Forgive me for asking, but... [Archive] - Two Plus Two Older Archives

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lil feller

11-13-2005, 11:59 PM

I'm in the middle of a huge (200 BB) downswing, the biggest of my life, and i'm re-evaluating some of my basic decisions. Here's a couple of hands that i'm wondering about.

Hand 1:

Online 15/30. Sorry the converter wouldn't work. BB is a lag (37/14/2.2), others are irrelevant.

I'm the SB w/ AA. Two PF callers, I raise, BB calls as do the limpers. Flop is Q99. I bet, BB calls, utg limper (L/P) calls. Turn's a 5. I bet and they both call. River is a 9. I bet, SB raises. UTG limper folds, hero?

Hand 2:
I'm in the c/o w/ KJs. UTG+1 limps (38/8/2.2). Folded to me and I raise. Blinds fold, heads up. Flop is J99 and goes check/call. Turn is a 4. Checked to me, I bet, he raises. I ?

I know these probably seem insanely simple, but this downswing has me questioning every decision I make. If you think this thread is stupid or a waste of your time please ignore it, but if you feel like contributing, please do so.

Thanks,

lf

Dazarath

11-14-2005, 12:17 AM

Hand 1: I've seen people pull this kind of play with Qx (because their kicker no longer matters) and I've seen people slowplay trips until the river. I think any option besides folding is good. If I'm feeling laggy, I'd raise.

Hand 2: Ugh, my standard is to call down in these type of situations, but a turn checkraise from a 38/8/2.2 screams of a 9. He'd have bet/3-bet the flop with a J.

AceHigh

11-14-2005, 12:35 AM

[ QUOTE ]

Hand 1: You are probably winning here, but I only call because you will get 4-bet every time your opponent has a 9. And I don't like 3-betting and folding on the river. My opponent might cap it with KQ figuring he is splitting with AQ.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

Hand 2: Call down against most oponents. This player seems too aggressive to fold against.

[/ QUOTE ]

flawless_victory

11-14-2005, 12:43 AM

hand 1, easy raise.

hand 2, call and consider raising the river.

11-14-2005, 01:15 AM

hand 1 raise

hand 2 raise/fold to re-raise

lil feller

11-14-2005, 01:15 AM

[ QUOTE ]
hand 1, easy raise.

hand 2, call and consider raising the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hand 1 you do mean easy 3 bet, right? Do you call if capped?

Hand 2 a river raises is something I wouldnt have thought about, i'm assuming you fold to a 3 bet...

lf

mc1023

11-14-2005, 01:17 AM

First hand looks like a raise to me and call if capped.

Second hand I would call down here, no point jamming this turn and putting in lots of bets against someone that's loose and could very well possibly have a 9.

and 200 BB isn't too bad, just ride through it /images/graemlins/smile.gif

11-14-2005, 01:21 AM

i want to elaborate what i said...

hand 1 easy three bet, call the cap

hand 2 raise, fold to a cap, and check behind river UI

Dazarath

11-14-2005, 01:41 AM

[ QUOTE ]
hand 2 raise, fold to a cap, and check behind river UI

[/ QUOTE ]

And what does this accomplish? He will fold all worse hands and cap all hands that beat you. Calling gets you more value from a weaker J or a low pocket, while it saves you money when you're up against a 9.

Does anyone agree with my original thinking? 2.2 is a really high AF for someone with 38 VPIP. In my experience, these players will always go to war on the flop with any two pair (any J or pocket pair) and will use the CC/CR line with a 9.

Smoothcall

11-14-2005, 02:14 AM

Is this for real? Just kidding i will give your thread more respect than you gave mine. I would call in first situation since you are getting raised by yourself since the sb raised and you are the sb. So it has to be a tie. Just kidding again. I would reraise if it was the loose aggressive if he raises again then i have to worry about QQ ot a 9 and just call.

@nd one with kj call the turn raise and call river. People make bluff raises and semi bluff riases too often to fold here.

11-14-2005, 02:26 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm in the middle of a huge (200 BB) downswing, the biggest of my life

[/ QUOTE ]

If you've been playing for a substantial period of time you can consider that either lucky or an achievement on your part. I wouldn't get too depressed about it.

Hand one's an easy re-raise. You'll see a Q here majority of the time. If you get capped gnash your teeth together and call. On hand two you just call down and hand him some rope.

Lurker4

11-14-2005, 02:49 AM

For those who 3-bet river in hand 1, don't you think a LAG would have raised the flop or turn w/a Q? loose/tight-passives are the ones who worry about kicker not being good enough on this board, not LAGs. I think the raise is a bluff a majority of the time, with the other times it being the case 9, so I just call here, since he's folding all his bluffs to a 3-bet and obviously capping quads.

