Chances are that you were running super hot at the beginning and now are running super cold. Frustration like you are having right now is the main reason Ive always kept track of All In EV.

When you get all in with AA vs KK and lose, its all you remember. You forget about the last 4 of those you won...and you are really right where you should be EV wise, but the only thing on your mind is the stupid big pot you lost as an 80% fav.

Yesterday I lost a $1300 pot all in with AK on a QT4J board. It sucks but a few days ago I won an all in with 55 vs 89 on a 567A board. I can tell you exactly how the equity of those hands came out overall.

All Ins are just one example of running hot or cold. There are many others but at least that one can be tracked.

My intuition tells me that if you have lost every month since Sept, you have some massive leaks that need to be addressed. IMO a good player shouldnt have more than 1-2 losing months per year (assuming your putting in 100+ hrs per month)

You don't go from $50 to $9,500 at 1/2 in 9 months without running hot (assuming you're not putting in 20+ hours/week)

Just from experience, this is huge. My recent trip to Vegas I was in my worst financial situation out of all my trips. My tilt threshold was definitely easier to break. Until I went on a monster heater.

Maybe I’m making too much out of it, I only played 10 hrs/month from sept through December. And I’ve only won 1 of the 5 or 6 large pots I’ve played this month and if I was 50/50, I’d be having a really good month.

Im not denying that I ran great early and have leaks, both are true, it’s just frustrating to lose like this.

Excellent point that many players overlook.

On Bart Hanson's weekly call in show he will mention how the number of BB's changes in straddled pots and thus affects how the hand should play out. However, to your point, this is often times irrelevant because most players look at calling/raising/betting as a static amount of dollars. To this kind of player, one hundred dollars is no different in $1/2 than it is in $1/$2/$4.

You post isn't exactly clear regarding exactly what you're currently up / your exact winrate, but either way:

- looks like you've only played about 550 hours or so (is that correct?), so not a huge sample size; you're winning either way (either big or mediocre) so nothing wrong with that, but can't exactly have a lotta confidence with exactly what you're doing thanks to sample size
- sounds like you lost $4K over just 40 hours; very lol small sample size, but downswings happen (noting that all my biggest downswings have occurred in fairly short ~80 hour bursts); admittedly $4K is a pretty steep and ugly one for 1/2 NL, but if you're playing LAG then it's easier to do

GgoodluckG

So I just looked at it closer, since August I’m down 1800 at 2/5, 800 at tournaments, and 1100 at 1/2.

So really I’m only down 4 buyins at 2/5 and 5 buyins at 1/2.
Is that a normal downswing that I should expect?

^^^^

They all seem like perfectly normal/reasonable downswings to me.

But as I say, you have a fairly short sample size overall, so even though you're winning you really can't have any confidence in for how much. The better winning player you turn out to be, the more chance these downswings are just variance; the worse winning player you turn out to be, the more chance these downswings are just meh play.

GcluelessdownswingnoobG

Bart then often points out that most live players don't think about the number of BB's being halved in a straddle pot. Instead they base their stack-off threshold on dollar amount, not BB amount. This reinforces the point that was originally made here.

A Tale of 6 Giraffes!

Here are some giraffes! All from me in my 1/3 NL game to date!

Giraffe#1:

Here's me at the 2000:40 hour mark of my game. 9.44 bb/hr (SD = 59.78 bb/hr). Whooo, poker is sooooo easy!



Giraffe#2:

Here's me over the next 1307.15 hours in the same game. 3.97 bb/hr (SD = 47.15 bb/hr). WTF, pokr is hard now?



Giraffe#3:

Just so I don't lose my street cred, here's a little 1013:35 hour stretch within all of that. 12.79 bb/hr (SD = 61.21). 1000 hours tho, lol, amirite?



Giraffe#4:

Here's me after 1008:45 hours of my new Super Nit method (now BIing / topping off to 66bbs instead of 100bbs, and becoming way more tighter / passive, you know, weaktight like all the good poker books recommend). 6.16 bb/hr (SD = 45.15 bb/hr). Meh, considering I spent 1/5th of my time digging into / digging out of my tied-for-biggest downswing, not horrible, maybe. I'm not sold either way. Winning, hurray!



Giraffe#5:

Here's the yeah-but-what-have-you-done-lately 2018 giraffe. 7.12 bb/hr (SD = 46.48 bb/hr). But just 526:30 hours, so, lol, ignore, ldo.



Giraffe#6:

And finally the overall mess to date at 4316:40 hours. 7.02 bb/hr (SD = 53.39 bb/hr). 9 years in and not even halfway to expert # of hours but amazingly mediocre! Never had one lesson!



Gbutwhatdoesitallmean?G

Thanks for sharing those. I am impressed with how well your doing and how serious you take poker by keeping track of your stats.

