I'm not sure what is exactly viewed as a downswing, but I feel like I haven't been progressing much in my game these days. Granted I only have about 250 hours logged and am booking an extremely poor win rate of less than 1 bb/hr. I look at my charts compared to others and I am just going through massive roller coasters. One week I'll be up several hundred, and then lose several hundred the next week and never really make major progress in my win rate. Is there a glaring leak that is causing these swingy sessions?

Gonna get moved to the wr thread but:

-250 hours is nothing
-1bb/hr is winning and if you are winning you are ahead of 90% of live players
-you didnt say anything about your game so we cant identify leaks in your game
-try booking smaller wins/take breaks/play shorter sessions. I roller coaster alot also and this helps.

I'm taking more seriously this year tracking my poker results and know that I will have a near meaningless sample size. As someone with a full time job/family, my goal is 250 hours. My question is: if I believe I am a 10bb/hour long-term winner and play 250 hours, what would the 95% confidence interval be in terms of bb/hour? Would a negative number fall in that 95% CI?

http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

Search this thread for your stdv input

Basically, what Ava said. Especially 250 hours being nothing and being a winning player (even a modest one) nothing to sneeze at.

I recently had a ~200 hr breakeven stretch (digging out of my tied-for-worst-ever downswing) and yet have still managed a ~5 bb/hr winrate overall the last ~500 hours (which encompassed those ~200 hours). These little stretches (both good and bad) are meaningless results-wise.

Ginb4movedG

A NLHE player with a 60BB STD/hr would have a +- 7.6BB 95% confidence interval, so no, for a 10BB WR, 60BB STD/hr player, it wouldn't be negative.

There are a few important assumptions packed into that sentence though.

^^ Thanks guys. I'm not very good on search to find exactly what I'm looking for, but what is a typical stdev? I would claim to be a TAG like I know most do (whether or not its actually true) and seem to have much more milder swings compared to what I hear others have, so I would imagine my stdev would be on the average/smaller side.

What are you doing to improve your game? You're on here so I am assuming you post hand histories. Are you doing anything else to work on your game?

So sessions like:
+350
+220
-700
-$600
+750
+450

are completely normal? Considering how this happens a decent amount of the time for me, or I end up booking smaller multiple wins coupled with a massive loss, isn't this something more alarming?

Trying to look more on 2+2, reading Ed Miller's The Course, studying on Red Chip Poker, etc. I think one of my biggest leaks is just calling off with the worst of it, going on tilt, and not making the right decisions in most spots. I do watch Andrew Neeme's vlogs a lot and see his perspective on calling down a decent size pot with top pair, getting in with speculative hands that probably wouldn't bode well in 1/3, etc. My last session I found myself getting into so many multiway pots and really couldn't do much. (I play in LA, and Temecula and I would say 90% of players are calling stations regardless of my raise size. And I find myself first into the pot raising and get 3-4 callers with like AKo, JJ and make poor decisions on later streets. Maybe I should be tightening up my UTG-UTG+2 range?) Just rambling, but these are the thoughts that are going on these days.

It's really hard to tell since you can easily go thru streaks where you win/lose a lot as well as streaks where you win/lose a little. In my last 8 sessions, I've only had 1 session where I won/lost more than 100bbs; but in the 8 sessions before that, I had 6.

It takes a long time to get a real feel for what is going on if you're simply looking at results. Poker is a pretty high variance game where a single pot here and there can make a *massive* difference to short term results.

GgoodluckG

SDEVs for winning players ITT have ranged from 55ish-100ishBBs/hour.

Ive been on 2 pretty brutal downswings in 3300 hours. I once lost AA 7 times in a row. I once saw the flop with a pocket pair 62 times in a row with out hitting a set and then the 63rd time I hit a set and got stacked. During those times I have thought to myself, why the hell dont I ever go on an unexplainable GOOD run like that?