Smoothcall

11-14-2005, 04:16 AM

What you say itsd all true. But the bottom line is only a 9 or QQ beats you. Loose agressive players will raise with a wide variety on the river so the percentage is wioth you that your good. And yeah could be bluffing but he may try another rebluff, or he may have a little somthing and call you out of curiousity now.

flawless_victory

11-14-2005, 04:20 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
hand 1, easy raise.

hand 2, call and consider raising the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hand 1 you do mean easy 3 bet, right? Do you call if capped?

Hand 2 a river raises is something I wouldnt have thought about, i'm assuming you fold to a 3 bet...

lf

[/ QUOTE ]
never fold hand 1 no matter what.

hand 2 you will prob want to put 4 BBs on turn/river but NOT 5... if u put in 5, u will lose... so yeah, do what you gotta do.

lil feller

11-14-2005, 05:45 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm in the middle of a huge (200 BB) downswing, the biggest of my life

[/ QUOTE ]

If you've been playing for a substantial period of time you can consider that either lucky or an achievement on your part. I wouldn't get too depressed about it.

Hand one's an easy re-raise. You'll see a Q here majority of the time. If you get capped gnash your teeth together and call. On hand two you just call down and hand him some rope.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been playing for quite a while (about 8 years) and professionally for 4. I've never encountered so many losses to 2-5 card outs in such a short span of time/hands. I'm generally untiltable, but this has me talking to myself. I'll get over it, and I just need to make sure i'm not making any stupid mistakes on what should be easy to play hands. thanks for the encouragement.

lf

elindauer

11-14-2005, 05:50 AM

Hi,

Hand 1, I'd reraise. There is some chance of course that the caller has been slowplaying a 9 trying to keep the 3rd player in, but I take the risk.

Hand 2, it depends on his SD rate, but at 2.2 AF I'm calling down.

Keep your head up.

good luck.
eric

Victor

11-14-2005, 06:00 AM

hand 1 i 3bet but im a sh lagtard.

hand 2 i call down but im a sh lagtard.

Victor

11-14-2005, 06:02 AM

[ QUOTE ]
hand 1 raise

hand 2 raise/fold to re-raise

[/ QUOTE ]

lines that involve folding top pair for the same price as seeing showdown are bad.

kiddo

11-14-2005, 06:08 AM

Hand 2: U should have aggressionfactor by street, not total postflop. Will make these hands easier. Some players prefer to attack with any flopped hand on turn and got like AF 1 on flop and 4 on turn.

Im a bit surprised you play at 15/30 and never have lost more then 200BB. A 200BB dowswing happens many times each year if u play fixed holdem.

JasonP530

11-14-2005, 06:13 AM

Sorry to hear of your struggles. How bad is the villian in hand one? If he is bad, then definately reraise the river, as he many bad players will raise you with a queen there. If he is a better player, I think a reraise is much closer, because a cap will make you unhappy(though I think you still have to call) and he is less likely to be raising a Q, after you have raised out of the SB and can bet the whole way into the field.

Hand 2 is definately a call down. He is agressive for a player at 16 VPIP, at 38, his standards have to be lower. In addition, he could be raising a worse Jack, a straight draw(though that is likely to have semibluffed on the flop), or a total bluff. And you could hit a jack. This is a definate calldown.

Good luck in getting back on track.

Jason

DeeJ

11-14-2005, 06:16 AM

1) raise and call. Qx is 3 times more common than 9x. folding is v bad
2) I call down. Turn raises can be pushy but on a scary board with just a top pair I'd like to get the showdown on my terms.

lil feller

11-14-2005, 06:32 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Im a bit surprised you play at 15/30 and never have lost more then 200BB. A 200BB dowswing happens many times each year if u play fixed holdem

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, i'm not sure what this means, but this is my first, and I play a lot.

lf

flawless_victory

11-14-2005, 06:33 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
hand 1 raise

hand 2 raise/fold to re-raise

[/ QUOTE ]

lines that involve folding top pair for the same price as seeing showdown are bad.

[/ QUOTE ]thats just something ppl say but it makes zero sense. sry.

baronzeus

11-14-2005, 06:37 AM

3bet call a cap in hand one.

i would never do anything but call in hand 2. get him to bluff the river too.

jediael

11-14-2005, 07:23 AM

1) Call
2) Call turn and river, bet river if checked to

Smoothcall

11-14-2005, 08:25 AM

I dont think i have ever had a 200 bb downswing at a one live 15-30 game knock on wood! I think my biggest was $4700 maybe? Online the swings are bigger, i have had bigger downswings online but i play 4 games usually.

kiddo

11-14-2005, 12:32 PM

You are playing live?

