Also most need more than 300BB until they increase their skill level. Less skill means more variance.

I mean, its an absolute certainty that you will lose 300bb at some point. no matter how good you are.

Correction, less skill is not necessarily mean less variance. If you're truly horrible you'll likely dive straight down without much variance, especially at no limit. In no limit less skill can definitely mean less variance.

For the most part though, it's true.

It's also possible with higher skill you can choose some very high variance (but profitable) plays, and get a better winrate.

Lol. Your best post so far, ainec.

But, yes, the idea is that a small winrate will produce larger 'swings' that a greater wintate, if variance is held constant.

the problem is that all great players have slumps.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/7...nique-baseball

OP, whatever plans you currently have, do the opposite

It would be a poker mistake hard to top. Limit is dead on Vegas. Literally go anywhere else to play limit poker

I lost $11,000 in 9 days of 20-40 once, and my long term record in that game (before and since) is quite decent.

There's a difference in what constitutes a "safe" roll depending on whether you can replenish it with outside funding.

Have lost 6 figures in less than a month of mostly 30/60, AMA.

These questions are really hard to answer, because a lot of the answer depends on you. We can get to that later.

First off, try a variance simulator like this one. As long as the terms match everywhere, I think you can replace /100 with /HR. So, if you were a long term 1BB/HR winner with a SD of 13BB/HR, a 5% RoR gives you a 243BB roll. That's a really high RoR, and I think most pros either just go huge for BR or use a more conservative 1% or 1.5% roll. You're looking at 350-400BB with my assumed WR and SD. The calculator shows some epic downswings, breakeven stretches, and the "unluckiest 1BB winner" losing after a ridiculous # of hands.

Here's the thing, though. Most people overestimate their WR. Most of us play a while, then we start winning at a good clip. We declare "I've figured out midstakes" and then ignore older data. This biased sample becomes evidence of winning a lot. Let's say you're really a 0.5BB/HR winner. Suddenly, things like 1000BB downers come into play. The 1% RoR bankroll is almost 800BB.

At one time on this forum, there was a thread about how no real winner ever had a losing run of 100BB or something equally nuts. That was before online poker and huge sample sizes showed people reality. People then played a million hands. Then more. Then people yawned at 800BB downers while playing huge volume in tough games.

Lastly. All the calculators assume you play just as well stuck 200BB as you did the day you moved to Vegas full of confidence and well rested. Mason likes to talk about non-self weighting strategies. All the statistics have weasel words about independent random samples. Why? Because if after loosing 50-100BB in a session, I'm going to have 5 beers and go on tilt to win it back, my likelihood of 300BB downers is way higher than the RoR calculator says. Even without that, many people play worse after 5 losing or breakeven sessions in a row. Your next day's EV can depend on how you did last week, unless you're some former SNE grinder who literally doesn't care about results because he's burned our that part of his brain.

Playing for a living is hard, and I have a lot of respect for people who've pulled it off for a good while.

Ill bite. How did u lost that much in less than a month? Online live? Full ring, six max, huhu? Did you ever recover? If so how? How were you playing after losing big bet 1000?

I'm in the midst of a soul crushing bad run at 20. I've moved down to 8 and have been playing better and regaining confidence and bankroll. I think everyone who plays for a while will go on a big downer, it's what you do to stop/fix it that makes the difference.

% chance you got cheated?

I assume it was before he switched to limit.

Obviously you never "know" your winrate, but I think the number of even regular live players and self-styled pros who know how large your sample size of live hours actually has to be before you can even draw some reasonable conclusions about your winrate is quite tiny.

And further, most live players' actual number of hands seen in a week, or a month, or a year, is ridiculously low as compared to the numbers you need to see to draw those conclusions about winrates. Because typical players take a lot of breaks for bathroom, smoking, etc., don't play long enough sessions or don't play enough sessions in a week, stop all the time to "lock up" wins, etc.

For most typical players, including players who are probably long-term winners, a downswing that plays itself out over a full year is quite within the realm of possibility.

Even more than that, we're all tempted to write off "unrepresentative" data. So, that drunk session doesn't go in the tally. The one where we got in a fight with a friend and took it out on our BR. Those two horrible sessions where we chased losses and went way beyond stop-loss or reason, "don't count that in the yearly numbers, because I'll never do that again!" This all after waiting to go on a nice heater before deciding to keep records at all for some people.

Add in the fact that as a rec player, we literally play the 10-15 best hours in the week for a year, and then going pro we add 25 more meh hours and still think that the super high WR can be sustained. Hey dude, I've solved poker and win at 2+BB/HR hour. How many times have we heard that over the years?

It isn't just a long time to converge that's a problem. It is that people leave out data to feel better. It is that they're using data from the best times to decide BR for other times. All of these things make it hard for other people to know stuff and predict the future, even though the math is pretty clear. I'll admit that I don't play as well after several losing sessions or stuck a bunch in a session. That's why I'm not a pro and kind of doubt I could be.

It's not that tiny. Standard deviations converge well before win rates. You can certainly make "reasonable" conclusions after hour 500, 1000, 2000, etc., in typical hold'em games. If you're playing mixed games, then I agree it takes longer to draw reasonable conclusions about win rates due to way more variables and volatility. But even then you can make reasonable estimations on what your overall edge is or isn't based on where results fall within the bell curve.

Mostly 6max on Bodog (bovada). Probably 50% 30/60 lhe (mostly dried up now), 25% 30/60 LO8 (mostly dried up now), 25% 10/20 PLO (still action). Sometimes the tables get down to heads up.

How? Swings happen. 10/20 PLO short handed, can easily lose 5 buyins in a half hour. No, I don't believe there are super-users on Bovada.

How to recover? If I feel like crap, I take time off poker and spend more time studying and looking at bot sims, telling myself that makes me better than everyone else.

@lawdude To be more accurate, I should've said we can make reasonable assumptions. Not conclusions. Although, I'm sure you know what I mean.

No min 10/20 PLO is a pretty big game (much bigger than 30/60 limit), not to mention extremely more volatile. I would entirely discount this from any limit results.

That said, even talking away 25% of the 6 figure loss still leaves a pretty hefty limit downswing. Do you know your standard deviations for 30/60 LHE and O8?

I'm pretty sure I've came close to a 1000 big bet swong online before, but I was playing 6+ tables and didn't have much of an edge.

You really think anyone serious about poker does these things? I have kept records of every single session of poker I have ever played, and have never even considered dropping a session for any reason, either from my records generally, or when calculating averages. I just can't imagine anyone being serious enough to calculate results yet sketchy enough to do that. Of course I have never drank at the table (or been drunk period), so I guess there is a lot I don't understand about degenerates. I just figured they know they are degenerates and are not under the impression they are professionals.

Lol

Depends on your definition of serious. I think lots of people do stuff like this. What % of people in the casino keep no records? Biased ones are a step up.
How do you the reconcile the idea of pros who need staking? Especially ones with amazing graphs...
Our OP is someone who is likely serious about poker who had a BR question, but I don't think he's a pro. Lots of amateur players do this stuff, imo. At the very least, thinking that their Thursday-Sat prime time WR applies to Tuesday a 10AM. Most? The rest. More of it.

Rob, how typical do you think you are of all pro and serious players?

I would wager that "professionals" do a lot of really stupid things when running bad and in a long term slump. I never fudge my results except for when I was running really bad I would add high hand results to my LHE results to make my horrible play appear better! LOL
Now I have stopped drinking at the table and never combine high hand results with actual results in the game.