Variance

[HonestIago15]

First post, been reading for a while.
I started the STT with $150 bankroll playing the 10+1's. A bit small, but I was nervous. Over the course of about a month early this year, following standard procedure that I've picked up from forums and other reading on how to correctly play these tournaments, I turned it into $1300 dollars. Obviously, I had a run of good cards as my ROI was somewhere around 70 percent for the last two weeks, during which time I had started keeping track. Now, however, I can't seem to win any money whatsoever. For about the last 50-70 tournaments I've just been hovering around the same dollar amount, and am presently actually down approximately 200 dollars from my high. Is this normal for variance, or do I probably just have some significant leaks that didn't show up when I was getting good cards? I've compared my playing style to that of players such as Daliman on the teamfu hand histories website, and though he is obviously much better, I don't notice any major differences in general playing style. Is this typical for people starting out to win a lot of money and then just go stagnant, and even start to slowly lose money? Any tips as to how to counter this? Thanks everybody

[Pepsquad]

Congrats on the early run! Obviously, you understand the 70% ROI was unsustainable so we don't need to get into that. In my opinion, 50-70 SNG's is nothing - you could encounter both extremes of success and failures over that span - so yes, this sounds like varience.

Welcome.

Pep.

[spentrent]

I've had 250 game 30% ROI where the first 100 hovered around 0%. I have learned that ROI and variance can only be viewed in retrospect of the very very long term.

I don't think I'll ever know my "true" ROI and it's quite possible that in the next 10,000 tournaments I still won't know whether 1) I'm a decent player 2) I'm a terrible player 3) I've been unlucky generally or 4) I've been lucky generally.

If I wasn't such a whore for graphs and charts I could probably just remain blissfully unaware of all these short-term numbers. But I want to think that I can treat this business as thoughtfully as any. Not 100% on that.

The basic question never goes away: "But will I have $X for next week?"

[kspade]

[ QUOTE ]
I've compared my playing style to that of players such as Daliman on the teamfu hand histories website

[/ QUOTE ]

A link would be much appreciated. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[HonestIago15]

http://teamfu.freeshell.org/visitor_histories.html

That link has a list of hand histories by players who are considered experts in the type of games under which they are listed. The teamfu website has all sorts of other good articles and tips on it as well (I particularly like the "Poker Traps" article).

[jackdaniels]

I'm watching this and decided to stop and say - cool. Thanks for posting this link.

And thanks to the guys who contributed the HH, much appreciated.

[HonestIago15]

In case you didn't know, the engine used to play the hand histories you are watching there can be used to replay ANY hand history. Just copy the hand history that the site sends you, paste it in the box, and click "start replayer." Note - the replayer does NOT work on Mozilla Firefox, in case you were having trouble with it. Gotta use IE. Enjoy, lots of goodies on that site.

[kspade]

Thanks for the link, great stuff!