I was talking about multitabling online where u play about 10 times as many hands/hour as live. (I play 400hands/hour)

If I hit a 200BB downswing online in fixed limit holdem and my wife asks me how Im doing I tell her: "Well I have been a bit unlucky lately, but it will change." Its not a big deal.

Not untill you hit +300BB you start to think about what is happening.

brick

11-14-2005, 01:51 PM

Online 15/30. Sorry the converter wouldn't work.

Tommy Angelo

11-14-2005, 02:00 PM

"I'm in the middle of a huge (200 BB) downswing"

Every time I read something like that, I wonder what kind of swings I've been through, and really, I have no idea, because I always get bogged down on time units, which happens eventually anytime score-keeping comes up.

What does "downswing" mean? Does it mean we win no pots at all? Or one pot per hour? Or per 100? Or is "downswing" a word that everyone has agreed to calculated by the session? So a 200BB downswing would mean no winning sessions during some period that is defined by there being no winning sessions in it. Okay, I think I see it now. And it looks like self-torture to me. But let's say we say that "downswing" is a by-the-sessions thing, well, in that case, how long a break between playing determinines the end of one session and the start of another? An hour? Two? 24?

If there is some specific need to compare something to something, then looking back at records can be a good play. Otherwise, I think it is a waste of physical and emotional energy and therefore -EV.

Tommy

ggbman

11-14-2005, 02:25 PM

UMTerp

11-14-2005, 02:26 PM

Tommy, I'm fairly certain that by most people's definition of "downswing", it can last multiple sessions, weeks, whatever.

I would definite the magnitude of a current "downswing" for a winning player as: how much money has been lost since his bankroll was at its highest level.

It would be rare that one's biggest downswing would occur over a single session.

phish

11-14-2005, 02:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"I'm in the middle of a huge (200 BB) downswing"

Every time I read something like that, I wonder what kind of swings I've been through, and really, I have no idea, because I always get bogged down on time units, which happens eventually anytime score-keeping comes up.

What does "downswing" mean? Does it mean we win no pots at all? Or one pot per hour? Or per 100? Or is "downswing" a word that everyone has agreed to calculated by the session? So a 200BB downswing would mean no winning sessions during some period that is defined by there being no winning sessions in it. Okay, I think I see it now. And it looks like self-torture to me. But let's say we say that "downswing" is a by-the-sessions thing, well, in that case, how long a break between playing determinines the end of one session and the start of another? An hour? Two? 24?

If there is some specific need to compare something to something, then looking back at records can be a good play. Otherwise, I think it is a waste of physical and emotional energy and therefore -EV.

Tommy

[/ QUOTE ]

Tommy,

I'm amazed that you don't understand what he means by a 200 bet downswing. Or that you think it's not important.

A downswing ignores sessions. It simply measures how many bets you've lost since your maximum profit peak. For example, if at one time during your life you were up $876K, but then over the next 6 sessions (some wins, some losses) you lost 16K. Then won 8K back over the next 4 sessions. But then loss another 15K over the next 8 sessions. Your total downswing at this point in time is 23K.

And I believe this statistic is vitally important to assessing your skill as a player. How much you can swing down is a function of both your variance and expectation. If over the past 10 years, you have never experience a downswing of over 200 bets, but now suddenly find yourself down over 300 bets, then the odds are good that something has changed in the game, and you may need to re-examine.

If you can honestly claim to have never swung down over 200 bets, then that says a lot about your skill and game selection.

In fact, since a true winrate takes so long to converge, I would argue that the maximum downward deviation may be the most important statistic to objectively assess your skill relative to your opponents.

ggbman

11-14-2005, 02:26 PM

Hand 1: 3 bet and call a cap, if he has quads, theres nothing you can do.

hand 2: Call down. 3 betting here like some suggested is ridiculous, especially because you might continue to induce a bluff from a Q-10 type hand. Only raise the river if it is a J.

Tommy Angelo

11-14-2005, 04:57 PM

"A downswing ignores sessions. It simply measures how many bets you've lost since your maximum profit peak."

So, losers aren't allowed to have downswings?

"And I believe this statistic is vitally important to assessing your skill as a player."

For those who believe it is vitally important to statistically assess their own skill as a player, I agree. But everyone isn't like that.

Tommy

phish

11-14-2005, 05:07 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"A downswing ignores sessions. It simply measures how many bets you've lost since your maximum profit peak."

So, losers aren't allowed to have downswings?

"And I believe this statistic is vitally important to assessing your skill as a player."

For those who believe it is vitally important to statistically assess their own skill as a player, I agree. But everyone isn't like that.

