Are these fluctuations normal?

[adam61]

I been back to playing limit for 2 weeks now and I'm not real real confident I'm a winning player so I tend to question myself a ton right now, that goes away the more confident I am I'm winning.

I started playing Limit again with $240. I know that's not enough for 2/4 but I was basically just experimenting with 2/4 again seeing if I liked it and had no problems losing that money. Well I grew the $240 to $1250 in about 10 days. That's great I say I'm right where I wanna be. The problem is 95% of those winnings come from 2 insanely profitable sessions while the rest of the time I sit down and lose money a lot. Is this pretty normal or the sign of some bad play depending too much on luck?

Just some sample swings. Last night I played 700 hands in about 5.5 hours. I made $550. I was up $850 at one point. The 3 previous nights I played 250-400 hands and lost $80-150 each night. The night before that I made $250. And the 3 nights before that I had $100 losing sessions each night. And the day before that I made $400 on 500 hands. I just wanna know if this is pretty normal or if the big (maybe they aren't big, but big to me) streaks are a sign I'm playing poorly. My VPIP is 21% and I feel like I am decently aggressive but not as much as I need to be.

Also just as an aside I started using pokertracker again for the last 1,800 hands or so but in general what is the best way to know if you're a winning player. Is the only possible way to really know to get 50,000+ hands in PokerTracker and see if BB/100 hands is greater than 1 or are there other real good indicators you can get without playing 50k hands?

[sthief09]

you can start to get an idea if you're a winning player, but you just don't know how much so. if I were you, I'd stay at 2/4 for a while, since it's possible you'll end up giving a lot back.

also, given these huge swings, it's possible that you're playing loose-aggressive. those players tend to either win big or lose big.

[k000k]

[ QUOTE ]
Just some sample swings. Last night I played 700 hands in about 5.5 hours. I made $550. I was up $850 at one point. The 3 previous nights I played 250-400 hands and lost $80-150 each night. The night before that I made $250. And the 3 nights before that I had $100 losing sessions each night. And the day before that I made $400 on 500 hands. I just wanna know if this is pretty normal or if the big (maybe they aren't big, but big to me) streaks are a sign I'm playing poorly.


[/ QUOTE ]

$550 in 2/4 in 5.5 hours is ridiculous, that's 137BB's! +100BB's another night?? I wish I was getting cards that good all night! Losing 20BB is nothing, losing 40BB is starting to get annoying.. I get frustrated after -40, I need to stop or I get mad and tilt.. +-20 or +-30 is typical, but being up 240 BB's in <10 hours of play is just plain lucky as hell, no question. At my standard win rate, it'd take me at 10-15x longer to win that much.

To answer your other question, several thousand hands CAN be good enough to tell if you're on a general up or down trend, but if you're on an extended lucky or losing streak, you'll end up with incorrect assumptions about your play. The more the better. I've been up after 5000 hands, and I've been down after 5000 hands.. You really do need to zoom out a lot more to get a real picture.

[adam61]

yea I mean that's the hard part, I had 1400 hands in pokertracker and I'm a -3BB/100 hands play 1 more day and I'm 6BB/100 hands positive, that's a 9BB/100 hands swing in 1 day, so I'm guessing I can't even make general assumptions til 10k+

[adam61]

As far as loose aggressive, I'm not sure I really don't know what numbers I'm shooting for but here's poker tracker stuff related to that through 2000 hands. I feel more tight weak than loose aggressive honestly.

VP$IP: 21.22%
VP$IP SB: 39%
Saw Flop All hands: 26.42%
Raised Pre-flop: 6.55%
Aggression factor: 0.90

Feels tightish weak to me, so that really makes me wonder about my swings ;P

[Guy McSucker]

Some people I respect said some very nice things about this post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=780339&page=&view=&sb =5&o=&vc=1) I made concerning win rate and the like.

The main thrust of the post is that it's very hard to work out what your win rate is. On the other hand, you can establish statistically that you're a winning player after a decent sample: if your standard error is more than three times your observed win rate, there's a very low probability you're a losing player.

[Just to put some numbers on it: if you've won 3BB/100 over 22500 hands with a standard deviation of 15BB/100, then your standard error is 15/ sqrt(225) = 1BB/100 so you're likely a winner.]

To my mind, the best way to tell if you're a winning player is to think about what your edge in the game is. That is to say, what can you see your opponents doing which is costing them money? What are you doing to exploit their mistakes? And how are you avoiding money-losing errors? If you can readily see that your opponents play too many hands for too much money, go too far with their hands, etc., and you don't, and you charge your foes when you have reason to believe you're ahead, then it's very likely you're going to be a winner.

Guy.