Project Play More

[Zetack]

I decided recently that I wanted to play more poker, I'm tired of the intermittent way I get to play. So I've cleared a bunch of time off my schedule and plan on playing a lot for the foreseeable future. I figure probably somewhere around 4500 hands a week, give or take a bit.

So, my first few days of that are over (I'm breaking for a long labor day weekend travel).

I have a regular schedule I'm more or less going to keep to, but I feel free to modify it. I'm particularly willing to knock off early if I've done particularly well--I don't mind banking the 50-60 BB win and going off to something else, and also if I start feeling frustrated I keep the option of breaking early open.

So I hit my first 3500 hands under my new concentrated regimine--I know some of you hit that in a day and a half, but it took me a bit longer since I'm two tabling it.

All of this is Empire 1/2. I'm up 350 bucks (175 BB's) That's right at 5 BB/100. Plus I got to play in the welcome to new players freeroll tourney (limit tourney--yuck!) and scored another 27.50 in prize money--35th out of 600 some players.

That puts me a shade under 10k hands total at 1/2 and a having won a little over 300 BB's over those hands. That puts my bankroll up high enough I could play 3/6 so despite the small sample at 1/2 I'm going to go on up to 2/4 and really get into "Project Play More" (imaginative ain't I?) at that level.

I was going to make some observations about the play, but as I wrote them out most of them seemed so obvious that I figure y'all will go, yeah--and??? so maybe I'll save it until something actually interesting occurs to me.

I'll be interested to see when and if this starts to feel like a grind instead of fun.

Ah well off to vacation.

--Zetack

Edit: Ah I notice that the personal progress thread has popped up again, perhaps this would be more appropriate there.

One annoying thing, I started using the auto request feature of Pokertracker, and I check the stats window each time to make sure I'm not missing hands--and somehow I've still managed to lose a couple of hundred hands in Poker tracker over the 3500--and not just from one session so I can blame it on a missed email. Either the stat window lies about the number of hands or something else screwey is going on. Hmmmm

[bakku]

GL with the project and with your move into 2/4, you've been ready for a long time and I'm sure you'll do well there. Hmm, I constantly struggle to play more than 150 hands a day, poker is hard.

[bisonbison]

Zetack, welcome to the grind and congrats on your results.

As for the missing hands: how many hands are you requesting, and how often? 4-tabling, I find I never miss hands if I request 70 every 5 minutes.

[kenberman]

[ QUOTE ]
One annoying thing, I started using the auto request feature of Pokertracker, and I check the stats window each time to make sure I'm not missing hands--and somehow I've still managed to lose a couple of hundred hands in Poker tracker over the 3500--and not just from one session so I can blame it on a missed email

[/ QUOTE ]

I've had this problem myself (missing hands here and there). The solution seems to be what BisonBison said: just request more hands/more frequently! Last night I 2 tabled, requesting 30 hands every 5 minutes, and it seemed to work. Maybe 40 hands would be safer though...

Pokertracker Pat mentioned that Party/Empire may start using a hand storage system similar to PokerRoom, where the hand histories are stored automatically on your harddrive. This would make importing more accurate...hopefully this happens soon...

[bakku]

I don't get why you guys don't just request 100 hands every X mins, you'd have to request less often.

[bisonbison]

I don't get why you guys don't just request 100 hands every X mins, you'd have to request less often.

If you use the gametime windows, it's important to request and import as often as possible. Before I started using them, I'd just do 100 every x minutes.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
Pokertracker Pat mentioned that Party/Empire may start using a hand storage system similar to PokerRoom, where the hand histories are stored automatically on your harddrive. This would make importing more accurate...hopefully this happens soon...

[/ QUOTE ]

PartyPoker actually upgrading their software? Did elephants grow wings? Are all the table names suddenly spell checked too? How can I live at 2/4 without my fav table On The Toof?

[Zetack]

I'm requesting 100 hands every 42 minutes. I can tell when it requests and I keep checking the stats--I write down how many I'd played--so I have a list that says something like 77, 139, 221 etc...every single time it had been less than a hundred hands played when it requested a hundred hands. Somehow I'm still missing some. It's annoying cause I log some of my session stats separately from PT but I was depending on PT to figure them out.

--Zetack

[sfer]

Congratulations Zetack. I believe you started at the micro-micros so this should be an inspiration for a lot on this forum that building a roll is doable.

[sin808]

[ QUOTE ]
Plus I got to play in the welcome to new players freeroll tourney (limit tourney--yuck!) and scored another 27.50 in prize money--35th out of 600 some players.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought I saw you playing that. Congrats on the finish. That was my first ever tourney play. I busted out 57th (made the money though!) and stuck around and watched some of the other tables before I had to leave for work. It was good fun for something different.

[eric5148]

Good luck, Zetack. Perhaps our superior table selection skills will bring us to the same table one day.

