Being a good loser?

[Irieguy]

Cold streaks are a bitch.

They seem to do pretty serious damage to some very good players. Recent posts by Aleo and Daliman about horrible cold streaks causing changes in outlook and behavior really got me thinking. I think they saved me a lot of money...

I started running horribly cold after a failed attempt to move up to the $109's, but several recent ideas spawned by the horror stories of fellow posters helped me take a different approach:

I decided I wasn't going to lose my bankroll. No matter what. I was going to move down to the $33's. If I got below 30 buy-ins, I was going to move down to the $22's.

Well, I kept losing and losing and got to the verge of the play money tables, with a bankroll under $300. But what I DIDN'T do was freak out. I didn't change my game, search for leaks that weren't there, take a big break, or anything else like that. I just kept making the best decision I could on every hand... and moving down. A couple hundred SNGs later, I stopped losing. Then I started winning again. Then I moved up. Then I moved up again.

Now my bankroll is back to where I can start playing the 55's again. The net result is that I am even over the last 30 days. That's the worst month I've had since I started keeping stats... but it's not the end of the world.

There's no point or educational value to this post. It's just a thank-you to those who post about their losing streaks (real losing streaks, not "oh my god, I've lost 7 in a row!) and a story for the benefit of anyone going through the same thing.

One final thought: I now know that you can have an ITM% of 42% or so and still lose for hundreds of SNGs, even at a level lower than you usually play without it meaning that there's anything wrong. I analyze my decision-making frequently, but my stats very infrequently. I think getting too concerned about results over less than 300 SNGs or so can be a major source of anxiety and trouble. I'm interested to know others' thoughts on this and an update from Eastbay on how his comeback is going.

Irieguy

[Bigwig]

I'm not on a losing streak. But I am on an insanely frustrating streak of 3rd and 4th place finishes. And I'm being a jerk at the tables.

But, I'm not changing.

Heh.

[lorinda]

I'm not on a losing streak. But I am on an insanely frustrating streak of 3rd and 4th place finishes. And I'm being a jerk at the tables.

But, I'm not changing.

Heh.


I hate to admit it, but I have my moments too.

However the REALLY important thing is to be a gracious winner.

Many fish play for the fun of it, and whilst a loser throwing a tantrum is not pretty, even fish understand the feelings.
However if you take their money AND insult them/degrade them, they may find it far less fun that it was previously and for that reason, no matter how excitable I get, I try to always be a gracious winner.

Edit: This is not to say you should throw every insult in the book at your opponent when you lose, you shouldn't (and neither should I), just comparing the two.

Anything that upsets fish is BAD, and as the original post points out, upsetting yourself isn't too good either.

Lori

[viennagreen]

This isn't really a reply to you Irie, but just a general cold-streak post.....

I just don't understand these bankroll posts that advise ~30 buy-ins for good players.

It's just not true.

If you either have no other source of income (like me) or refuse to reload due to principle, 30 buy-ins is not enough bankroll.

I maintain at the minimum of 60 buy-ins at all times, and move down in limits if I drop below 30 buy-ins. And I've had to move down quite a few times!

I play at least 600 SNGs in a month, and regularly--- at least two times a month--- find myself down at least 20 buy-ins. I end one day down 10, the next day lose 10, etc.... And I am sure that if I only had 10 buy-ins left after losing 20, my game would suffer... I would be playing scared, and have a much greater chance of going broke...

For anyone depending on SNGs as their income--- maintain a much greater bankroll than 30 buy-ins... it's a statistical certainty that you will run cold and lose at least that... and don't have too much pride to step down to lower limits

[viennagreen]

Additionally...

I can totally see how people who play for a living bust out... it is easy to do...

You have to maintain your poker bankroll. You have to have at least a couple months of expenses in your savings/checking accounts. But-- you want continuously move up in limits... It's just so tempting to move up before you set aside months worth of living expenses and have the proper bankroll...

Money management is probably the biggest obstacle a professional player faces.

[eastbay]

Hey Irie,

The way it goes is: slow as hell!

I've moved from $260 to $410 playing mostly $10+1s, and am now playing $20+2s and have hit a dry river spell, treading water for 30 games.

Hopefully things will now accelerate a little bit.

Glad to hear you're battling back. When I hit $1k I'll post another update.

eastbay

[Irieguy]

Yeah, it will be very slow. But I think it does wonders for your mental game.

The financial crisis of my "bad streak" only lasted about 3-4 days... losing 8 at a time at the $55's a few days in a row before moving down. After that, the loses slowed down because I was playing smaller limits, and the recovery was slow too. It took me 3 weeks to build back up what I lost in 3 days.

Now, the sensible aruguement is that if I just kept playing the 55's and rebought when broke, I would have lost a lot more, but when things started to even out, my recovery would have been swifter and it wouldn't have taken me 3 weeks to break even. That's probably true, and i've broken out of slumps with that approach before... but my mental game apparantly isn't tough enough to handle it. What happens is that the game stops being enjoyable at all. I am seriously angry the whole time I'm playing. By moving down, I was able to avoid that because I could distract myself with the strategic challenge of adapting to a different limit. Financially I felt like I was kind of wasting my time, but from a game-theory standpoint it was still fun.

Good luck.

