dual purpose post ( a bit long)

[Greg J]

I wanted to make this post for a couple of reasons. First is to point out an awesome thread which all new players should read under general hold em. i HIGHLY recommend this one:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=765011&page=0&view=ex panded&sb=5&o=14

Scond, and this is somewhat related to the topic of the link above, which is about bad streaks, a question I'd like to throw out.

I am in the middle of a very good streak. I'm tempted to think that it's skill, but it is only an nano-limits (I have limited money available, so I'm trying to build it up slowly while getting lots of experience). Still, even at this level (currently 5c/10c at paradise), I win every session. I am taking a few "bad" beats, but they are compensated for by what is, for the time being, winning play. I think I am running lucky. I am tight preflop, but am seeing sometimes up to 30% of the flops in a session. That is because i keep getting awesome hands. It's uncanny. I'm worried about when this streaks ends, which I KNOW it will -- it happens to us all -- how do you handle it?

This is a psychological question as much as anything else (but it seems more approriate in this forum). I want to be prepared. When the sweet cards stop coming and the bad beats start dipping into whether or not you had a winning session (which despite everything I have been told, still seems important), what techniques help you tough it out?

A related question: If 300bbs generally sees you through bad swings, what does moving up 300bbs mean? I have gotten the impression (though no one has explicitly said this) that if you loose 300bbs then you are a loosing player, at least at that point. If this is the case (and if it is not, please say so!) does winning 300bbs mean you can consider yourself a winning player? MAybe this is too linear -- seems like it should be more. How many then? 500? 1K?

Opinions?

[Chiefs Fan]

Greg -

I started playing for real money last winter. I started at .5/1 at paradise and didn't take the time to learn the game like I should. Stupidly, I decided to try the 5 handed tables, thinking there would be more action and I'd pay more attention. Well, I did very well at first and was up about 300 bb in less than a week. And the next couple of weeks I lost almost all of that. And eventually was down to $2.00

I took a few months off and started up again in early May, playing at .5/1 at paradise and sticking with full tables this time. I now have about 12k hands since early May and I'm at 4.5bb/100 overall and i have about 6bb/100 over my last 7k hands. I am improving, I no longer feel that I am "gambling" its only a matter of time til I get my cards and make my hands. I am currently up about 500bb overall.

Something I've wondered myself recently is, what concepts and skills do I need to develop at this level? Primarily I am playing better cards than my opponents and playing them strong when I make hands or have good draws and getting away from hands that don't have a good draw.

I definitely don't win every session, in fact I have 250 sessions in PT and only about 52% are winning.

As far as not catching cards, I have felt that at times, I certainly haven't had an extended period of this but when I do feel it happening, I tighten up. It is easy for me to fall into the - I have to win this, I haven't won anything for so long - attitude. So I tighten up to get away from marginal hands. Overall my VP$IP is 16.3%. Some on this board say that is too tight, but I don't play unsuited connectors QJ and below except out of the blinds. I only play AXs with 4+ previous callers and I very rarely play any unsuited Ace with a kicker under a 9. The 9 I only play in certain situations, T is usually as low as I go.

I've played enough now at .5/1 that I know my skill is not the question, its only a matter of time til I get the cards. I will get the money.

I am going to give myself another 10k hands then I am moving up to 1/2.

Also, I've seen your posts on the board, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders, my guess is, if you are up 300bb at .5/.10, you can win and progress at .5/1 just fine. The people at .5/1 play all kinds of hands, most of them do not consider position and # of previous callers with their hands.

I kind of rambled on here, hope some of this helped? made sense?

[Greg J]

made sense? absolutely! Thanks for responding.

As for moving up... I feel i might have the skill, but not the bankroll. It's getting up there. And when i do move up it will prolly be at party -- i hear that is where the fish are.

You know i still need to get pokertracker. I plan to soon though. Money issues.

Just had another session, where the cards came my way again... it's getting uncanny. I just keep having winning sessions of several hundred hands. How many times in a row can a coin turn up heads???? (And how will i handly it when it stops?)