I'm playing Empire/Party 2/4 these days too. After 1200 hands I've made 115 BB. I've found these games to be no different than 1/2.

Personally, I can only manage about 300 - 400 hands a day (2-tabling). Maybe when I get one of them bigass monitors I'll try 4-tabling.

[dfscott]

I started losing stats occasionally when I moved from PS to PP. I 4-table and I request 100 hand every 20 minutes (maybe that's not frequent enough?). It's probably just chance, but I find if I leave the PT window and the PP lobby un-minimized, it seems to work better. I think it just sends keystrokes to the window, so it might get confused if you're betting or switching tables when it requests (I'm not sure what language PT was written in, so I don't know for sure).

I log my BR stats in a spreadsheet. I always check my BR change against PT, and if I find differences, I can go into PP transaction history and compare. Then, I can at least record the table name, time, and net $. From that, I can back into hands played. I think Pat is working on a patch to allow you to manually enter sessions, so once that's there, I can get caught up.

[Moozh]

Heh, played with you two nights ago and watched you run a quick 20BB profit. I was on your left so I just stayed out of your way for the most part. Unfortunatetly I couldn't share in your luck and dropped something close to what you won. Thought of saying hi, but then the table wasn't to chatty so I thought better of it. Maybe I will next time. My Empire ID is Zdorab.

[Zetack]

So here's the update on Project Play More, depressing as it is.

I START ON 2/4

I move up to 2/4 and promptly went on a massive hundred BB downslide. Not the first time

I've done that by any means, but when 100 BB's is suddenly 400 dollars, its kind of gulp and

run a finger around your suddenly too tight collar time....

So...down 100 BB's in about 900 hands. Worked my way back to even over the next 1300

hands...and then stalled out and played break even poker for another 1200 before I started

going up--and up. Yea.

So by 5500 hands I was up to a 3 BB per hundred clip which, given my slow start was a pretty

nice rate.


And then the bottom fell out. Can you say card dead? I knew you could.

We've all been there, but its still frustrating when it goes on and on and on.... The

flushes that always seem to come in against you, the promising starting hands that never

hit, the draws that don't get there time and time again. And how many damn times can a set

(so rare when you're card dead to begin with) lose? Not quite everytime...but close.

Flushes and straights and flushes, Oh My!!!


Generally when I hit the flop, I'm not that upset about the two of a suit on the board.

Sure they come in occaisionally, but heck, only a third of the time, and that's assuming

somebody has a flush draw which a lot of the time they won't....except now...now not only is

there seemingly always a flush when three of a suit make it, but when two of a suit are on

the flop the third one is surely coming...and gradually I start to feel like the dang noobs

who keep bitching about the flushes, and how TPTK can't win and and and.....(ok, I didn't

get that bad, but rationality does become hard to maintain when things go badly for a

thousand hands and a thousand more hands and a thousand more hands and a.....)

Oh and this was fun, the poker gods, as if to punish me when I started to sigh too often to

my girlfriend about how I've got a long stretch where even my pocket aces have held up well

under fifty percent of the time send me a stretch of 1400 hands with no pocket aces at all

(and as if to taunt me even further send me an abnormal amount of KK's which get cracked at

an even higher rate than the Aces. Grrrrrrrrr).


MY FIRST WEEK CARD DEAD

So it goes like this...I start out the week briming with confidence. Up a little over 150

BB's since I started 2/4 (and up 250 BB's since that 100 BB slide I started out with) and

over 300 BB's since I started project play more. Naturally enough after one essentially

break even session I quickly have a plus 50 BB session. Great, the sun is shinning, I'm a

poker god---I should have started this Project Play More a long time ago....


heh heh heh. (Hey, do I hear cosmic laughter in the background?)



Next session, 358 hands, down 215 dollars (54 BB's). (oops!). 394 hands, down $60 more

(15 bb's). 475 hands up 90 dollars, 261 hands up 124 dollars (whew! glad those two

aberrational sessions were out of the way I'll get back to even next session...). Next

sessions: Down $57, Down $63, Down $180....... ARRGGGGGH!!!!.


It's that last losing session that was an interesting one for me. After the two winning

sessions that didnt even make up for the 54 BB losing session from ealier in the week, I 'd

had two more losing sessins. And now, in this sesssion I found myself down 150 dollars.

And I realized my shoulders were tense every time I played a hand, that I was forcing the

action a little, that I was letting it get to me. And I pride myself on rarely steaming...

Geez, chill out, I told myself. This is just normal poker variance, and this isn't even a

big downswing.... Ah you're right, I replied (what, you don't talk to yoursel?) this is

ridiculous, just relax and play solid poker and the cards will turn around ---they (nearly)

always do....