Irieguy

[ThorGoT]

Irieguy -

Very much appreciate your post, along with the posts from others in similar situations. I'm curious, though, if you can identify any reason for your problems at the 50 + 5 level -- the one you'd been successful at before. I can definitely emphathize with the trouble moving up to a higher level, and a different kind of game. But with a good ITM percentage, it seems like a cold streak at a level where you had formerly had success suggests there might have been a change in your game. I know I have problems when I'm (a) desperate to win now, and make back my losses or (b) overestimating the foolishness of the people I'm playing against.

[Irieguy]

Yeah, that's what I used to think, and what the popular opinion on this forum is... but I no longer buy into that. It's just a function of variance, and here are the conclusions I've come to:

1. You don't know whether you are winning or losing until you've played approximately 250-300 SNGs.

2. Once you've played 300+ SNGs as a winner, there's no reason to think you are a loser until you've had 300+ SNGs as a loser. (and vice versa)

3. You won't know how much you are winning or losing (ie, your ROI) until you've played about 500 SNGs.

4. There's no reason to think that your ROI is changing until you've played 500+ SNGs that prove it.

Until you've reached those numbers, all your results are just noise. If you already know you are making winning decisions, then a bad streak of 100-200 SNGs is much more likely to be due to variance than a change in your decision making ability. Now, there are several situations where this is not true: ie, you are not a winner, you move up in limits, you start multi-tabling, etc. But I don't buy the argument that you can play 1000 SNGs for an ROI of 20-30%, and then suddenly become a loser because of bad decisions. I don't think that happens. With experience and learning, a good analytical player will improve. If your results show differently, question the methodololgy of the results before your play. I know that many have a different opinion about this, but I'm now convinced that it's a mistake to think that way.

Irieguy

[Bigwig]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not on a losing streak. But I am on an insanely frustrating streak of 3rd and 4th place finishes. And I'm being a jerk at the tables.

But, I'm not changing.

Heh.


I hate to admit it, but I have my moments too.

However the REALLY important thing is to be a gracious winner.

Many fish play for the fun of it, and whilst a loser throwing a tantrum is not pretty, even fish understand the feelings.
However if you take their money AND insult them/degrade them, they may find it far less fun that it was previously and for that reason, no matter how excitable I get, I try to always be a gracious winner.

Edit: This is not to say you should throw every insult in the book at your opponent when you lose, you shouldn't (and neither should I), just comparing the two.

Anything that upsets fish is BAD, and as the original post points out, upsetting yourself isn't too good either.

Lori

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, I don't swear at the other players. I just swear and get censored *****. It's rare that a player upsets me. One did last night. I'm on a short stack, and limped in from the SB. The BB bluffed at the pot with 42o when I had completely missed and showed me. That got me a little ticked, because the guy had been the one to put me on a short stack by getting lucky with his AT vs my AK. I just told him, "You're a stud."

[stupidsucker]

I think this is one of the biggest leaks in my game.

I am a sore loser, and I run my mouth way too much. I am not one of those people that stick around to watch the idiot lose, that is a waste of time and therefor money!

I'd venture to say that those of us with short fuses are in the majority, but a lot dont like to talk about. The internet gives anonymity and we take it for granted. My mouth far excedes my weight when it comes to the internet. Over 50% of the time when I see a bad play or suckout I see the victim spew forth some words of wisdom. If that particular person is on a bad streak they are more likely to have more "wisdom" to spew.

In some ways I dont feel being a smart ass is really a bad thing. A ton of the fish thrive on it. They are gambling, they know they are gambling, and they love it when they get to be the antagonist. Some of them love to take cheap shots when they suck out, and this can be very frustrating to anyone.

99% of the fish are not going to play different if you tell them they are a moron. If you get downright abusive they might go away, and we all know this is bad.

The main thing is dont let anything you say get to yourself, dont let anything the fish say get to you. You have to know the edge is yours and its this badluck that keeps them comming back.(How many times have we heard this speach)

Lori was right about being a classless winner. If you do this then you will take away a big thrill for the fish and perhaps make them leave or worse... they could actualy start learning how to play better in search of revenge towards the snooty ass that beat them before.

I honestly see nothing wrong with a few beratings from time to time. I really think they love it. You personally have to keep everything in view though.

[TheRempel]

I'm happy with my results as long as I made the best plays I could and put my chips in with the best of it.

I am much more satisfied getting drawn out on with the best hand and losing than I am being the perp.

[parappa]

Hey, Irie-

I didn't realize that you were running that badly. I'm glad that you're feeling better about it. MHO over time is that the one piece of incorrect information that always appears on this forum is an underestimate of the amount of variance in one-table tournaments. I had played well over 600 10+1s at an ROI of about 35% before my bad streak came. I was routinely draining the bankroll back down to 25 buyins, because the variance seemed so low, the profits so constant. Then I started losing, and was suddenly down to $80 or something. I started playing the 5s and ground my way back up at $1.90 per tournament. It was a horrible experience, but I did learn about how much variance there is, and how long you can go without winning while still playing as well as ever.

MHO is that everyone will go through these streaks (and I am far from believing that I've seen the worst of them--I've commonly read about people going cold for 10 or 15,000 hands in limit games, which would be perhaps 200 tournaments) and that one of the best improvements you can make when your game is getting solid is simply to sit through them and gain the experience to understand how long the long-term is.

On another note, in spite of the terrible time that I know you must've had, it gives me a kind of perverse pleasure to know that this kind of terrible losing streak happens to such luminaries as yourself, Aleo, and Daliman. It makes it a lot easier to take when it's happening to me /images/graemlins/smile.gif