i half read this thread but there is a lot of terrible information in here.

Variance and down swings have nothing to do with the amount of tables you play. Absolutely nothing. It is related to your ROI.

100 game down swings are not normal. Of course they can happen, but theoretically there is no limit to down swing sizes, even for a winning player.

I personally think most winning players arent going to go on down swings bigger than 50 games but 30 happens more than people thing.

ocz not sure how you get bored over cash compared to sng, maybe you havent played enough. i haven't played much cash games, and i might be a bit biased, but there is so much more things to think about in cash than sng, when playing sngs after playing a 8 hour session of cash, it seems so robotic and spewy you have to go through so many showdowns all the time

fooly - if u draw a trend line thru your chart u will see that your upturn and downturn were a blip from the long term trend which is actually very stable. a casinos winnings will exhibit similar upward trend line with spikes up and down off the trendline. if u study charts of shares on the stock market this is a very common phenomenom also. in fact most charts show an upward sloping support line. the stock market from 1930 to the present day has a very consistent trend line with short term blips up or down. the property market is the same and thats why the sharp increase in prices is being followed by a sharp dip in prices. if u read popular delusions and the madness of crowds it explains these bubbles (bit off topic but reading it will improve your poker play massively as it has important lessons on not following the herd).

with poker stts charts u will always get spikes up and down but u should be able to draw a trend line pretty easily for all games with the same stakes and same number of players provided u dont go on tilt a lot. if u look at the charts of good players they have very consistent upward trends. there is remarkably little variance at stts i think.

for my two cents:

I'm glad this thread popped up because tomorrow im picking the STTs back up after my worst swing so far. Having logged about 800 6.5s at 21% ROI, I have been playing the 16s consistently for about a month. Around my 1200th 16 i was plugging along with about 12% ROI which I was more than happy with, and then the "unimaginable" strings of beats began. 100 games and only 24 hours after that milestone, i was on a $600 downswing.

Now, ever since I was about 17 and had some pretty traumatic things happen in my life, I've developed a habit of INSISTING to myself that there are positives to be extracted from every negative event along the way, and have had a really positive attitude ever since. At 25, poker (serious online playing) is only about 3 months old for me, but is having its go at testing my outlook. Now that I've played a lot of golf, straightened up the house, etc, 7 days later I'm opening up my spreadsheet and seeing that after 1300 games, I have a 8.8 ROI.........

as a developing player, can I honestly look at that big-picture number and complain??? So what if there's a "sudden" downswing? As long as I'm understanding the big picture, why does that sudden event merit any anger or disappointment from me? I think we can all agree that if after 1300 games i had more "steadily" reached a 9% ROI, I'd be perfectly content that I'm a new player developing solidly..........

really, there's no difference between going on a 37 buy-in downswing all at once and getting an awful beat once a day for 37 days in a row! And i think we can all agree that we accept the once-a-day latter, while we all hopelessly muse on the former!

For me, that deductive reasoning only leaves one thing to be desired--coping mechanisms for when its sudden. If you're a winning player and a 20 or 30 downswing happens, call up your spreadsheet and next to your graph make a new one with only two coordinates: (0,0) and (total games, total profit). Observe the straight line then take a break---return an hour, a day or a week later, and simply start logging some more sessions.

OP if your straight-line graph has a slope (ROI) of 10% after 5500 games, then you've logged 5500 at 10% ROI. Be pleased with your persistence and aptitude in the face of many unexpected turns.

Back to the attitude thing--what positives can come of a negative turn? Well, the obvious, that adversity makes us improve. Additionally for me, I played lots of small stakes cash this week (been reading Harrington also) and have been delighted in how much more control there is at a cash table. I've turned about $250 at the small NL tables, and its an absolute joy to see that amount of cash with about 10% of hands played going to showdown. After taking the time to play patient, small stakes after my downswing, I'm going to return with a new understanding of what STTs are and aren't, and also anticipating learning cash NL and relishing in the intelligence quotient thus satisfaction to be found in playing that game well..

also i played a lot of golf.

I forget who said it, but to reiterate: humans beings don't live long enough to negate luck. The biggest rule--never play another STT unless you can come to grips with that.

Enlightenment: plugging along at 9% ROI, hoping to always improve--the downswing never really happened. Out.

pcv - nice post. i actually think keeping a positive outlook is at least 25% of being a successful sng player. currently i just lost 7 races in a row. thats v big odds around 100/1 i think. but u just have to laugh as u forget the times u win 7 races in a row as people only remember the bad beats.

if u can avoid going on tilt when u have a ton of bad beats that will add 3% to your roi at least. oops just lost my 8th race in a row lol!