And then I worked my way back up to only 42 dollars down for the session and had that

horrible horrible thought---I really ought to stop now. Really. I feel very good about

being down 10.5 BB's. I kept my cool, played well, got things back together, I 've played

six hours...why don't I a call it a night. Well...maybe a few more orbits--I could get this

thing back to even...

So not too much later I was down 60 bucks and thought, the heck with it, next pot I win I'm

packing it in....



Heh heh heh. (hey what's with the cosmic laughter again?)



And then the bottom fell out. A couple of hands that stand out. I'm in one of the blinds

with J-2 suited. Flop comes 2-2-A. Wheee! Nice amounts of money go in the pot. Turn is a

Jack. Double Whee!!! Major amounts of money go in the pot. I don't believe anbody has

pocket aces or two's or A-2 so I'm betting away... River is an ace. Crapola. Yeah I

called one bet on the river---wouldn't you?--even though I knew I'd lost that pot. About an

orbit later I made the Ace high flush put a ton of money in the pot and lost to a rivered

straight flush. A straight flush????? 180 bucks down I quit in disgust.


Right there, I can point to that right there, as the single most frustrated I've ever been

at the game of poker. Not so much because I had the 45 BB downswing, althought that's nice

and sizeable, but because I felt like I had conquered my frustation, played through it, and

here I was feeling so frustrated...and when I had the oportunity twice to walk away feeling

pretty darn good about the evening.


And as frustrated as I was when I stopped, by the time I went to bed twenty minutes later

I'd gotten my head screwed on straight again, by thinking: "Heck there's variance in the

game of poker, big deal...and ok, when you play a lot a bad stretch just seems to keep

hitting you in the face over and over again...you have less time to put it behind you. But

hey, I'm a winning poker player, over time the cards will always work in my favor. And what

are you upset about anyway?...you're down 40 BB's for the week, that's not even worth

writing home about..." And so I was fine. Although I did ignore that if I factored in the

early in the week 50 BB upswing I was actually down 90 BB's which is almost worth writing

home about.


With my new and improved attitude I had a nice little final session for the week.

Score for the week: Aprox 4200 hands, down 6.5 BB's.


Even when things aren't going great you do tend to have some occaisional moments, check out

this hand:

Party Poker 2/4 Hold'em (9 handed)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K/images/graemlins/club.gif, K/images/graemlins/spade.gif.
UTG calls, <font color="666666">1 fold</font>, MP1 calls, <font color="666666">1

fold</font>, MP3 calls, CO calls, <font color="CC3333">Button raises</font>,

<font color="CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>, <font color="666666">1 fold</font>, UTG calls, MP1

calls, MP3 calls, CO calls, <font color="CC3333">Button caps</font>, Hero calls, UTG calls, MP1

calls, MP3 calls, CO calls.

Flop: (25 SB) 9/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, 8/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 4/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="blue">(6 players)</font>
Hero checks, UTG checks, MP1 checks, MP3 checks, <font color="CC3333">CO bets</font>,

<font color="CC3333">Button raises</font>, <font color="CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>, UTG folds, MP1

folds, MP3 calls, CO calls, <font color="CC3333">Button caps</font>, Hero calls, MP3 calls, CO

calls.

Turn: (20.50 BB) 4/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="blue">(4 players)</font>
Hero checks, MP3 checks, CO checks, <font color="CC3333">Button bets</font>, Hero calls, MP3

calls, CO calls.

River: (24.50 BB) 2/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="blue">(4 players)</font>
Hero checks, MP3 checks, CO checks, <font color="CC3333">Button bets</font>, Hero calls, MP3

folds, CO calls.

Final Pot: 27.50 BB

Results in white below: <font color="white">
Hero has Kc Ks (two pair, kings and fours).
CO has 7c 9c (two pair, nines and fours).
Button has Td Jd (one pair, fours).
Outcome: Hero wins 27.50 BB. </font>


Did you think I was winning this pot? My second 100 dollar pot win.



CARD DEAD WEEK TWO: Frustration reappears


I started off with more of the same. Losing. Damn. Again feeling card dead. Too many

flushes coming in against me, too many flops not hitting, too many made flops getting drawn

out on, too many draws not coming in. The regular litany of of things not working out. But

I had worked through all that, I was prepared and ready--play your good game Z, stay with it

and things will turn around.


And then it turned around. Yea. There's just a sense you have of how often your hands hold

up. how often flops hit, etc etc. And finally, finally for several session it felt like

the cards were backed to normal, even perhaps a smallish rush here and there. I breathed a

sigh of relief...ok 5500, maybe 6000 hands of being card dead, not too unbearable, I didn't

lose my shirt during that time, and now we can get back to playing...


heh heh heh (Ok, cosmos, you really really need to knock it off with that laughter thing.)



