If it is a leak, which I’d disagree that it is...I’ve sealed the gaping hole and am allowing the drip. Many people would be better off if they focused on successes using this perspective. (in poker and in life)

It’s like saying an alcoholic is truly recovered when he can have one beer and stop. Really he should just accept he has a problem and never put himself in that situation.

imo

I can respect that answer, that's all I was saying. It's a leak, but a drip at most.

If Ava's "-EV leak drip" has helped keep him in the game as a winner, which can't be said of anyone else in his rooms, then it's obviously pretty +EV overall for him.

"I'm still here". I actually love that, and I don't think it should be undervalued. It's also one of my proudest accomplishments as well. I get a lot of flack here for my game (some of it well deserved I'm sure), and my year-to-year winrate over the years has fluctuated from awesome to horrible and everything in between, but it's always been positive, and I'm now into my 9th year of my 1/3 NL game. And "I'm still here". Not sure any other winning player in my room can say the same.

Gdowhatyougottadotosurviveinyourgame,imoG

Someone here has an Excel Formula to calculate downswings/upswings?

Like spotting local minimum/maximum and making (max - min) between them?

I'm not sure how to do it

I have one to calculate my winning session streak, but don't think its useful here cause you can have an upswing with a loosing session in it...

if you've got a running P&L you should be able to spot it pretty easily

i'm guessing you could also use an IF AND function

yeh i guess its easy to spot on a graph Profit vs hours which I already have...

It might be masochism to try and do an unperfect formula for it

Google "excel peaks and troughs" or something along those lines and you'll find a ton of info from people who have asked the same question

+1, I have this exact same tilt and I desperately want to rid myself of it. I almost get mad when I get dealt JJ/AK type hands in my last few hands.

=MAX($E$2:E142) - E142

Basically calculates the difference between your current winnings and your "lifetime" winnings.

Just to reiterate what's said already, if you can't spot leaks in your own game, then that's a leak in itself. It essentially means you are unable to progress further. Let me tell you, everyone else will be getting better, so if you don't, then you better start planning your exit strategy.

I'm curious if others are seeing this trend I am - there's more people buying in short including more buying in for the minimum at low stakes NLH. I was part of 10 players starting a new game last night, and I was the only one buying in for the max(300) - there was one guy for 250, like 3 or 4 at 200 and 3 or 4 at the minumum, 100.

And it's common for someone to buy in for say 200-300, but never reload and just linger with a small stack until - usually - they lose it or punt it off.

Is this good or bad? I actually don't like it from a poker strategy view, but I think it helps your winrate because these players are generally bad - and it really helps lower your variance. These stacks - although not very big - have an excellent chance of being donated to the table - and the players are not using the short stacks correctly even. Very common to see a player call a 20 raise with SC with a starting stack of 60-80.

I notice I have a very low variance to my play - I jst had a -470 session at 1/3 and it was prolly my worst in about 30 sessions. I have a lot of "boring" sessions where I play say for 5 hours, almost linearly go from 300 to 550 without any real big pots. I'd say 1/3 of my winning sessions are this way. I think it has to do with these short stacks - they just can't hurt you when they flop their sets or hit their draws, but they donate their chips in the process.

Anyone else notice this being a trend?

It's good for you for sure.

Even if they donate their whole stack, the rake is going to take at least 10% of it.

I see it a lot in my room. A couple weeks ago I actually ran Kings into Aces twice in a 4hr session (can't even remember the last time that happened), and afterwards I joked about how good I was running because both players had stacks under $70 (in a $100-$400 cap game).

I play in a pretty sizable room that usually has 10+ tables going any night of the week. Most are as you described, and they're near no-risk tables where you'll slowly and steadily make money without playing any big pots. There's usually at least 1 table I can move to that'll be the complete opposite, a high upside, high variance table with a ton of action, but usually with stronger players as well. I guess I'm somewhat fortunate that my home casino affords me the option to pick the type of game I want to play in on a daily basis depending on what kind of mood I'm in that day or how long I have to play that day.

