Running Ice Cold. Is This A Normal Downswing or Has The Plane Crashed?

[FakeKramer]

About 2 weeks ago I started playing 20 $20 SNGs per day. I truly believe I am a solid player. After 100 SNGs I had an ROI of 15% and honestly thought this could even be a little higher (in other words, I felt a bit on the side of unlucky during my first 100).

Now I am 200 SNGs in and everything has fallen off the charts. My ROI is all the way down to 5%. I'm down 15 buyins over my last 50 tournaments.

I really don't think this is happening because I'm "bad". Cards are just ice cold. I'm not going to say I don't have leaks, because I do, and they are plenty in number, but I really think 15% should be totally sustainable for me at this level.

Anyway, my question is, with these statistics, is it possible that my super long-term ROI truly is 15% and that I'm just going through a bad streak right now, or are there major problems and 5% is a lot more accurate of an ROI for me.

I realize you would need to know a lot more about how I play and how good I am in order to be able to accuratly answer this question, but see if you can't give me a decent reply off of the above knowledge. I basically want to know if I should stick with this thing, or throw in the towel.

[RikaKazak]

dude, no one can give you a solid answer or even guess, you might be a losing player for all anyone knows and am actually on an upswing. Once you reach 1K's SNG's then hit me up and we can go over your stats.

[psyduck]

Very easy to be running badly over just 200 SNGs. I think if you've established yourself over a good amount of 10+1s (like 20% over 1K or something) then just play out 1K 20+2s as well and then post about it.

[SippinSoma]

Don't throw the towel in. Keep playing. Get use to the ups and downs of long-term poker. You'll be fine.

[citanul]

[ QUOTE ]
Now I am 200 SNGs in

[/ QUOTE ]

got to there and didn't care any more.

no one else did either.

oh, i lied, i actually knew where it was going earlier, and already didn't care.

i think everyone else did the same.

citanul

[FakeKramer]

You became a moderator treating forum members like this? Skalansky must smoke crack. Or think you give good head. One or the other.

[downtown]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, my question is, with these statistics, is it possible that my super long-term ROI truly is 15% and that I'm just going through a bad streak right now, or are there major problems and 5% is a lot more accurate of an ROI for me.

[/ QUOTE ]

With your sample size, I would guess they are equally probable. Don't be unhappy with a 5% ROI after 200 $22s. Don't be afraid to be critical of your game. I can usually come up with a very good line when I read posts here, but I routinely find hands in my own HH's that I HATE, I don't know what I was thinking and I don't post them because I obviously messed up. Allow yourself room to grow. Perhaps the best way to do this is to think of yourself as a 5% ROI player with room to improve.

I started the month at 20% after 250 33s. Now I'm around 7% after 400. I am guessing my true ROI is somewhere between those two numbers. As far as I'm concerned though I need to work on my game because I'm only doing 7% when I should be much higher.

By thinking of ourselves as 20% ROI players who have temporarily experienced a downswing we are missing opportunities to improve, whether the true cause of the decrease in ROI is in fact related to variance or not.

[FakeKramer]

Thank you. That was a good reply. They should give you Citanul's mod job.

[ClaytonN]

Kramer,

Citanul was out of line, but he was more or less hit the nail on the head. People run bad sometimes. You can't control your luck, but you can control your level of play. So fix that. We don't know how good you're playing, so how the hell are we qualified to say your downswing is luck or poor play? 20 buyin downswings are commonplace to higher level players. Just a couple of days ago I had an 8-buyins downswing at the 33's followed by a 5 buyin downswing at the 22's and I'm already back up on the horse.

[FakeKramer]

[ QUOTE ]
20 buyin downswings are commonplace to higher level players. Just a couple of days ago I had an 8-buyins downswing at the 33's followed by a 5 buyin downswing at the 22's and I'm already back up on the horse.

[/ QUOTE ]Thanks Clayton. I was just wanting to hear some stuff like this. I'm pretty new to this whole thing and wasn't sure what I'm going through is a normal occurance or not.

[1C5]

Ice cold?

Hahahahaha, you think down 15 buy ins in 50 games is ice cold?

Wait until you hit a streak of 25 out of the money IN A ROW .