Tommy

[/ QUOTE ]

For losers, their entire life is one big downswing. Yes, downswing only has meaning for winners. Losers should talk about upswings.

And if you don't objectively assess your skills, how do you know you're any good? I've met players who complain about running bad for three years, never acknowledging honestly that they are not winning players anymore.

Tommy Angelo

11-14-2005, 05:08 PM

"If you can honestly claim to have never swung down over 200 bets, then that says a lot about your skill and game selection."

I don't know about the past, but I do believe that the likelihood of me having a 200BB downswing at any time in the future (meaning drop 200BB below where I am right now, or drop 200BB from any future relative high-point) is very, very close to zero. And I'd put the chances of me ever going backwards 100BB at extremely slim. But then, I also believe I am playing limit hold'em these days in a way that results in me having the lowest fluctuation of any player in the history of limit hold'em. More on that later maybe as it comes in. (I have to collect a little more data. :-) )

Tommy

phish

11-14-2005, 05:17 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"If you can honestly claim to have never swung down over 200 bets, then that says a lot about your skill and game selection."

I don't know about the past, but I do believe that the likelihood of me having a 200BB downswing at any time in the future (meaning drop 200BB below where I am right now, or drop 200BB from any future relative high-point) is very, very close to zero. And I'd put the chances of me ever going backwards 100BB at extremely slim. But then, I also believe I am playing limit hold'em these days in a way that results in me having the lowest fluctuation of any player in the history of limit hold'em. More on that later maybe as it comes in. (I have to collect a little more data. :-) )

Tommy

[/ QUOTE ]

What you are saying is that your edge over your opponents is huge and that you play a low variance game. Contrast that with other posters here who seem to think that 300 bet downswings are to be routinely expected. Their edges are probably razor thin and they don't even realize it.

Also, I can tell that you don't multi-table online. It is simply much more difficult to avoid 200 bet downswings when you're playing 3 tables against hyper-aggressive opponents.

brick

11-14-2005, 05:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]
when you're playing 3 tables against hyper-aggressive opponents.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think this can be summarized as "my egde isn't as big when I multi-table."

It not any more difficult than avoiding a 200BB downswing while playing 3 times as long against hyper-agressive opponents at one table.

11-14-2005, 05:35 PM

so you dont think villain is ever folding to a three bet here often enough to lay down a hand like QJ or better?

my thinking was if the three bet gets him to laydown a better hand ever, it's worth it, and, if he caps, which is rare unless you're seriously beaten, well, you can check behind often times for the same price with the advantage of possible getting a better hand to fold, and, if he caps it on the turn you were beat anyways....???

ggbman

11-14-2005, 05:56 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"If you can honestly claim to have never swung down over 200 bets, then that says a lot about your skill and game selection."

I don't know about the past, but I do believe that the likelihood of me having a 200BB downswing at any time in the future (meaning drop 200BB below where I am right now, or drop 200BB from any future relative high-point) is very, very close to zero. And I'd put the chances of me ever going backwards 100BB at extremely slim. But then, I also believe I am playing limit hold'em these days in a way that results in me having the lowest fluctuation of any player in the history of limit hold'em. More on that later maybe as it comes in. (I have to collect a little more data. :-) )

Tommy

[/ QUOTE ]

Meh, i think this begins to push it. I've had days where i was stuck 100 BB's and got even. Without trying to sound condenscending here Tommy, because believe me i respect you a lot, saying that it's unlikely that you will have a 100 BB downswing is more likely a factor of not having a full appreciation of the variance of limit hold em than it is to be a reasonable conclusion that you have come to.

AceHigh

11-14-2005, 08:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
And I'd put the chances of me ever going backwards 100BB at extremely slim.

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds like the voice of someone who doesn't keep very good records. 100BB downswings are pretty common, at least for those of us who play online. Maybe your games are that much softer...

DMBFan23

11-14-2005, 11:15 PM

[ QUOTE ]
But then, I also believe I am playing limit hold'em these days in a way that results in me having the lowest fluctuation of any player in the history of limit hold'em. More on that later maybe as it comes in. (I have to collect a little more data. :-) )

[/ QUOTE ]

How's the no limit hold em going lately Tommy?

phish

11-15-2005, 04:29 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And I'd put the chances of me ever going backwards 100BB at extremely slim.

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds like the voice of someone who doesn't keep very good records. 100BB downswings are pretty common, at least for those of us who play online. Maybe your games are that much softer...

[/ QUOTE ]

Live games ARE much softer. When I used to only play live, 100 BB downswings were extremely rare. There was one stretch where I went almost two years without experiencing one. (And I keep very good records)

Online, it seems I hit a 100 bet downswings once a week, and a 200 bet downswing about once a month or so.