Quote:
Originally Posted by water69
Most people just refuse to believe a winning player (for a good clip) could ever break even for over 500 hours until it happens to them. I know I didn't believe it until it happened to me. Put one of those stretches into a sample size of even 3K hours and the results still won't reflect your EV earned (unless you have a similar stretch of winning 2x your true WR). That's pretty much why I say there is no sample size in live poker really big enough to come to any conclusions. Better to just review your play each session and make sure you're always making theoretical dollars.
Good luck getting people to stop looking at their results, even if their sample sizes are small
I need to go back and convert the confidence interval math into hours the next time I look at mine.
I've heard this said at the table as a joke and there's some practical truth in it "hookers don't take sklansky bucks". So a big part of the smaller sample analysis comes back to cashflow management more than win rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avaritia
Thanks for sharing. Coming off of a 500 hour stretch myself. Pretty surreal considering my first 1k hours of sun run, but i had actually just come to accept it. Then i went on a pretty sick heater april-june and was like "oh sh*t i can win again"
Hoping it continues.
It's a weird feeling when you look in your fire safe and all of a sudden you're up a bunch of buy ins after running "meh" for a while. Once you can accept that bad stretches happen without it tilting you you can actually exploit it if your player pool is small and they think you're "unlucky". Wouldn't try anything fancy in a big room though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnyBuz
I agree and have posted similar thoughts over the last year. I'm closing in on 4000 hours and believe 1000 hour samples are just noise. Maybe 10,000 hours would give an accurate representation but I have a feeling the "long-term" is longer than a lifetime at live poker.
I'm going to add a 1000 hour trailing calc the next time I look at my data to see what it looks like. Doubt it'll be anything groundbreaking.
I'd disagree that they're "just noise". They're enough so start seeing trends and make some inferences. I think they're enough to tell you that you're *probably* playing well if you're winning. I'd just say that there's still some uncertainty in what the true answer is. (I really need to pull those equations.)
For a rec player you're never getting a long term answer for true winrate. If you were putting in 2k hours / yr as a full time pro maybe you'd have something with some good confidence with less game changes underlying your data as the collection rate is so much higher than a "normal" player. Can't see that being a sustainable lifestyle for too long though if you wanted to put in any off table studying and also have a life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JB Clark
This happened here in maryland. Last year the games were really juicy but the player pool went broke. Its a very cannabilistic game because you can lose a lot in a hurry and some of the people just never folded pre. Now the four card game is close to dead. All the fish are playing 5 card, which obv is a big game that u better be rolled for.
The thing is, edge is huge in 5card bc ppl have no clue how to rank starting hands
When you say 5 card you mean Big O? Get dealt 5, play 2? I saw that on the board when I was in DC this spring and thought "that's weird in a casino". I can see that being like Hi-Lo where it's impossible for a whale to imagine that any hand is bad enough to fold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeStarr
I see lots of strategy lines posted here by what I assume are good players, like a good amount of double barrelling scare cards, bluff check raising draws on the turn and things like that. I see it all the time when Im playing. I see guys doing it in real time at my tables. Things that I consider unnecessary plays causing chips to be spewed everywhere even though I know they are winners long term.
These same players post about long losing streaks and crazy variance and how 1000-2000 hrs is insignificant. Its hard for me to believe that you guys don't see that these things are related.
Keep those super aggro plays to an absolute minimum and your variance will decrease and your consistency as it relates to win rates will increase.
I could probably count on my fingers how many times I've double barrel bluffed scare cards, bluff check raised the turn, or many of those crazy ago lines in the last 3 months. Some might even call me a nit (I exploit the **** out of them when they do), and I still see significant variance in my results. The issue has a lot to do with sample size beyond what you think of as "style". (If anything many of the "un-orthodox" lines I've seen you post are more spewy/high variance or luck boxy. Unless there's just a giant selection bias there.)
I don't think I've ever said that 1000 hours is insignificant. 100 hours is completely worthless. 500 hours can be breakeven. Without running numbers I'd say that 1000 hours probably has a factor of 2-3 potential error. It's enough to say if you're probably a winning player, but not enough to point at a win rate and say "I make $20 BB/hr, so you should be able to easily too".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrucci
As a single example i cant count all the 10-12 hour sessions i have been sitting there just folding hour after hour being totally carddead, executing patience at it finest. Only to stack a guy late at night when he is doing just _one_ big mistake and i take his 150 BB stack, and by that booking another long session with 10-12 BB hour winrate.
Winning poker longterm combined with aiming to lower the variance as much as possible is usually boring as f----,that is the reality.
What about those times when you wait patiently for 10 hours, get it in against the fish, and get 4 outerer on the river? Or go AA v KK preflop and he gets his 20%? You're tying your entire session result to the outcome of 1 hand, which (I think) increases overall variance.
Although I will say that those sessions where you play $1/2 for 4 hours, feel like nothing significant happened, and walk away up $80 *feel* weird or like a waste of time. But that's actually a pretty good win rate for that game.