yeah you're right he probably doesn't have that, just felt like from the initial post about downswing was saying that you're going to have serious downswings regardless of your edge and it seemed wrong to me

I can assure you that rec players can and do experience how bad it can get. The only difference is we probably won't get wiped out financially when it does hit.

well I mean of course rec players experience downswings, they're either -EV or very marginal winners, they're supposed to downswing a lot

Bull****. That's an absurd generalisation. Many rec players are long term winners.

lol what

^ this is just a difference in how you define a recreational player


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"In general, 2 things should happen as you increase your bet size:
1) Your range becomes more polarised
2) You have more bluffs in your range

It's generally better to overbet rivers than it is to overbet flops and turns, since ranges tend to be much more polarised on later streets.

With a pot-sized bet, you ideally want to aim for 33% bluffs and 67% value.

With a 3x overbet, you can have 40-45% bluffs and 55-60% value.

Polarity comes from having a nut advantage (not necessarily a range advantage). For example, someone who flats a 3bet pre can overbet on a 87544 board, since they'll have far more nutted hands than the player who 3bet pre. They can pick some bluffs like T9s, J9s, JTs and 87s and then they can pick all their straights and boats for value."

I hope this helps you understand the concept of overbetting. " Singular post from earlier today, there are many examples. Compare to poker logic/writing format here. gg op, was a fun ride.

Yes, exactly, because we've decided how much much money we allow ourselves to lose and we don't have to desperately "win it back" or "start winning" because it's not our career and we don't have to win to sustain our bills as people with poker as main profession have. If we lose, our reaction is, I dunno ~"f*ck this I'm out" and we quit for at least a while and we stop fueling the ecosystem.

Of course REC players experience downswings. Imagine how often you'd be losing, mathematically, if your baseling bb/100 was like -15 or whatever as most recs have.

Examples? By math being a rec has a way lesser chance being a long term winner than as a pro, as little as very slim, actually.

LOL his roll isn’t big enough to experience a full proper downswing.

It’s ok though because his gf is what’s going to bust his roll, not poker.


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Like Jaman Burton says:
“I got a 401(k).”



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There are recreational players who take the game seriously, use proper BR management and study the game , believe it or not.

Some of them post in these forums regularly.

I consider myself a recreational player and I'm one of the winningiest players in my room and likely my region.

But this is just semantics of course.

I can also play any stake in my region. Specifically because I am recreational.

This will probably fall on deaf ears, but I'll give it a try, both to Xeno and to OP. I am a serious rec player. I have been one for over ten years now, and am a consistent winner in the 7-15BBs/hour range, depending on stakes. My regular stakes are 1/3, and I am at 9.3BBs/hr in that game.

My most profitable game (in BBs/hr) has been 1/1 at home games, where I am over 15BBs/hr. I have also gone on a -2,877BB downswing in my most profitable game, a game that I am crushing for 15BBs/hour. I was fortunate enough to have a few non-1/1 sessions mixed in to that downswing at which I won an amazing $305, but I still was down 2,572BBs by the time I bottomed out. At 1/3, that would be more than OP's entire $7K bankroll, and again, that happened in a game I have crushed long term and for which I am ludicrously over-rolled.

Long story short, statistics are brutal, and if a downswing happens at the wrong time (which will be any time if OP keeps spending his roll), OP will go busto, even if he manages to play only 1/3NL and crush it.

Just to add to the already great posts in here, I played semi-pro through uni and had a decent ROI playing hyper turbo HUSNGs on Stars. I played large volume, probably 200 games per day on average and I believe I had a 2 month period where I had ONE winning day, ONE. I was playing every day. Running below EV, bad card distribution, probably some poor decisions eventually, it was ****ing brutal. I used to chat on skype to a friend who played the same games and I was in literal disbelief that the **** never seemed to end and that's playing a ridiculously larger volume of hands than anyone would get playing live. It does happen, it will happen to everyone if they play long enough and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. The cards don't remember if your AA didn't hold the past 10 times, you are not due ****.

Yeah I posted that in the LLSNL forum. And I've posted many practical examples in this thread of hands where I overbet, either for value or as a bluff, or even (on page 1) where I merged for thin value. How is my writing any different there to here? Maybe you're just confused because my writing in the LLSNL forum is purely strategy-based and doesn't focus on the emotional side of the game.

Also, a lot of people have been telling me something along the lines of: "you've only got 25 buyins at 1/3, it's possible for a crusher to go on a 30 buyin downswing, plus you're eating into your bankroll for life purposes. You could easily go broke".