I am not sure about that...of course theoretically its obvious but in reality multitablers imo have probably bigger downswings (counted in buy-ins). If player A and B are equally skilled (say 5% ROI at given buy-in level) and player A plays 1 table , player B plays 16 tables sets....will they have the same downswing (in buy-ins) after their next 1000 games if their card distribution and game conditions would be identical (if they would be playin in another place)? Will one of them win more/lose less after 1000 games?

Imo 1 tabling player can reach higher ROI...he can take enough value from some hands...pays attention all the time...has better reads and can put opponents on more accurate range ..etc.

so imo xtabling==>ROI==>downswing (in buy-ins)

And if you play 1 or 25 tables it must have big impact on the size of somebody`s downswing, not just skills (ROI).

Variance, at least from the mathematical point of view, does relate only to the payout structure, period. The more players in a tournament, the higher the variance. Same with top-heaviness of payouts.

Higher ROI means you are less likely to go on extended downswings, but that's it. Whatever kind of player you are, great or bad, the standard deviation on your average profit on, say 1000 SNGs, will be almost the same. The only thing that changes is the average profit.

On a sidenote, downswings are to be expected pretty often, even if you are a top player. After playing around with ROI simulator, I found that for a 15% ROI (top) player, the average downswing experienced over 1000 games if about 25 buyins. If you are a 10% player, a 35 buyin downswing is standard.
The positive thing is that variance also works on the other side and equally important heaters should happen slightly more often to the winning player

cj - i am very interested in your variance model. i know there have to be models which can calculate variance at different roi levels. people often talk about 100 buy in downswings but if your roi is 10%+ i dont think this should ever happen assuming u dont go on tilt.

out of interest at 20% roi what is maximum downswing u would expect in 1000 games?

1000 game downswing.

you guys sure like to waste time on analyzing things that you can't change.

It isn't a waste of time! Players should know how running bad will last! If not, players begin to think that their game isn't correct and the site are rigged and get stressed

the detail its taken into is. the faq tells you all you need to know about downswings. people want to know exactly what the odds are of each downswing and thats just not worth it, to each his own i guess.

This post pretty much tells you the odds of going broke given an expected ROI, # of BIs, and # of games

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...hical+variance

It's true that if you have have a high ROI over a large number of games, the chances of going broke with more than 50 buy-ins is pretty low. However, it happens, and if you can't reload then you are in a tough spot. Moving down is an option, but it will take longer to regain your losses. Also, this is based on "true ROI" which is a bit mythical, as most people do not play the same way (or level) over a sample big enough to determine your "true ROI" with any certainty.

This is a chart from linked thread:

beer - thanks ive been wanting to see chart like that for ages. its kind of as i expected. i agree re your argument about the difficulty of calculating a true roi. i do however think after u have played 3000 games your roi is within a couple of % points of your true roi assuming a few things:
1. you dont tilt.
2. you dont dramatically change your playing style and decision making process
3. you are playing 2-18 player games
4. the quality of players u r playing against isnt improving.
5. u havent improved as a player over those 3000 games.

i thought with an roi of 15%+ it was pretty difficult to have a downswing of more than 50 buy ins. peope who say drawdowns of 60 buy ins are common place for good players are not correct according to these charts.

Yes it is very nice post...but when we can say we are on downswing? After losing x buy-ins or after going down tendency for x games? Read somewhere that downswing is when any particular player noticed that he lose too much in given period...but it looks like very player dependent definition for me...one will say that he is on downswing after going down of 20 buy-ins another will agree after losing over 50 buy-ins. Which ones is right?

Also I still think the number of tables we play will influence our ROI significantly (what is nothing new)...and so probability of downswing.

Well maybe not common place, but it would be incorrect to say the chances of a 50+ buyin are insignificant. If you run 15% for 4k games you are almost 10% to have a downswing of at least 50BIs. You've had that many games at 15% and have experienced downswings >50BIs. I also don't agree that your ROI is definitely within a few points after 3k games. Sure there's a good chance but there is a significant chance you are better or worse by more than a few points. Take OP, for example. Also, I think meeting all your assumptions over a large sample is pretty rare.