[Chiefs Fan]

pokertracker is awesome, well worth the cost of a couple books. I've been able to post my stats and figured out I was taking hands too far, and that I was too passive on the river. I was at about 1bb/100 at that time, since I received some advice about my stats I've been making about 6-7bb/100. Pokertracker well paid for itself I'd say.

[HUSKER'66]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't play unsuited connectors QJ and below except out of the blinds.

[/ QUOTE ]



Chief,

Glad to see that your doing well, but your costing yourself money by not playing these under the right situations/ circumstaces.

Husker

[Chiefs Fan]

I realize that, but until I can play them with more confidence, I'm avoiding them. I have read a couple of posts about offsuit connectors and whether or not to play them, I know I am probably losing something, but it's probably not much. While I'm learning, I tightened up my PF requirements alot, attempting to remove some marginal hands that can get me into trouble. AXs and offsuit connectors are definitely hands I have trouble with, so I'm careful with them.

[Soggy Salmon]

[ QUOTE ]
When the sweet cards stop coming and the bad beats start dipping into whether or not you had a winning session (which despite everything I have been told, still seems important), what techniques help you tough it out?


[/ QUOTE ]

A couple things help me. First is Pokertracker. But you don't need Pokertracker for this, just keep detailed logs of your sessions. I have gone through some very rough patches. I have seen 3 150+BB downswings in the 70,000 hands I have played. At those times, it feels like I can't play at all and any of my wins were just luck. Yet I can look at my numbers and see that, amazingly, I am still at 2.8BB/100 over thousands of hands. And that is very unlikely to be luck. This helps to keep it all in perspective. To know that it will turn around eventually.

The long run is reeeeallly long sometimes. Patience is so neccessary to playing winning poker. Results over 2,3,4 even 5,000 hands mean nothing.

Another thing that helps me is TANSTAAFL. If you are familiar with Heinlein, you will recognize that acronym. If not, it stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Do you really expect to sit on your ass and just rake in the money effortlessly and painlessly? That just plain doesn't happen. Anywhere.

The money you earn comes at a cost. Part of that cost is the work you put into learning the game. But the other, never-ending, price you pay is the bad streaks and the suck-outs. The frustration, the doubt, the anger, the boredom and dealing with those emotions. Not letting them affect your play. Even though AQo hasn't won a hand for you in a week, you still need to raise it when you should.

This is the sucky part of playing long-term. But it is unavoidable. TANSTAAFL.

[BugsBunny]

[ QUOTE ]
And when i do move up it will prolly be at party -- i hear that is where the fish are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Instead of waiting to have a $300 roll for Party I suggest switching to Stars and playing .25/.50 once you have $150. Even less if you're willing to move back dowm if you start losing (Stars has .05/.10 as well). But since there's a big difference between .05/.10 and .25/.50 (BB is 5x bigger) you really don't want to move back down, so I'd want at least $100 (a little more would be better) and wouldn't drop back down until I was down to about $25

That way you'll get to 300 faster AND you'll gain experience against some better players than you'll find at .05/.10. If you're able to beat Stars .25/.50 I guarantee you'll be able to beat Party .50/1

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
You know i still need to get pokertracker. I plan to soon though. Money issues.

[/ QUOTE ]

At their site http://www.pokertracker.com , they have a free download, like most good software shops. And like most good software shops, they made it capacity-limited (1000 hands) so that you have just long enough to get "hooked" and realize how much you need to buy the full version. ;-)

Thanks everyone for a really great thread here. I just want to add my own question: Is anyone aware of tables (or even a formula) that show how, given a set of observations for a statistic, how sure you can be that the mean is moving upward? In other words, if my next 1000 hands I finish up 20 big bets, whereas my last 1000 hands I finished down 20 big bets, how sure can I be that I'm improving (my expected value is trending upward)? Or what would be a 95% confidence interval for the change in my expected value?

