? about running bad

[Kevin]

About 180,000 hands in my PT database. Through the first 155,000, I was at mid 2's in bb/100, however, the last 5 weeks (about 25,000 hands), I have been just above break even (about 0.2 bb/100.) the reason I ask this question is that I just read a post in small stakes that at 10,000 hands, there is a 10-20% chance that a winning player would lose money or break even. It seems at 25,000 hands, it should start to net itself out right.

Sets are winning at a 61% clip during this time frame which seems light - but I am not totally sure. Since so much is dumped into the pots on sets, if they lose at a rate greater than expected and you lose that 7-8% of the investment vs pulling the pot, that seems like it could be the difference. Stats look almost exactly the same as the previous 155,000 hands, but results are much, much different.

Not a bad beat post, not a whining, poor me post - just wanted to get some feedback as to if I need to make some serious introspection into the game at 25,000 hands of break even. If it is 10/20% that a winning player can play break even or lose at 10,000 hands, it seems like by 25,000 hands, it should look more accurate.

Thanks,
Kevin

[BugsBunny]

It depends on exactly what your earn is and what your SD is.

Some examples:
assuming you have an earn of 2 BB/100 with a SD of 18BB/100

Chances of being behind after 10K hands ~= 13%
Chances of being behind after 20K hands ~= 6%
Chances of being behind after 30K hands ~= 3%
Chances of being behind after 40K hands ~= 1%
Chances of being behind after 50K hands ~= .5%

Now change the base numbers and make the earn 1.5 BB/100 but leave the SD the same.

Chances of being behind after 10K hands ~= 20%
Chances of being behind after 20K hands ~= 12%
Chances of being behind after 30K hands ~= 7%
Chances of being behind after 40K hands ~= 5%
Chances of being behind after 50K hands ~= 3%


One more just to see how SD effects this:
assuming you have an earn of 2 BB/100 with a SD of 20BB/100

Chances of being behind after 10K hands ~= 16%
Chances of being behind after 20K hands ~= 8%
Chances of being behind after 30K hands ~= 4%
Chances of being behind after 40K hands ~= 2%
Chances of being behind after 50K hands ~= 1%

(These were all generated on an Excel spreadsheet I put together a while ago. The formula is

=NORMSDIST(-Earn/SD*SQRT(NumHands))

where Earn = earn in BB/100
SD = SD in BB/100
NumHands = number of hands/100 (so 40,000 hands = 400)

Now you may be up, but very slightly, at any point here. So the chances of being up just a small amount (still basically break even in other words) are going to be somewhat higher than the above.