it. Lets not forget everyone who says you have to buy in full or you lose lots of EV. Another untruth.

From what I found out by googling, a standard range for poker deviation is between 80-100bb per 100 hands. Yours are 50bb per hour and you re playing about a third of that. To put a further wrinkle to that, the relationship isn't linear AFAIK so you can't just say I am playing 33 hands per hour, so my standard deviation is 150bb per 100. So yeah, your standard deviation should be in the range of a 100bb per 100.

Who said anything about BB/100 hands. StnDev is normally quoted as BB/hr and that's what I was responding to when Maskk said "hourly SDev for poker is going to be a min of 100BB"

That's just flat out not true.

Step off the soap box this isn't a personal blog. If I recall correctly you also play in some extremely shallow games based on your HH's where every hand seems to be $350-400 effective at 2/5. You can't compare your style to someone else playing in games where everyone on the table has $1000+ at 2/5. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

FWIW, your lines aren't good but that's beside the point.

MikeStarr; I'm not saying your lines aren't good. You've certainly got more live experience than me.

My only concern is that 1,100hrs is only 33,000 hands. Playing online I've had major sun runs that lasted twice as long. I've had downswings of 50,0000 hands.

I spent 2 million hands trying to find ways to avoid the downswings but concluded there's no dodging them completely. All you can do is make the most money you can when you can and hope it is enough to carry you through the inevitable times when you just can't win.

I had hoped live wold be soft enough that downswings didn't exist for good players but reading this thread I see players I know are better than me reporting significant downswings.

The difficulty live is that the long-run comes around so slowly it is very hard to tell if you're actually winning. I won't be happy till I hit a real downswing and come out the other side with my BR intact.

Session volatility of multi-hour sessions often masks hourly Vol rate


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What does me disproving a statement someone made have to do with this being my personal blog? Someone made a statement that something is impossible. Its something that I have proven IS possible.

He said "I think a realistic hourly SDev for poker is going to be a min of 100bb, prob more for those w higher W/Rates (as it's unlikely a low Vol style is as profitable in the current environments of midsttakes)"

There is nothing in there that talks about deep stacked games.

Ive played in 2/5 games all over the country and the majority of them (at least during the daytime when I play) are not deep stacked so dont act like deep stacked games are the standard and nobody else has access to 100BB max buy in games. Even if the game you play is deep stack, it can still be beaten handily playing a low variance game.

"Realistic" is a key word there. You've proven that one person has done it, that's far proving his belief wrong.

I played over a million hands online also. There is absolutely no comparison. Its a totally different game. You cant compare downswings between the two. Most of the people experiencing large downswings playing live have not made correct adjustments to live play whether they realize it or not.

Its been a few months back so I forget the exact numbers but I went thru a stretch over 2-3 weeks where I lost like 16-18 all ins where I was 70%+ favorite and I lost 2 out of 2 coin flips during that same time frame. A stat expert friend of mine calculated the odds of that happening at over 5,000,000:1. Suffice it to say that a run like that doesnt happen often. I still won money during that time frame......because live play is so soft that I was winning enough money on standard hands to make up for all of those all ins that I lost.

A great Major league baseball hitter only gets a hit about 30% of the time over the long run. Against major league pitching he can easily go on runs of a month or more where it seems like he cant get a hit to save his life. But if you put him up against "AA" minor league pitching, his edge is so great that it would be almost impossible for him to go more than a game or two without crushing the ball. The "long run" is much shorter when his edge is much bigger. Thats the difference between online and live poker