Well, I now know what it feels like. Im now at 20 wins in a row. Im playing some really good poker but Im also hitting hands, hitting cards that I need, not getting my premium hands smashed..ect

20 days
Just under 81 hours
$13707
$169.50/hr

My one and only trip to Vegas was this past summer. Was there for like 7-8 days played ~70 hours of poker flopped 0 sets. That’s left a sour taste in my mouth (as did the ****ty coke).

Didn’t flop one this past December either. Coincidentally my worst month in nearly 2 years.

<snark removed>

Who'd you buy the coke from? Asking for a friend.

3 things that massively improved my win rate
1. Be more selective of the hands your calling with Pre, and in what position. Especially to raises. Calling to often, and not 3 betting or folding Pre is a huge leak.
2. Study tells. Make. Sure your not giving away, and study your oponnents.
3. Practice ranging your opponents on every street, and play the hand back in your head before you make any marginal river calls. Including tells. Folding more when your behind, and making good calls when your marginally ahead drastically improves your win rate.

This last one isn’t advice, but don’t forget that coolers happen. Don’t beat your self up over set Vs set hands or 2nd nut flush against the nuts agaisnt certain player types. If it’s OMC, that’s one thing. But, OMC’s have tons of tells, use them to your advantage.

Reminder to everyone about the thread standards. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, please re-read the things you agreed to when you entered this thread.

These are actually really small swings. You haven't had any sessions where you won or lost 3+ buyins. I consider this low variance.

On PokerStars for example, I'm up 35 buyins at 2nl and I would have sessions where I won up to 8 buyins or lost up to 6 buyins in less than a thousand hands. This is equivalent to playing a 30hr live session at 1/3 and winning up to $2400 or losing up to $1800 whilst still being a huge winner overall.

My mate used to crush 50nl and he told me that having a 10 buyin swing was normal.

Forgive me for not spouting the "variance" platitudes.

There is a good chance that you are playing too many hands, are spewing when you should be folding, are calling too much, or bluffing too much.

Start posting some hand histories and let's take a look at how you are playing. Yes, it's good to be breaking even but it' not fun, it's a waste of your time, and it's common among players who are "fit or fold" or manic-aggressive.

-600 followed by -700 at 1/3 needs to be looked at IMO.

I genuinely don't believe that hahah you and your fkn analytics. I swear you must have 6 guys with clipboards and spreadsheets who stand behind you every time you play. :')

I swear its not very hard at all. I mean if you play 25% of your hands, you are doing nothing 75% of the time. The 25% of the time you play the hand, you fold before the river a lot of the time.

Including the time in between hands, dealer giving out chips...ect, you are probably sitting idle 90% of the time you are at a poker table. There's plenty of time to record stuff and I have a very good memory.

So far in 2018, Ive called raises with pocket pairs with the intention to set mine 93 times.

Ive hit 14 sets and made $3635 in those hands.

21 times I continued post flop even though I originally was set mining but something during the hand changed my mind. In those hands I made $1360. I won 16 of those hands. 1 of those was a big all in on the flop and I won and in the process I won $465 more than my All in EV so my adjusted profit on these 21 hands is $895 or about $43 per hand.

In the other 58 hands, I lost a total of $1020 by calling preflop and then folding the flop.

This is all very helpful information when determining if Im calling too many raises with small-mid pairs to set mine. Instead of reading a book and using some guys arbitrary formula to determine when I can profitably call a raise with a pp, I record this kind of stuff and determine it on my own. Im not guessing. I know these things for a fact.

It also keep me from getting bored which can be a big problem playng live.

Man I don't know how you have so much free time in between hands to record all this. I'm too busy trying to pay attention to showdowns, bet sizing, physical tells, etc. I think my brain would explode a la Scanners if I tried to record all the stuff you do.

Whats a realistic winrate for the 1/3 games in Vegas if you play mostly during the "good" hours?

How good are you?

General consensus is that if you are beating a game for 10BBs/hour, you are crushing it. Whether you are a crusher, of course, we can't know, but that's about the ceiling in general. Deep games with bad players can sometimes be beaten for more, but Vegas 1/3 does not really fit that criteria often.