And as to citanul's comments, just remember some posters here have played 200 games IN A DAY .

[AA suited]

What i think Citanul meant was do search 1st or even read the FAQ b4 posting.

Anyway, I've have a 0% ROI over 649 games and Raptor has 2 different 0% streaks lasting 1k games.

Here, read THIS (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=3453777&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)

[microbet]

Variance is much easier to understand than how to play poker.

You have been around long enough that you should know that 200 is no sample size.

People who don't know you can't answer whether you should play or not.

There's one person in this thread that I know of who has played SNG's for more than a year, dwarfs your sample size and your hoped for ROI, often offers detailed advice on how to play poker, and you called him a [censored].

[microbet]

the censored part was c.o.c.k. s u c k e r

I guess you can delete this obscene post.

[Tater10]

[ QUOTE ]
I truly believe I am a solid player.

[/ QUOTE ]

How would you rate your driving abilites? Above average or below average? There are very few people who would rank themselves as below average, even though you would expect 50% of people to be so.

How many players in a typical $20 sng table would rank themselves as a "below average" card player? I'd say pretty close to 0.

The point I am trying to make: Realize that you are playing against 9 other people who think they are "solid players."

I used to think i was a solid player, then I played 1000+ sng's, and vastly improved my game. Then I discovered ICM - how could I have been so blind? My ROI went up dramatically over the next 1000 games as I started pushing 74s on the bubble. I learned some things from Dan Harrington's books. I learn plenty from this board (even though everything seems to be OT now!)

I cant wait for the next piece of information that I will be able to use to get me from being a profitable $33/$55 player into a profitable $109/$215 player.

I'm 4 tabling the $33's with a positive ROI, and I dont think I'm good. There are too many people out there better than me.

[Vetstadium]

Put it this way if my current streak I am in would have occured when I first started playing (around 200) I would have quit poker. It is streaky can not get real read with such a small number of tourns.

I am down 50+ buyins after my last 200 games (see my last OT: post, I posted a graph), but I dropped to the 11s went on a heater and have almost earned it all back now. Things turn around.

I suggest you look into something to hit and kick and scream at while you are on a downswing. It really helps /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[pokerdirty]

http://www.mwnews.net/assets/images/Decorah-Plane-crash804-_4_.jpg

[Irieguy]

[ QUOTE ]
You became a moderator treating forum members like this? Skalansky must smoke crack. Or think you give good head. One or the other.

[/ QUOTE ]

The regular posters on this forum put a reasonable amount of thought, effort, and experience into their posts and replies.

For you to make a garbage post like this... where you basically say "I am not interested in reading anything, or doing a search, or listening to any of the bajillion posts on the subject," you are insulting everybody who puts effort into this forum.

Citanul is showing remarkable restraint, because if I were the moderator I would delete the post and send you a PM saying that if you aren't even willing to try, don't bother posting anymore.

So, before you feel like you are getting picked on... consider the fact that your post pisses people off.

Irieguy

[Sabrazack]

If you spend a little more time here you will learn to appreciate Citanul's special way of expressing himself.

Oh, and this subject has been beaten to death. Read the FAQ section on variance and downswings.

[Slim Pickens]

You are in a parking lot?

[ebaudry]

I'll be one of the few to answer your question w/o sarcasm. Then read the FAQ and search for variance to get much more detailed info than mine.

You really need at least 1000 tables to have any idea how you're doing. If I picked 500 tables from either the beginning, middle or end of my last 1000, I could make myself look like a -5% player, a breakeven player, or a +30% player. Not too useful yet /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Best of luck, and get to multi-tabling asap if you want your sample size to grow with any sort of speed. Otherwise, if you prefer 1 or 2 tables, just recognize that you will likely have entire months of breakeven or much worse.

-Eric

[helpmeout]

Most fish think they are solid players as well and thats where the money comes from. What do you bring to the table that makes you a solid player?

No one can ever say that they are a 15% ROI player longterm. Longterm is so far away that few will ever get there.

It is also unlikely that you know what a stretch of cold cards or bad luck is.

What is considered running bad? Not getting big hands often? Getting them cracked more than usual?

Have you been keeping tabs? I doubt it, so how do you know you are running bad?