So I'm in my third losing session in a row, and its not just the losing, its the sense that

the probabilities are just all wrong that gets to ya...and in that third session I was down

75 bucks which wasn't that big a deal in itself, but I realized I was becoming frustrated

again. What got to me was that I thought I had turned the corner, that the down period was

over and now I had the sense that I hadn't...I think I wouldn't have gotten frustrated if

I'd been consistently card dead the entire week.


And here's where I made an expensive mistake. My girlfriend talked to me while I was

playing and I told her I was getting frustrated which was bothering me because I had planned

on not getting frustrated no matter what happened. "Why don't you just take a break?" she

said. I thought. Hmmm, yes indeed, why not? A very good idea." So I did.


Plopped down on the sofa with a book intending to take a half hour or so. About an hour

later I said screw it, I'll Play more tomorrow.

The thing is, that was the last day for an Empire Bonus deposit. I only had enough money in

my Neteller account to get 70 of the possible hundred dollars, so I had been waiting till

11:30 or so to see if more money hit my neteller account, if not I'd just settle for the

seventy buck deposit. From what I've read it may be that I could've just withdrawn money

from Empire and redeposited which would've been the way to go, but nooooooo.

So sometime after midnight I look up from my book and go....Aw [censored]! So there I steamed

away seventy bucks by missing a deposit bonus.


[My girlfriend says I better say nice things in here about her and how she puts up with all

my poker playing and is NOT in any way shape or form responsible for my not scoring a

seventy dollar bonus because she's wonderful...(ok, will you stop reading over my shoulder

now honey?)]


Anyway I kept my cool the rest of the way and finished the week up a massive nine tenths of

one BB.

Score for the weeK: 3500 hands, up .86 BB's ($3.44).



CARD DEAD WEEK THREE? Things look marginally better...


So this past week things look mildly better. But not great.


A real high note. Monday I enter the 250 player freeroll. I came in second. That's

$77.50. A real miracle in some ways since I was way under average stacked almost the entire

way, including when I made the money. But I felt real good when toward the end when I built

up to one of the bigger stacks...for the last hour and a half or two hours I was usually one

of the two biggest stacks almost the entire time. The heads up part went a looong time (we

were probably seeing 4-5 hands a minute and must've played for at least fifteen minutes, I

hit a long stretch were I couldn't catch a card and finally made a play that didn't work out

for me...I think largely because he wanted to end the damn thing already and didn't care

that much which way it went and made an iffy call that worked out for him.


I entered that tourney with a couple of things in mind. First I've got a nineteen inch

monitor now and am thinking soon I should move to three tables at a time instead of two.

The free-roll was a great way to practice with a third table open.


Also I've been thinking about the big sunday 250,000 dollar weekly tourney on pokerstars.

They run 3 dollar rebuy satellites about three times a day. Generally somewhere between

14-25 people make the weekly tourney from these satellites. The thing is if you qualified

for the tourney, my understanding is you could unregister from it and get 215

T-dollars--money good for entry into more tourneys.

So say you entered those satellites and were good enough, lucky enough, or went on the

occaisional rush enough to make the main tourney once every ten satellites. Suppose you

spent six bucks per satellite to do so. Make it once, cash out for T dollars, use those for

entry into more satellites, repeat as necessary. If those assumptions are close to accurate

you could essentially play in almost every week ender for free once you scored the first

satellite placing. If you played in say 45 weekenders a year is it possible even if you

aren't a great tourney player you might have a great day in one of those and make the final

table where there is some real money involved (usually 9th is 4000 dollars or more and

first is over 50,000 dollars)? Anyway, that's a thought I've been having.


Anyway, back to the play. I was winning most of the week but at a very anemic

rate...somewhere around 1.5 BB/100...but after the last two weeks even that felt pretty

good. Of course when you win at that rate you are very vulnerable to downsings and a couple

of losing session to end the week knocked out most of the win.


Week score: 3600 hands, Up 76.25 dollars (19 BB's). Plus 77.50 in the tourney. Plus I

cleared 200 dollars in bonus's..



THE BOTTOM LINE SO FAR


For the past three weeks I've played about 11,300 hands maybe a hundred or two more. I'm up

a whopping 12 BB's. That's a win rate of a tenth of a BB per hundred. Whee!


Since I moved up to 2/4 I've played about 16,500 hands and won 166 BB's at ring games so

just a hair over 1BB/100.


11,000 hands of break even poker is not the longest stretch I've heard of by any means, but

its left my confidence a little shaky. Maybe its me. Or (worse yet) maybe I've changed my

game under the pressure of this long run and haven't realized it. I had a 10,000 run of

break even cards at .5/1 at one point, and I haven't heard anybody else posting about two

10,000 hand stretches of break even cards within the same year, so that worries me. One

such stretch seems like normal card variance, two and I start to wonder.


I wanted to have a BB/100 result for 2/4 somewhere in the 3 BB/100 range before I moved up

to 3/6.

