How long can a downswing last for a profitable player?

[pshreck]

Hi all,

No bad beat stories here (although I have more in the past 48 hours than I know what to do with).

Over the past 75 or so SNGs, I am down 12 buy ins. The downswing itself happened basically all at once, with an incredible streak of out of the money places. Since then, I have played about even poker. I have to say.... it is really mentally draining.

So... for all of you 25%ROI + long term SNG players. How long should a streak SIGNIFICANTLY off your ROI last?

I know 75 isnt a huge sample... but I also have a feeling that any long term decent player really shouldnt have all too many losing streaks over 75 games. Not even 1 of these streaks per 1000 games.

So, enlighten me. Is there a point where I have to reevaluate some of the things that im doing? I hate to rethink my game that has served me so well for the past 6 weeks.

Do any of you find your game deteriorate from staring at the screen, playing 4 tables, hand after hand.... If I am getting burntout and consequently playing worse poker, give me some tips on how to avoid this.

Thanks.

[SmileyEH]

I've lost money over 60 SNG's before....I've only played about 500 total at the 10 - 50 level though.

-SmileyEH

[tigerite]

Yes, I did have something similar happen, then I re-evaluated my game and now I'm almost back to the profit I had, and constantly placing in $50 SnGs again. The trick is not to start pushing too much or thinking the others are just there to make up the numbers.. respect their play, respect your own play, and you'll get back to where you were.

I still have no idea how I made so much profit playing the way I used to, it made me believe I was much better than I actually was. I doubt this is the case with you, because I didn't even know about 2+2 back then..!

[mackthefork]

I have 500 and there is a set of 80 with -1% ROI, I imagine its possible for a 30% ROI player to post 200-300 SNGs with a negative ROI, if they played say 10,000 or so, my standard ROI over all my SNGs is close to 30%.

People on here talk about needing 30 buy ins, I have 100 buy ins for my level, and I think the 30 buy in people are suffering from dangerous levels of optimism, but then maybe they know better than I do (probably).

Regards Mack

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
The trick is not to start pushing too much or thinking the others are just there to make up the numbers.. respect their play, respect your own play, and you'll get back to where you were.

[/ QUOTE ]
An excellent point. I'm definitely making a note of this.

[Chief911]

pshrek,

How bout posting some entire tourney HH's for us, and I'd gladly comb through it to see if there are leaks.

Nick

[AA suited]

i'm in a downswing myself..

$12000 buy-ins (30+3, 20+2, 10+1) w/a 25% roi.

now my roi went down to 5% /images/graemlins/frown.gif

bad beats, not getting cards, losing coin flips. and this leads to tilt which leads to more loses. (ALOT more loses...why in the hell did i call an all in with 88 at 10/15?)

i stopped playing for 2 weeks and did other things to clear my head to get rid of the tilt. i'm now 35% roi in ~100games.

[Irieguy]

I have "sets" of 300+ SNGs at various levels in various games with ROIs of 25% +, and they all contain a stretch of at least 50 with a negative ROI.

My longest streak is the one I'm currently in, which now numbers 77 SNGs with a negative ROI. In my current batch of 300 $55 SNGs, I have two 50-SNG negative runs in addition to the 77-SNG negative run I'm in now... and my ROI is still pretty good.

I would say that it's fair to expect a run of 100 SNGs with a negative ROI in the midst of any statistically significant sampling (500-1000). I would bet that any pro with more than 10,000 SNGs logged has probably seen a bad run of close to 200-250. Beyond that, you are probably stretching the limits of probability.

One final note with regard to bankroll: I've never been down more than 15 buy-ins at a single limit, so I think the generally accepted 30-50 buy-in recommendation is sound. There's a big difference between having an ROI of -4% over 100 SNGs and having a downswing of 30 buy-ins or more. The former is statistically inevitable, and the latter is statistically improbable. Running bad for 100 tourneys requires no game adjustment if you're playing well... but dumping 30+ buy-ins almost certainly suggests a big leak.

Irieguy

[Marcotte]

How do these long negative ROI streaks affect your hourly rate? There is a fair amount of discussion about pushing marginal edges early with the idea that if you bust out, you can start another tourny and keep your hourly rate up. Have you (Irie or anyone else) compared hourly rate during these downswings to your normal hourly rate?

[stupidsucker]

I am a 30% roi player at the 30s. I have big swings sometimes. Currntly I am on a 128 game -roi. It all came at once, and I have been trying to get out of the hole.

8 losses in a row at the 50s hurts. Dropped back down to the 30s and so it is going slower then if I had the BR to continue at the 50s.

[willperkins]

I'm relatively new to poker as I have only been playing about 2 years. So far I have played 555 SNGs beginning at the $5 level and moving up to the $10 level a while back.

My ITM is 36% and ROI is 7%. I do not know if this is good or bad.

The longest losing streak I have through was finishing out of the money 14 straight SNGs.

I found that once a losing streak started (more than 4 games in a row), I would get out Sklanskys' Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, or maybe Cloutier and McEvoy's books and reread them.

IT seemed to get me refocused.

[Irieguy]

I don't know, because I only track $$/SNG, not hourly rate. It's easy to convert to hourly rate, but I don't find that a useful metric.

But I don't buy into the argument about pushing edges early being good for your hourly rate. The best thing for your hourly rate is to win, so anything that doesn't help you win will not help your hourly rate.

During these bad streaks, I'm losing. So my hourly rate will be much worse than when I am winning.

Irieguy

[JNash]

Hi

I have experienced 75-game runs with a -30% ROI, but frankly I was playing lousy in at least half the games (prolonged tilt).