Maybe you were running good or were lucky to find some really bad players. 100 SNGs is not a sample size. 1000 is a small one.

All you can say with those kind of sample sizes is how likely it is that I am a winning player?

You are at 5% over 200 so you cant even answer that question.

[pergesu]

http://www.javaspot.net/images/nicerun.jpg

3......2......1.......BLASTOFF!!!!

[bones]

http://www.macbrain.org/faces/sad.JPG

Is that what you were looking for?

Poker is harder than you realize. Suck it up.

[PrayingMantis]

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't think this is happening because I'm "bad".

[/ QUOTE ]

In order to get to any reasonable reply for your post, there's a need to make an assessment of the percentage of players from group of losing/breaking-even/"don't win enough" players who actually do think they lose/break-even/"don't win enough" because they are "bad".

I'll give you my guess: very very close to zero.

Even the worst players alive don't think they lose because they are "bad". Just like you, they think that they are running very cold, or that the games are rigged, or that essentially this whole game is about luck and nothing more, and if there's no skill involved, clearly if they lose it's because they are unlucky, just like in bingo basically (forgetting about rake for this discussion). Quite a few of them post on these boards from time to time.

As a matter of fact, and quite paradoxically, if you were actually willing to admit that you ran bad (on this tiny sample) because you were playing bad (or even if you were simply willing to admit that you don't know if you're bad or good), that would increase the probability that you are indeed a winning player (or a >5% winner for that matter), or have the potential to be a winning player, which are sometimes the same.

But you didn't. You think you are just unlucky. Which is perfectly fine, but isn't different from the perspective of any fish (with "expectations"...) on such a subject. BTW every fish has "expectations".

I'm not trying to insult you and I'm not saying you're a fish. I'm only telling you what would be my normal reaction to the approach you are presenting in your post, with regard to a very small sample.

[Huckle]

You're always gonna feel unlucky, because the donks play worse cards than you do and draw you out. You won't remember winning with better hands, only losing with them.

Selective memory plays tricks on your head, if you're good enough you're gonna feel unlucky for the rest of your poker career.

A small thing to remember, but hard to live by.

[MegaBet]

Move up to the $55s or $109s to get your money back quicker /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[SuitedSixes]

Do you keep track of your results on a spread sheet that computes confidence based on X number of SNGs? If you do, enter 200 and see what range is statistically possible. This will keep you from making posts like this in the future and help you realize just how insignificant 200 . . . even 500 SNGs are towards the long run.

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, my question is, with these statistics, is it possible that my super long-term ROI truly is 15% and that I'm just going through a bad streak right now, or are there major problems and 5% is a lot more accurate of an ROI for me.

[/ QUOTE ]Sure. It's also possible that your super long-term ROI is truly -5% (your return over the second 100 SNGs) and that you were just going through a hot streak during the first hundred.

Which ROI would you have more confidence in:

15% over 100 SNG or
5% over 200 SNG?

I'd have more confidence in the larger sample size.

[revots33]

[ QUOTE ]
After 100 SNGs I had an ROI of 15%

[/ QUOTE ]

You could've caught a lucky card one time, and won 1 tournament that you busted out of - then your ROI would be closer to 20%. Would that mean you were a better player? This is why statistics after 100 SNGs are meaningless. It's like expecting a batter who goes 3 for 5 on opening day to bat .600 for the season.

[FakeKramer]

I wanted to come back to this thread and say thanks for the peeps who gave me good advice and said "quit worrying the variance is huge in SNGs and you don't have a big enough sample size to be able to say anything".

Check out this (http://www.nubblies.net/ubb/uploads/1127843336.JPG) picture to better understand how I am able to know where you guys are coming from now. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

And for snapping at Citanaul, my apologies. I still think he was out of line, but I certainly wasn't the "bigger man" with what I said to him in reply.

[ebaudry]

"Do you keep track of your results on a spread sheet that computes confidence based on X number of SNGs?"

Please, oh please god tell me where to find this treasure. Please.

[ebaudry]

I loved your picture. Glad to know that everyone's comments about sample size and variance were understood, and applied to your graph...

Best of luck man /images/graemlins/smile.gif