Obviously I'm not going to get there anytime soon. I'm certainly well funded for 3/6

though, so all I really need is a decent stretch to start feeling better about my play. I

figure if the next week results are decent at all, say 2.5 BB/100 or better I may go ahead

and move up.


Someday, I'm going to have to play more tables too. If I'd been playing 4 tables instead of

two I'd have 32,000 hands of 2/4 by now, and 40K hands total since Project Play More started. That's a big difference. Right now the downside swing potential of that many tables worries me, but I'm close to ready to play three tables at a time. One thing that worries me is that I've had trouble consistently finding two good tables at 2/4.


Anybody still reading /images/graemlins/smile.gif


Comments welcome.

--Zetack

[srt19170]

Hey, if nothing else I enjoyed reading your story! :-)

One thing you might want to do is export your starting hands/outcomes from Pokertracker and see if you've really gotten bad cards or not. I'm not sure how much confidence you can have with a sample size of 10K, but if you see, for instance, that you had less-than-expected numbers of high pocket pairs, you might have some reassurance that it wasn't just your play. And/or you could check to see how often your strong hands held up, etc.

-- Scott

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
Hey, if nothing else I enjoyed reading your story! :-)

One thing you might want to do is export your starting hands/outcomes from Pokertracker and see if you've really gotten bad cards or not. I'm not sure how much confidence you can have with a sample size of 10K, but if you see, for instance, that you had less-than-expected numbers of high pocket pairs, you might have some reassurance that it wasn't just your play. And/or you could check to see how often your strong hands held up, etc.

-- Scott

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure I didn't get less high pairs over the entire stretch, although there were some long stretches of dryness. For instance after the 1400 hand stretch of no Aces I went through a stretch of more frequent than expected aces included Back to Back AA on the same table, something that's never happened to me before.

Hitting flops though, I'm not sure how to measure that, but I'm pretty confident that occurred, particularly during the first week and a half of the dry stretch.

--Zetack

[bisonbison]

Zetack,

It happens. Just remember that your stats are not important.

[detruncate]

Hi Zetack. The psychological process you describe is one I'm intimately familiar with. I'd guess the same can be said for pretty much everyone around here. The swings are hard, even after you've had a few under your belt. The flat patches can be even harder. You always seem one win away from breaking through to the promised land, and that win never seems to come.

It's easy to imagine that everyone else is much more proficient at keeping their [censored] together. It might not give you too much comfort coming from me, but I've had multiple 10k break-even stretches in the past few months, and one of them didn't turn around until somewhere in the 20s. This is at .5/1, too. It's not something I anticipated, and it's taken some getting used to.

Winning at a ~1 BB/100 clip might be a bit dispiriting, but it's still winning. Hang in there. &gt; 0 is good. I find a lot of my frustration comes when expectations clash with my current reality. I've been trying hard to let go of all the little ego-padding self-deceptions (and their goatee'd evil twins) that make up the bulk of these expectations, and it's seemed to help a bit.

I'm not a 5 BB/100 player, or a 3 BB/100 player, or a 1 BB/100 player, or even a -.96 BB/100... though I've been all of these over a significant number of hands. I'm not their average, either. Past results do not determine future results. I am the guy who's got enough chips in his stack to play this hand. If the same can be said once it's over, I get the privilege of deciding whether I want to play the next one.

You seem to know what you're doing. Your post suggests that you're properly self-reflective. Your roll is sufficient to play the limit you're at. Sounds like you have things well in hand. All you can do is try to make sure each decision is as close to perfect as you're currently capable of. The rest will take care of itself.

I'm sorry if this is pop-psych drivel. It's the best I've got. Chin up sir. You're doing just fine.

[Sarge85]

[ QUOTE ]
Zetack,

It happens. Just remember that your stats are not important.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bison -

I'm suprised, well not totally suprised because I know you have have big picture mentality, but you surprisedme a little bit here.

I know you put alot of work into Pokertracker and understanding the numbers you have there.

The only reason I bring this up is because our Hero (and I feel somewhat the same way) are looking for a benchmark of BB/100 before we move up. Granted if we feel like we are playing winning poker, a magic number isn't the end of indicating when to move up.

Looking at our Hero, and me, we hit a bad patch of cards, and our BB/100 is "tarnished".

I'm curious, how long does it take to move BB/100 back up to where we think they should be?

I can't seem to get a straight thought out, hopefully you see where I'm going.

Sarge/images/graemlins/diamond.gif

[bisonbison]

I understand the desire to benchmark, but the long run is really long. 16,000 hands is maybe 1/6th of what you'd need to get an accurate view of your BB/100 (within a BB/100 or so, and that would still not be accurate because your level of play has shifted significantly during this period).