On the cheerful side, I have also had 50-game streaks at the $22-33 level with ROIs of 65% (no, not a typo, and yes, I got lucky a lot).

I now keep track of each sng in a speadsheet with a lucky (y/n) column, a grade for how well I feel I played, and a brief note on what I learned. I find that most of the time when I lose it's because I did something really stupid along the way--not because of the bad beats.

[The4thFilm]

Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: scott1017 ( $860 )
Seat 4: Jennifer732 ( $790 )
Seat 5: EndNote ( $725 )
Seat 8: CrazzyTootth ( $888 )
Seat 2: dohboi00 ( $800 )
Seat 7: The4thFilm ( $770 )
Seat 6: carlincortis ( $775 )
Seat 9: widower ( $785 )
Seat 10: Chutups ( $800 )
Seat 3: bmxfueler ( $807 )
Trny:6996068 Level:1
Blinds(10/15)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to The4thFilm [ Ks Kc ]
scott1017 raises [50].
dohboi00 folds.
bmxfueler folds.
Jennifer732 calls [50].
EndNote folds.
carlincortis folds.
The4thFilm is all-In.
CrazzyTootth is all-In.
widower folds.
Chutups folds.
scott1017 folds.
Jennifer732 is all-In.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4h, 9h, Qc ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Td ]
** Dealing River ** [ Jc ]
Jennifer732 shows [ Kd, Ac ] a straight, ten to ace.
The4thFilm shows [ Ks, Kc ] a straight, nine to king.
CrazzyTootth shows [ Qd, 9d ] two pairs, queens and nines.
The4thFilm finished in tenth place.
CrazzyTootth wins 98 chips from side pot #2 with two pairs, queens and nines.
Jennifer732 wins 40 chips from side pot #1 with a straight, ten to ace.
Jennifer732 wins 2385 chips from the main pot with a straight, ten to ace.
The4thFilm has left the table.

[pshreck]

[ QUOTE ]
How do these long negative ROI streaks affect your hourly rate? There is a fair amount of discussion about pushing marginal edges early with the idea that if you bust out, you can start another tourny and keep your hourly rate up. Have you (Irie or anyone else) compared hourly rate during these downswings to your normal hourly rate?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a great point to bring up, and I definetly want to keep it in mind in the future.

The only conscious thing I do is just about always gamble all my chips with AK early. If someone has raised to say 150 early, Ill come over the top knowing I dont have all that much fold equity, and take my coinflip. The times I run into AA or KK are balanced out by the frequency of times I am called by AQ through A10.

Thanks for the responses from everyone else. My streak has since ended and since I posted I've erased the 12 buy in downswing and gone up a few. I had a great session of 6 out of 8 ITM's with 3 firsts. One of those will bust you out of most losing streaks.

[willperkins]

Let me preface this by saying I am still learning this game. So please let me know if my thinking is incorrect.

Why did you push with only t125 in the pot. I would have raised t145 (3 x BB + two limpers). That is only about 20% of my stack.

If Crazytooth pushed and then Jennifer pushes behind him, and this is the WSOP and I forked over 10 big ones to play, I would lay it down. But since this is a SNG on the internet and another game will start in 2 minutes if I bust out of this one and I am only a big dog if one of them has AA I would probably end up all in anyway.

I really would like to know if your push preflop is better or my bet is better?

[citanul]

Heyo,

Wanted to chime in here a touch, and respond to the below quoted post as well.

There are pretty simple equations for how long swings of various lengths "can" last given your true ROI and ITM and all that jazz. I don't have them offhand, but they're around, and I'm surprized no one has posted any. The point is that an arbitrarilly long time can go, with ever decreasing probability.

If you're not a winning player to start with, then you're in trouble. If you're a winning player who is playing poorly because of the bad run, you're in trouble.

Don't focus on the bad run you're on. Take a few days off. Calm down. Go back to playing one table at a time for a couple days if you normally multitable. Go back a buyin level. Whatever. Stop playing for a significantly long time, and return to a pace and buyin level such that the game is relaxed and fun, as opposed to the stressful environment that is associated with losing runs.

Remember that 10 buyins sucks, but it's hardly even "rare" statisically over a medium chunk of games. 10 buyins in 10 games isn't *that* rare.

Breathe, drink icewater, repeat.

Now, regarding the post below:

You seem to have a very level head about things, which is very good. You are also a winning player, which is a good thing. I just wanted to say that you should look at your distribution of 1st/2nd/3rd/4th, as it seems that for your ITM%, your ROI% is pretty low.

Don't fret too much, clearly you're doing something right (or more accurately, through ~600 games, it's likely that you're doing something right, since you're up). But do look through some of the archives or whatever, or make some posts about playing while in the money. There's some great stuff on playing heads up with short stacks to be read here. Take advantage of it.

If you want, PM me and I'll help out as best I can, but it's likely best to just drop a post or two in about your own play.

Look forward to hearing about your results getting even better,

citanul

[ QUOTE ]
I'm relatively new to poker as I have only been playing about 2 years. So far I have played 555 SNGs beginning at the $5 level and moving up to the $10 level a while back.

My ITM is 36% and ROI is 7%. I do not know if this is good or bad.

The longest losing streak I have through was finishing out of the money 14 straight SNGs.

I found that once a losing streak started (more than 4 games in a row), I would get out Sklanskys' Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, or maybe Cloutier and McEvoy's books and reread them.

IT seemed to get me refocused.

[/ QUOTE ]

[zephyr]

I find this play to be highly profitable at the low limit sng's. Many players read a large overbet as a bluff or a medium pair. This move is great for $/hr too as 10th is the 4th best place in my opinion.

Zephyr