Basically if you rely on poker income, or redepositing is not an option, it's foolish to assume 60 BIs is enough. And then especially as you move up stakes, 15% ROI is just not attainable, and 100 BIs may not be enough. This is all FAQ stuff, and maybe it should be more specific with high ROIs at lower buy-ins, but it's a safe standard imo.

ozcuss - a downswing/drawdown is how much u fall from your peak before making a higher peak. so say for example u won $1000 and then dropped as low as $300 before going back to $1200. i would call that a $700 drawdown. but say then u dropped from $1200 back to $300 i would call that a $900 drawdown. i think if u always keep 50buy ins in your account and u roi 15%+ its unlikely u will ever go bust.

beer - the arguments i have been having with people are for roi of 20% at stakes $16 - $38. as i assume at 20% roi we are looking at about an 10% chance over 10000 games. so u would have to play 50000 games before u had a better than even money chance of going bust if always maintaining 50 buy ins. thats a long way from inevitable. how many people ever play 50,000 games online!!

So looking at these graphs...and knowing I had almost 75bi downswing not so long time ago (running enormously cold at first and then tilting a little tbh) I shouldn't expect next downswing for a really long time...I hope

Good stuff. Also finally picked up The Poker Mindset, which was one of my goals for the month. Took two days off and played in a live donkament where I went fairly deep. Felt good to call a minraise with Ts8s and see a flop of Js9s7h as well, lol donkaments. Nothing better for getting off tilt than to hit a dream flop with someone betting into you imo.

oczkuss - but bear in mind how much your playing ability is affected by multitabling as is everyones. u cant think oh well i roi 15% playing 2 tables so i can do the same playing 15 tables. i think anyone who maintains over 10% roi playing 20 tables is a really superb player and would probably roi 30%+ playing 1 table.

and as soon as your roi dips below 10% your downswings get very large indeed which increases your possibility of going on tilt. so be wary!

I was thinking about that...and I could agree when we would like some specific numbers how bad we were running..how many bi we are down or so..

But in "The Poker Mindset" by Matthew Hilger we can read (p. 105)

"A downswing is a phrase players use to describe a period when they earn significantly less than their expected win rate over a number of SESSIONS. It is very difficult to define a downswing any more specifically than that [...] All players experience downswings at some point [...].

In reality, we will discover that downswings really DON`T EVEN EXIST from theoretical perspective. They are a fragment of the imagination of the player involved. But the poker community talk about them, they believe in them, and they assign prosperities to them."

ehh...my 75bi downswing was real...I mean existed. And I can see on my graph that it was exactly 75bi using chever`s line to describe downswing. And now how theory compares to reality...or downswing can be analyzed only as psychological concept (somebody with whatever ROI he has can go very easily on tilt after run of bad luck and go busto much more often that above graph)??

i have read some of hilgers stuff and i dont really rate it. there are a lot better poker authors out there.

what should happen if u r a consistent winning player when u r in a downturn is that your graph should bounce off the upward trend line if u r a winning player. the upward trend line is like a support line for your graph. u shouldnt ever go thru it unless u tilt.

if i was any good at all on the computer i could copy u a chart and draw the upward sloping trend line and explain what i mean with use of a chart.

btw - i would call it a drawdown rather than a downswing. as technically u can downswing and actually win money but at a lower rate than usual whereas a drawdown u r losing money. what is your max drawdown thats the key. 75 bi is a big drawdown. if u didnt go on tilt u can avoid that big of a drawdown. without tilting u should be able to keep it under 50 bi.

Ian Taylor was the primary author of The Poker Mindset, FWIW. I'm probably not as well read as I should be, but I can definitely say I've read far worse poker books than the ones Matthew's written/co-written/published and I probably wouldn't be playing poker today if I hadn't discovered Internet Texas Hold'em pretty early on. Of course, I'm also biased given that I work for him now. :-)

Downswings don't exist, really, for winning players. They're a product of artificially picked end points. All that really matters is the beginning of your poker career and now, and if you're a winning player that's one long upswing.

That said, those non-upward sloping parts of your career upswing can definitely be long and annoying. :-)

ciaran.

i politely disagree. have u ever heard of elliot wave theory. google it. u have both long and short term trends going on in a poker chart like u do in the stock market even if long term trend is up.

i really feel like you guys are too big of nits and are costing yourself longterm ev if you dont move up because you only have 50 buy ins.

just play perfect poker and move down when needed, this really isnt that difficult