I don't know the math. But I would suggest opening up Homer's Streaks thread and running simulations based on a reasonable win rate/100 and SD/100 for 16,000 hands. I think you'll find that the results are all over the place.

I've had a 16,000 hand run at 3/6 where my BB/100 was 1/3rd of my 3/6 BB/100 over 60k hands. It happens. We are continually underestimating variance on these boards, and when people say that 10k hands are enough to know that you're beating a game, I die a little inside.

Base your moving up on whether you feel that you're playing well and whether you have the money. Because if you want to base it on stats you have to wait a loooong time.

[Cosimo]

Homer's streaks post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=445039)

I was going to semi-disagree with Bison here, because I believe that a winning player has a 95% chance of being ahead after 10,000 hands. But then I started in with the disclaimers, and there's just too many of them.

So I gave up. I agree that 10k hands are not enough to know that you're beating a game. Moving up has to be a judgement of play and results. If your results really and truly suck, then I think you owe it to yourself to try more and see what happens over the next 10k hands.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Zetack. The psychological process you describe is one I'm intimately familiar with. I'd guess the same can be said for pretty much everyone around here. The swings are hard, even after you've had a few under your belt. The flat patches can be even harder. You always seem one win away from breaking through to the promised land, and that win never seems to come.

It's easy to imagine that everyone else is much more proficient at keeping their [censored] together. It might not give you too much comfort coming from me, but I've had multiple 10k break-even stretches in the past few months, and one of them didn't turn around until somewhere in the 20s. This is at .5/1, too. It's not something I anticipated, and it's taken some getting used to.

Winning at a ~1 BB/100 clip might be a bit dispiriting, but it's still winning. Hang in there. &gt; 0 is good. I find a lot of my frustration comes when expectations clash with my current reality. I've been trying hard to let go of all the little ego-padding self-deceptions (and their goatee'd evil twins) that make up the bulk of these expectations, and it's seemed to help a bit.

I'm not a 5 BB/100 player, or a 3 BB/100 player, or a 1 BB/100 player, or even a -.96 BB/100... though I've been all of these over a significant number of hands. I'm not their average, either. Past results do not determine future results. I am the guy who's got enough chips in his stack to play this hand. If the same can be said once it's over, I get the privilege of deciding whether I want to play the next one.

You seem to know what you're doing. Your post suggests that you're properly self-reflective. Your roll is sufficient to play the limit you're at. Sounds like you have things well in hand. All you can do is try to make sure each decision is as close to perfect as you're currently capable of. The rest will take care of itself.

I'm sorry if this is pop-psych drivel. It's the best I've got. Chin up sir. You're doing just fine.

[/ QUOTE ]


Thanks, I appreciate it. Particularly the part about winning &gt;0 being good. I'm looking at the fact that I'm actually up 12 BB's after 11K "bad" hands. It could've been a lot worse, I could be down a few hundred BB's. Break even poker beats the hell out of losing poker.

And as far as bison's comments about moving up not being number dependent...true very true. I just want to feel good about my game when I move up so I'm hoping for a decent week or so--not great necessarily, but decent--I expect its better to feel brimming with confidence than not.

--Zetack

Edit: Oh, and my girlfriend wanted to know if "anybody said anything about your cute girlfriend." Apparently the fact that I didn't mention that she was cute (and she is way cute) in my first post is no excuse...

[elitegimp]

[ QUOTE ]

Edit: Oh, and my girlfriend wanted to know if "anybody said anything about your cute girlfriend." Apparently the fact that I didn't mention that she was cute (and she is way cute) in my first post is no excuse...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just read the long update (missed it the first time the thread was bumped) and my first thought was "man, his girlfriend sounds like a cutie!". /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Seriously, though, sorry to hear bout the streak - to put it in perspective, your tenth of a BB win (or was it .1 BB/100?) is like two-fifth of a big blind at .5/1.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Edit: Oh, and my girlfriend wanted to know if "anybody said anything about your cute girlfriend." Apparently the fact that I didn't mention that she was cute (and she is way cute) in my first post is no excuse...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just read the long update (missed it the first time the thread was bumped) and my first thought was "man, his girlfriend sounds like a cutie!". /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Seriously, though, sorry to hear bout the streak - to put it in perspective, your tenth of a BB win (or was it .1 BB/100?) is like two-fifth of a big blind at .5/1.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the GF mention. /images/graemlins/smile.gif I almost have to post a picture now.

And it was 1/10 BB per 100 hands

--Zetack

[elitegimp]

[ QUOTE ]


Thanks for the GF mention. /images/graemlins/smile.gif I almost have to post a picture now.


[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, I was gonna go for the ultra-creepy PICS!!1!1!oneoneone post, but wasn't feelin' it. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[jtr]

[ QUOTE ]
yeah, I was gonna go for the ultra-creepy PICS!!1!1!oneoneone post, but wasn't feelin' it. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

You are truly a gimp's gimp. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

For the original poster, I can only chime in with the chorus of "hang in there" and note that I have reams of numbers I could bore you with that are in the same depressing ballpark.

