Hi all

Super new to all this and recently I decided to try properly learning cash game play instead of tournament. So I rolled myself for .01c/.02c and started the experiment.

Now after a few sessions of being the guy funding everyone else at the table I did some reading and learned a few things about not playing rubbish hands out of position etc. I'm still not good but I've stopped walking away from the table broke each time!

What I'm finding now is that whilst I'm ending sessions without being too far up or down on the day the swings during the session are huge when looked at in terms of BB.

Played about 300 hands yesterday which I know is not many and ended a very nice 12BB up. However at one point I was a huge 75BB down.

My question really is that when playing cash games is it normal to have that much of a swing in terms of BB?

It may be that I've made a bad assumption when people talk about +10BB/100 being a good number and assuming that those numbers are achieved by grinding out the odd BB here and there from good hands. It may be, and this is why I'm really asking, that I'm still gambling way too much and inflating pots when I shouldn't.

I'm asking about the swing rather than the exact numbers I've quoted. All my recent sessions have had these large swings (good or bad).

I guess if this is normal then all I have to do is get away from the huge pots I lose and stay in the huge pots I win.

I mean the table I was on yesterday the 'normal' pre-flop raise was 5 big blinds. When a hand is contested, especially multi way, and people start making 1/3 or 1/2 pot raises over 4 streets of betting the pots get large.

There was also, what I felt, a large number of hands ending with someone going all-in. It felt more tournament like with people determined to win big or go broke before leaving the table.

Thanks in advance and sorry for my complete noobness. I'm trying to learn honestly.

You will have sessions where you win and lose 500bb. Overall, if you're winning, it may average out to +5-10bb/100 at micros. But you should expect to swing far more than 75bb in a session. Sometimes you'll win a stack and sometimes you'll get stacked for far more than 75bb in a single pot.

In general, poker at the micros is about a lot of small losses offset by some big wins.

winrate values are averaged, however how you get there involves A LOT variance, not even comparable to your winrate. That's why poker is hard, it's difficult to keep paying attention to situations that might win/lose you few bbs while you are constantly winning/losing few hundreds of them.

Different formats have different std deviation, but you can expect 10-20 buy in (1000-2000bb) swings in one session in pretty much all of them. I used to play headsup cash and had 30 buyin swings in one session all the time.

Thanks

I'll not worry overly about it then other than to improve so I'm not getting it in bad on some of those larger pots. Just doing that will help me a ton.

Actually thinking about that doesn't it make the general advice of 40 Buy-ins to be properly rolled look a bit silly?

this advice is for recreational players playing 6max (which has lower std deviation). People who depend on poker as their source of income (ie, cant afford to bust their bankroll) either use 100+ buyins, or move up/down very aggressively

That makes sense. I mean I have a job and this is micro stakes so going bust is not the end of the world for me as a recreational player. That doesn't mean that I'm ignoring BRM just that I don't have to worry about it like I would if it was paying the bills or something.

Assuming I can turn the corner and start winning at some point I'll probably use the bankroll to dictate my stakes and therefore track my progress. It's a shortcut but this is more for the experience rather than any notion of being any good at the high levels. I think personally I might be a bit more conservative than the 40 buyins and only progress at say 60 buyins and be prepared to move back down when I get schooled at the next 'level'.

A few things to remember at 2NL

Don't get fancy. Your prey should be the players who can't fold TP or an over pair OTR vs a large bet.

You should bluff very, very rarely.

Go for fat value.

When your opponent makes a very large bet OTR, it's not a mediocre hand, it's either a very strong hand or a bluff, and it's rarely a bluff.