Yeah, nice giraffes. Sniffing at 100k this year. I wish I had started tracking sooner.

GG

The tighter you play, the more at the mercy you are of run good /run bad / distribution of the cards. Run into a few sets with your big pairs and good luck making back that 2-300BBs when you dont play very many hands or very many medium to big pots.

A good LAG has a lot less overall variance of win rate IMO and win rate is a lot less dependent on any one or any small group of hands. That is the main explanation for your fairly big difference in results over 1000 hour samples. My 1000 hour samples (or even 500 hour samples have win rates that dont vary anywhere near as much as yours and mine are getting better and better as I play better. Your results bounce around randomly and are mostly dependent on how many of your premiums get paid off or get cracked. You cant really play that much better if you mostly playing premiums and pocket pairs and not much else.

So while it seems to you need massive sample sizes to get an idea of win rate, I contend that playing styles can affect that greatly.

Isn't SD a reflection of variance? I'm actually not really sure if that's the case or not (I really am clueless about it) but if it is (???) I've been told my SD is pretty small (which is why I included it above).

My whole method regarding big overpairs is to not really care if I run into sets. If I run into them in a limped pot, I lose a small pot. If I run into them in a limp/reraised pot for huge percentages of stacks preflop, nice hand sir.

And while I'm always wary of lol 1000 hour sample sizes, I think I was simply playing too loosely / laggier in my previous 1300 hour sample size (especially for the stacks sizes / rake / table conditions) than I am now. But I'm not really all that confident in reading too much into the ~50% increase in winrate over those spans either.

I will admit that I think it would be difficult to get some truly crushing winrates using the method I'm currently using. But, as you know, I question whether those unicorn rates are possible at these stakes / rake / stack sizes / conditions.

GworkinprogressG

Nice giraffes, for a rec.... :P

Ha, yeah, thanks!

I'm sure all the on-line guys are rolling their eyes at my lol 130K hand sample size (which has taken me 9 years to achieve as a live rec player).

Gbutwhattayagonnado?G

LOL not even close to mediocre mang! I am sure most of the players in the 1/2 pool are envious of your w/r. That is one damn fine looking giraffe. And although your play style is far from sexy you prove that it does in fact get the money. Well done sir.

$10k p.a in tax free money from a hobby, not too shabby GG.

While I respect, even admire someone's discipline to be able to play a style like that, I can't imagine it being any fun at all. And for us rec players fun should also be an important factor as to why we're playing this game, next to profitability. At least in my opinion. But I guess one man's benumbing grind is another man's fun and games.

Incredible gg. Truly impressive.

Wow.

Wp GG! You do what works in your player pool.

Nice graphs GG. I really appreciated the feedback you gave me on the hands I played when I was starting out and I’m glad to see you are continuing to have success.

This will basically never happen when 4 or 5 out of 7 times you pick up the pot pre-flop.

If you are good, and you aren't scared money, then playing deeper will double your winrate, especially if you are in a short-handed game.



Being deep allows you to literally "buy the pot" preflop over nervous limpers and tight pros that dont know how to adjust to being 3-bet 6x over their late position raise.


The fish also start to spazz out and pay you off massively post flop by going all in with one pair and flush draws because they equate your large pre-flop bets with being a maniac post flop. But you are always getting it in good for huge money.

Its not fun. And worse of all, its not fun to play with for the rec players. If everyone in the player pool played that tight the whales would play less and less frequently. If GG ever played in a game full of rocks, he would be a lot less likely to advocate playing tight/passive and buying in for 66BB's.

I'll give GG credit, It's pretty solid for exploiting bottom of the barrel, no discipline, 1/3 players in a full ring game. It's also a fool-proof method for avoiding tilt and making any huge mathematical mistakes. Just avoiding tilt alone can add 2-3 BB's an hour for most players.

With that said, it's not the be all-end all- strategy for 1-3. There is still edge to be gained from loosening up a bit pre-flop. For example, squeezing over limpers to 15x when you are in the BB, and also turning EP folding hands like ATo-AQo into limp-reraise semibluffs. These plays pick up a ton of dead money when you have a rock image. Obviously pick your spots well and dont do it when a maniac is in the game. But other than that, people are going to fold to a nit that limp-reraises and has always shown up with the goods everytime in the past. Winning these pots rake-free every few hours can add a good $5 an hour to your winrate, not to mention the meta-game factors of getting your opponents tilted and creating a more gambley atmosphere where big money starts flying around.

Those were just a couple small examples that would be easy for a nit to add into his game. When you factor in iso 3-betting the aggro spewy regs in late position with Axss+, AJo+, KJss+, 88+ you can probably add another $5 an hour to your current winrate.