When you get really down, just remember how much money is leaving the table as rake. Getting zero BB/100 is great, as the average player is, by definition, doing worse than this.

[Zetack]

So, this week went better. Much better.

I played a a tad under 3K hands, which is low for me, I'm usually closer to 3500. I cleared 410 dollars or 102.5 BB's. If it weren't for a minus 38 BB session in there it would've gone all the way to a great week. My win rate was 3.6 BB/100.

I have a couple of concerns. One my PF raise percentage was almost a full percent lower this week than its been. Over 3K hands, it's certainly possible that I got fewer raising hands. But it might mean I've changed something. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

The other is that I'm worried I've gotten timid with respect to my results. My lower hand total is reflective of me stopping to "lock in" gains. Now I'm actually more willing to do that than most folks recommend, but I'm wondering if I've overdone it.

My philosophy on stopping may very well be flawed, and it certainly doesn't jibe with the standard advice. The standard advice is that if you have favorable table conditions and you are playing well there is no reason to stop playing. It's all one session after all. True enough far as it goes. Except in some respects--such as the short term-- its not truly one session. Except for psychological factors my next session results are completely independent of this session results. So it absolutely makes a difference to my bottom line if I end this session up 30 BB's or down 30 BB's. In other words, I do believe you can, to some extent, "lock in" gains.

Of course over the course of say a year, you absolutely won't be able to see any diffenence in my winrate if I finish up or down 30 BB's in any given session.

The other problem with locking in gains (or locking in minimized losses--you know, you've clawed your way back from that 40 BB deficit to an 8 BB deficit, then stop) is that you have no idea if you keep playing whether you'll give back some or all of your gain or go on to win another 50 or 60 BB':s.

I also believe in the law of returning to the mean. If you've played 250 hands and are up 50 BB's, the fact that you are, say, a 2.5 BB/100 winner not a 20 BB/100 winner means that you have to give some of that back sooner or later. Again the problem is that you don't know if that give back is going to happen now or at some future time so its not particularly valuable as a gauge of when to stop.

Anway, regardless of how flawed my philosophy is, I know that back when I was a .25/.5 player and I became much more willing to lock in gains, my results in both absolute and winrate per BB shot up.

Here's how I generally approach it, as a winning player, I'm confident that over time my winningness will prevail, thus the more time I have to play the less I lock in gains, the less time I have to play, the more willing I am to take my winnings and get out. Say I have 4 hours to play....an hour into it I'm up 15 BB's. I'm not going to stop. But now say I'm 3.5 hours into it, I'm up that same 15 BB's. More than that, I feel like I haven't really gained any traction...most of the session I've bounced between 15 BB's up and 10 BB's down. Maybe once I got up 20 or so.. And now here I am up that 15 BB's. I'm much more likely to stop and lock in my 15 BB's because if I take a slide I now don't have the time to keep playing to make it back up.

Or, say I find myself down 50 BB's after an hour (hey it happens) and I've clawed my way back to 7 or eight BB's down a half hour later. I'm probably going to keep playing. But again, if this were later in the session and I only had a very short period of time left to play, I'm going to strongly consider stopping here.

Anyway, that's my approach, feel free to criticize it harshly if you wish.

My only problem this week is that I think I may have been too willing to stop, too protective of my gains. That's the influence of a three week period where I was up 6 BB's (I think I wrote in my last update that I was up 12 BB's for those weeks but it was only 6). It's hard to tell, my method not being a science or anything. I'll have to keep an eye on that, if I get timid it may affect my play (my total aggession number was almost exactly the same as its been, so hopefully no affect, but again sample size is very very small).

The Bottom Line

Well I stopped feeling card dead which was nice, although I didn't have the huge rush I was hoping for. I did have some occaisional monster flops out of the blinds and I just about forgotten that could happen. One notable series, I had Q-9 in the BB, flopped two nines and lost to a rivered flush. Within an orbit but on another table I had 8-9 suited in the Sb, completed, flopped two nines again, but hit the eight on the turn and got called down by Mr. No pair. Not a monster pot, but fun. I also had some two pair flops that held up out of the blinds, that kind of thing. Poker's much more fun when you get some little gifts like that, and some of your regular hands hold up too.


I'm a little over 19k hands at 2/4 now. I'm up 284 BB's. Its a rather anemic win rate of just over 1.5 BB per hundred.


Throw in the bonus's I cleared and good news from my affiliate (boy if you aren't playing with an affiliate get one--get one now) for another 125 BB's (at 2/4 valuation) worth of money and I'm pretty well funded--particularly considering I was overfunded for 2/4 to start with. I had wanted to make at least 300 BB's from playing and be at something really solid winrate wise--2.5 bb's/100 or better. Nevertheless I think I'm going to go on up and take a gander at 3/6.