Deeper is always better if you have an edge on your opposition, but I think its better to be at a table full of $100 fish than $400 decent regs. I play in a $400 cap game which almost no one buys in for. Deep stacked fish are very rare, unless they run up their buyin.

One thing I have noticed is so few people at these stakes understand the value of stack depth, or they just dont care. I can count on one hand the players who top off their stacks. So many, even decent regs, just nurse a $50 stack for an hour, bust, and then buy back in for $300.

Does anyone record their win/loss record ? This stat comes with the app I use.
Not an real important stat imo, but I'm wondering what other players w/l record is .

I'm a rec player with 1 year of recorded results. Profit per Hr is 20.36 . W/L is 61% w, 39 % lose.

This is all at 1-2 NL

That stat can be useful or can be totally meaningless. It would be fairly easy to artificially keep your session win/loss record pretty high by quitting early when youre ahead...or staying later than you had planned when youre down.

The stat will also be higher (for winning players) who play longer sessions. If there are 2 good players with similar win rates but one plays (2) 15 hr sessions per week and the other plays four 7.5 hr sessions per week...the first guys win/loss% is going to be higher long term.

Having said that, if you just play without regards to the stat and then happen to look at it way down the road, then it can be interesting. Most winning players are probably around your 61%.

As I've recognized my tables getting a lot tougher overall in general with fewer and fewer postflop morons, and yet still very loose preflop, I've actually moved towards this shorterstacked strategy myself (BIing for $200 in my 1/3 NL game and keeping my stack topped up to it, coming up of 600 hours using this tweaked strategy), plus mostly trying to move to these types of shorterstacked tables (or more avoiding deeper stacked tables when I become deepstacked if the deepstacks are competent).

Poker is definitely simpler at these tables (and basically revolves around preflop decisions which most of my opponents are getting horrendously wrong).

GcluelessshortstackingnoobG

Basically what Mike said above.

FWIW, I used to have one north of 70% for quite a while at 1/3 NL (70.2% at the 2000 hour mark), but now at the 3891 hour / 503 session mark I'm sitting at 65.2%.

GcluelesswinningsessionsnoobG

61% W in ~1200 hours of rec 1/2 <shame> at about half that win rate </shame>

What's your winrate over these 600 hrs? (I know you're going to post your winrate at the end of the year like you always do, but can you share now?)

I've conveniently filtered this as my "Super Nit" (lol) filter in my PokerJournal, basically trying to tweak a strategy that saw me win in just the single digits $/hr in 2015 and 2017 (both over ~580 hour sample sizes). Sitting at $14.44/hr (4.81 bb/hr) over 583 hours with my "Super Nit" strategy, which I'm not too unhappy with considering that within this time frame I also tied my biggest ever downswing over about a ~200 breakeven stretch.

Gworkinprogressbutofftoapromisingstart,imoG

New Month's Resolution: Stop messing around on my phone in between hands.

Despite crushing 1-2 for the last few years, I still often find myself reading pointless nonsense on my phone instead of paying attention to the action. I'm a lot more likely to do it if I'm down or obviously if it is a boring game... I guess it's kind of an escape from the situation.

But while you are fluttering through Facebook, you might miss a comment or play that upgrades a player from fish to donkey, or maybe someone you underestimated shows a bluff but you don't even see it or have no idea what the line was.

On a similar note I have a new rule for myself that I won't play during a big sports game that I'm emotionally invested in. If "my" team is losing it will affect my mood and hence my play... even if they are winning it might cause me to care less about my own play quality / results.

General attentiveness at the table has to be worth at least a couple $ per hour.

Don't text and grind, it'll cost you blinds!

Although I don't disagree with this, sometimes life EV and the freedom to watch the game or check your phone is more important than the sliver of win rate you get from paying full attention. At least at 1/3, most hands are stupidly boring to watch cause it's limp limp limp limp limp check check check. Occasionally I'll pick up something useful like "lol this guy limped AQ" but other than that I don't find it too useful unless there's a sizable pot.

I agree. You should strive to pay attention when possible, but there's absolutely merit for regular distractions to make playing more bearable. Hell, I'm sure checking my phone etc. helps me put in a lot more hours thus being plus EV