My response is: yes, it could happen. I could go broke. My plan isn't 100% foolproof. Maybe I'll get struck by lightning too, or maybe I'll die in a car crash on the taxi ride home, or maybe I'll get diagnosed with cancer, etc.

Life isn't about coming up with a plan that's 100% foolproof. There's always going to be risks and uncertainties. My goal is just to keep my risk of ruin below 10%. If I'm unlucky enough to go bust when my risk of ruin was under 10%, then bad luck.

Maybe I could find a full-time job and then get fired 2 months in and have no way to pay the bills. That could happen too. Stability isn't yet an option for me, so I have to deal with what I have. And I'm choosing to take a calculated risk that will probably work in my favour, but might fail.

No. You need to study statistics. If you play long enough you not only can but will go on a monster downswing. Your current "plan" will not "probably work in your favour." Statistically speaking, it is only even close to an even chance of working only if you never play anything but 1/3NL and never let your BR drop below $7K. Given your BRM choices, a busting downswing is a near certainty.

You have approx a 1-in-12,000 chance of getting struck by lightning in your entire lifetime. Even if you have a 30BB/100 edge over your Vs (unlikely) and an average SDev (not what we've observed from your play so far), your chance of going on 3,000BB downswing over a career is over 1-in-4. They are not in the least comparable, and that is by far the best case scenario. Lower that edge to 15BB/100 and increase the SDev to levels more common for LAGs and the "chance" of a BR busting downswing goes to 4-in-5, even without ever playing anything but 1/3NL.

Add in your observed game selection, and it's not even a serious chance of success without a serious heater that you don't spend but keep as BR.

This is a fantastic post. I pray it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

I'm pretty sure you're trolling here, but it's a good opportunity to make a point about variance.

First, you almost certainly left the default SDev in when you ran this, and live SDev's are way higher than online.

Second, even if we assumed your number to be correct, it still implies a 29% chance of happening at least once per year of full time play (2K hours) as that is a lot of 2.64%s getting binomially distributed together.

Last, you are looking at losses over a 5K hand sample. That's a month's worth of full time play (167 hours). There can be a much larger downswing within that 167 hours that can only be partially erased by winnings in the rest of the the sample if Hero has the BR to stay in the game.

The downswing I posted about above happened in just 62 hours. If we look at any 167 hour sample of my records that included the negative 2.5K BB downswing (with the downswing at the end, beginning, or anywhere in the middle), they are all overall winning samples. In other words, if we look at 167 hour samples, that downswing never happened. We have to look inside the samples to find it.

Everyone itt needs to stop trying to save op, just let it happen

Who the hell has a 30bb edge lol. Pulling numbers out of your ass.

Not proud of this one

$2/$5, 9-handed, $550 effective.

V1 is loose-passive fish.
V2 is reggy, moderately aggro, but kind of loose.
Hero has TAG image.

4 limpers
Hero raises $40 BTN with T9ss
V1 calls $40 MP
V2 calls $40 CO

Flop ($120, 3ways) is Th 9h 2h

2 checks
Hero bets $60
V1 calls $60
V2 raises to $200

This is the point where I started tanking. It's the turning point of the hand. The key decision. I believe that we can find a fold here, since their limp-calling ranges are going to be full of low pocket pairs and suited cards. I just don't see people limp-calling offsuit hands often enough to justify this, especially Ace rag offsuit hands, which are my primary target here. We only have about 18% equity against a made flush here. Nonetheless, here's how it played out:

Hero flats $200
V1 flats $200

Turn ($720) is Th 9h 2h 8d

V1 checks
V2 jams $310
Hero calls $310
V1 calls $310

River ($1650) is Th 9h 2h 8d 7s

V1 flips over 65hh
V2 flips over 74hh

V2 scoops a $1650 pot

The thing that frustrates me is: even if it wasn't awful to stack off with this hand, it's just unnecessary variance. When I'm in a close spot like this, I should take the low variance option, not the high variance one. So I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not bet/folding the flop here.

The low variance option is limping pre not making it 40.

Ah yes the magical 30bb/100 and variance calculator line. I thought this was debunked years ago. Pros probably aren't averaging even half that long term/ once the honeymoon ends.

OP is drawing dead at this little poker pro vacation

So much for sticking to 1/3. That didn't last long.

OP.....are you familiar with Jaman Burton? If not, you may want to check out his vlog on YouTube, begining at day 1, just to get a realistic idea of what a normal grind looks like at 1/2, 1/3, and 2/5 and what reasonable goals for a good player at this level look like.

You don't end up in these epic 1k-2k pots every couple hours.