Any comments or advice welcome.

--Zetack

[Blarg]

Nothing wrong with making a move, but you sound very centered around things like locking in your wins and taking care of yourself psychologically at 2/4. That's not the wrost thing in the world, but it does speak to your not yet being bursting with confidence at that level. Even your coming off terrible losing streaks to a 1.5 BB/100 level still didn't seem to cheer you up much or give you much greater confidence in your skill or psychological strength.

I don't think there's much to be lost in your staying at a level until you feel you have not only mastered it skill-wise, but psychologically mastered it as well. Even if you feel fine about the former, you might need the reassurance of more numbers for the latter to really have "digested" that level and gotten all you need to out of it.

The psychological comfort level that doesn't seem to have been assimilated yet is precisely what you need when changing levels, which is always a stressful event.

[jtr]

Hey, Zetack.

Great to hear that things are looking better for you.

About all the locking-in of wins stuff: you must realize that the whole idea is nonsense, assuming you play in a consistent way. Sure, lock in wins at +50BB if you start howling and turn into a maniac when you're up 50BB for a session, for example. But if you keep right on slogging along, stop when you need to stop for other reasons like sleeping, eating, or not getting divorced.

Here's an analogy that might make it easier for you. Imagine that all your future hands of poker are written out on index cards, stretching off into the future. Imagine the breaks between sessions marked with a red card. So it's already been determined, for example, that your next five sessions will be +20BB, -10BB, +50BB, -5BB, -30BB.

Now suppose that somebody shuffles up all of the index cards into a new order. They also take out the red divider cards and ask you whether you'd like a new plan for your sessions. Put the dividers in anywhere you want -- you can even start playing through your future hands and insert a divider (i.e., terminate a session) as you go along. Can you see that no matter what policy you have for quitting a session (up a lot, down a lot, whatever) this will make precisely zero difference to anything you expect to win?

I know this messes with a lot of instincts we have, but that is just the pattern recognition stuff in your brain trying to ruin your life as a poker player. If you take this metaphor seriously, your psychological approach to the game will surely improve.

[Zetack]

Forging ahead in case anyone's interested in my progress.

The big news is that project play more has sputtered some. Why? I got some work. Sigh.

So I get called in on a project, all rush rush rush, and work a bunch of overtime. The first couple of weeks I worked 13 days in a row, and one week put in 35 hours of overtime---sweet. That left me rather worn out and needing to spend some family time with whatever time I had left over.

Bottom line? Over the past 28 days I've played 136 hands of poker. Oh, plus one sit n go when I started Jonesing real bad. So much for playing more.

Still, I could really use the bread from the work, so I'm not complaining (much). The downside of the project is that it had two phases, when we hit the second phase we brought in a bunch more people...like anything else it takes some time to get everybody up to speed but at the end of a day and a half they panicked that we were going too slow for the clients needs. So of course they went back to the client and got the scope of the project cut back way under half of the original work. Lo and behold, 3-4 days later the pace had picked up tremedously and now instead of the work going into the new year it'll be done by the first week or so of December. And they've cut back the overtime. Drat.

So, any poker at all? Well a little.

Just before the work came along I'd moved up to 3/6. I managed to put in 3882 hands and clear 1006 dollars. That's plus 4.32 BB/100. Undoubtedly not sustainable over a real sample size (although a guy can dream...) but a nice way to move up levels, and downright thrilling after my 1.5 BB/100 showing at 2/4.

One interesting hand from the 136 hands I have managed to play during my hiatus:

I pick up A-K off inthe Co. One mid/late limper to me-- I two bet, the Sb cold calls and the BB makes it three to go. The limper calls the two more and I merely call as does the Sb.

4 players, 12 small bets. Flop is Q-J-9 rainbow. Sb checks, BB bets out, Mp calls, I just call with my two overcards and nut gutshot draw, and Sb makes it a clean sweep and comes along too.

Turn is a six and now there are two clubs on the board (my cards are both red). 8 BB's--four players.
SB stays in character and checks, But the BB abandons the aggression and just checks, Mp checks and I bet. Sb bows out and BB--check raises me! Mr passive Mp calls two cold and I call the raise.

River 3 players, 14BB's (minus whatever the rake is). River is another six pairing the board. BB checks, Mp checks, and I check my buncha nothing.

BB turns over his A-8 offsuit. Mp turns over his A-10 offsuit. My A-K offsuit takes a nice pot unimproved. Veelly Interesting.

Hopefully I'll get a few session of poker in over the Thanksgiving break--although I have family obligations so who knows. And I'm looking to get Project Play More into high gear again sometime in december.


Keep drawing Aces everybody,

--Zetack