I'm just seeking another way to look at the same issue. I find the "accumulated poker wisdom" about ups and downs on this forum very helpful; I just wondered if there are numbers to back it up?

[dfscott]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And when i do move up it will prolly be at party -- i hear that is where the fish are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Instead of waiting to have a $300 roll for Party I suggest switching to Stars and playing .25/.50 once you have $150.

[/ QUOTE ]

I highly recommend this as well. I played about 10K hands of .05/.10 at Stars and thought I was doing pretty good. I moved to .25/.50 and encountered a completely different game. It threw me off for a while, but I emerged a much better player. You have to play tough, smart poker since you don't usually have so many fish following your nut hand down the river. On the other hand, you'll learn a lot of skills that you will never have an opportunity to develop at looser tables (blind stealing, semi-bluffs and even the occasional bluff re-raise). It will really round out your play.

[Ed Miller]

Mathematically, being down 300 BB is no proof at all that you are a losing player.

If you are an exactly break-even player, then if you play forever, over time your expected range of results will widen. For instance, you might be between -200 BB and +200 BB after 100 hours. After 10,000 hours, you might be between -2000 BB and +2000 BB. After 1 million hours, you might be between -20,000 BB and +20,000 BB.

So, if you play long enough, merely being up or down a certain amount cannot possibly assure you that you are either a winning or losing player, as you could simply be a break-even player.

The higher your winrate, the more those ranges shift toward the positive and away from the negative. They also shift "faster" than they widen, so eventually the low end of the range hits zero and then becomes positive. That's why there is a maximum required bankroll... because that low end of the range eventually starts becoming higher if you have a positive winrate.

But the 300 BB number is based on a winrate of a pretty large size. If you win at half that rate, you can easily lose 300 BB. So losing 300 BB is NOT conclusive proof that you are a losing player, but it does put an UPPER BOUND on how high your winrate can be.

Just so we're clear, when I talk about bounds here, I am actually talking about points at which results beyond the bound become vanishingly unlikely. They never become impossible. You could lose every poker hand for the rest of your life. But you won't.

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
If you are an exactly break-even player, then if you play forever, over time your expected range of results will widen. For instance, you might be between -200 BB and +200 BB after 100 hours. After 10,000 hours, you might be between -2000 BB and +2000 BB. After 1 million hours, you might be between -20,000 BB and +20,000 BB.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point, and not exactly an intuitive one. In fact I thought i disagreed until i thought about it more deeply. I think this point is specific to absolute metrics, not per-unit-of-time or per-hand metrics, right?

This example helped me grasp what you're saying: It's much much easier for a baseball team -- say one that's theoretically a .500 team, i.e. evenly matched with its opponents -- to finish "10 games under .500" in its next 100 games (45-55) than to finish 10 under for its next 10 games (0-10).

However, if we're talking about a relative metric and not an absolute one, the big-sample-size issue is more relevant. Then it's easier for a team to finish 1.000 or .000 after 10 games than after 100 games. As more games are added to the sample, the bell curve in terms of winning percentage becomes steeper around the expected value, in this case .500. Right?

Someone check my reasoning here, but if i'm thinking clearly then I understand why Ed's number of hours are increasing by a factor of 100 (100 -> 10K -> 1M) but the absolute number of BB in the range is increasing by a factor of 10. To put it another way, the range of BB/hr decreases as the sample grows larger (+/- 2 BB/hr --> +/- 0.2 BB/hr --> +/- 0.02 BB / hr).

Now all I need are the stats tables to tell where these confidence intervals fall, and someone smarter than me (or more up to date on this stuff) to remind me how to read them. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Greg J]

i would like to know what the standard deviation for bb/100 hands is over, say, 10k hands for a "winning" player (whatever that is).

Also, it seems that the low end of a (95%??) confidence interval is minus 300bb for a "winning" player (~2 stanndard deviations away). What is the upper bound? And what about a better that "winning" player?

Anyone know?