Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Always seemed to do well at $0.50/1.

Moved up to $1/2: 300BB downwsing in 10k hands. After 50k hands, I'm up 250BB.

Took a stab at $2/4: First 5k hands, and I'm down 200 BB. I seriously feel like giving up all together.

Is there always this harsh of a learning curve? Why does the next higher stakes feel like an entirely different universe? Or is it purely psychological on my part?

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Hey badplayer I also have had a hard time trying to move up. I feel that a component is psychological. I have done well at 1/2, but spend most of my money and have lost/broke even every time I have tried to go up to 2/4 and 3/6, gotten worried about losing too much and then dropped back to 1/2. I mean I just ended basically a long downswing/breakeven stretch, but am confident that I am a long term winner at 1/2, but if I drop $300 at 2/4 I feel like it's the end of the world.

All that being said, it is also likely that you have not yet made the adjusments to be a winner at the higher stakes game. Over 50K hands at 1/2, 250BB is a winrate of .5BB/100, and while you should feel ok as long as you're a winning player, most of the long term posters here are likely beating the 1/2 game for >2BB/100. So I would focus on adjusting and really beating 1/2, make some more money, and then try again.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Thanks for the advice. I'm definilely dropping back. My win-rate at $1/2 is a bit pathetic. Even dismissing the first 10k hands as my "learning period", I'm still only barely above 1 BB/100, still trying to overcome my weak-tight playbook.

There's another deception going on in my head. Whenever I try to get more aggressive, I seem to lose more (and more often).

When I think I have the best hand, I usually don't. When I think I have the worst hand and it's checked-down or I call the river, sometimes I lose, but sometimes I'm amazed that I take down the pot with such garbage.

But this is all generalities. I'll get back to posting a few hands soon enough.

I'm a sloooooow learner.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the advice. I'm definilely dropping back. My win-rate at $1/2 is a bit pathetic. Even dismissing the first 10k hands as my "learning period", I'm still only barely above 1 BB/100, still trying to overcome my weak-tight playbook.

There's another deception going on in my head. Whenever I try to get more aggressive, I seem to lose more (and more often).

When I think I have the best hand, I usually don't. When I think I have the worst hand and it's checked-down or I call the river, sometimes I lose, but sometimes I'm amazed that I take down the pot with such garbage.

But this is all generalities. I'll get back to posting a few hands soon enough.

I'm a sloooooow learner.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would focus mostly on preflop hand selection/aggression and table selection to start with. I think these are really fundamental to beating 1/2. Post flop I think value betting weak opponents is the most important concept, I'm always amazed at people with decent PT numbers who miss amazingly easily value bets. Aggression definitetly has it's place, and figuring out when/where to semi-bluff, raise for free card, raise for fold equity etc., is appropriate, and in particular which opponents against which it is appropriate. Just gotta play a lot of hands it will work itself out. Good luck.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

I breezed through $0.50/$1, +650BB over 19,000 hands. I thought no problem, move on to 1/2 and I'll be playing 2/4 in a couple months.

Well, 4 months later and 1/2 has been a bitch for me...

I was breakeven after about 35k hands. Then in my last 8k I've won 220BB. It's still an up and down thing but lately I'm having more ups than downs. That 35k breakeven stretch was probably good for me in the long run as I actually think I've gotten better over those hands and that's why I started to have an easier time winning. I actually see myself making certain plays that I know there was no way I made at the beginning of my career. The whole way I go about a hand is different than it used to be. I know I've come a long way and also know that there as an even longer road ahead of me if I plan to meet my goal of comfortably playing the 5/10 game by the end of 2006...

If it wasn't for bonuses and rakeback I probably would have given up on this game for the most part...which would have been sad given my current state of improvement...

I've dabbled a little at 2/4 and have actually had a little easier time at that level in the couple thousand hands I've played there. I'm waiting for 400BB and a decent win rate at 1/2 over a not so insignificant sample size before moving up full time however.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

have good winrate at 1/2 recently moved up to 2/4. Have lost quite a bit at 2/4 but have recognised a few important things.

1. There are some areas of my game I need to improve.
2. There are some really crap players at 2/4 just like 1/2.
3. There are probably a few more good players at each table than 1/2.
4. I really should not be multitabling when I try to move up. 2 at max for me.

Like you have dropped back down to my regular game and found myself playing better than ever. I will try again once the roll has recovered a little from any losses incurred.

I am guessing that this pattern will become familiarl.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]

4. I really should not be multitabling when I try to move up. 2 at max for me.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think this will help anyone the most. I used to multitable 4 or 5 tables and my results were very lackluster. I was missing so many things that it was really cutting into my winrate. I went on a 15k break even stretch followed by a 15k 200BB downswing, both at 2/4 on Party.

I kept reading and studying and decided to switch over to Prima to clear some bonuses. The Prima games were tougher than Party and there was only ever 2 games of 2/4 going on there at the most ever.

This forced me to play only 2 tables and focus and gave me some experience playing against a little bit tougher lineup.

I don't think I'll ever play more than 2 tables again because I believe anything above that and I just can't physically absorb all the information I need to.

I'm now reading my opponents much better and picking up tons of pots and seizing opportunities I would NEVER have even seen playing 4 tables.

I'm back at Party now and over the last 10k hands I'm running >7BB/100 at 2/4 (obviously partly due to running good) and I have >400BB for 3/6 so I'm making the move.

I'm also having a good time picking up pots from multitabling TAGs who give up because they have hands on other tables awaiting them and/or capping them with the nuts because they saw me bluff 1 hand and then missed watching every other hand I played on the table.

edited to say: I'm only playing 2 tables at Party as well now. No more, no less.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

this is a marathon post and mostly morning ramblings...I have tried to separate my ideas with lines.

ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.

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I have spoken at great length with a couple of posters about moving up in limits, and we seemed to agree that the difficulty of moving up is almost entirely psychological. Generally speaking this means that people tend to play scared. There are 2 ways to play scared:

1. you literally let the curent money you are putting into the pot affect your play. In other words, you won't make a slightly +EV move because you don't want to see your money going into the pot.

2. you get upset about losing a 10BB pot. Then you start to lose confidence. You doubt every play you make and start playing poker well below the level you're capable of.

Either of these will cause your results to be far worse than if you are feeling comfortable and confident with your play. Anybody who has hit a 250BB downswing knows the difference between how you feel when doing well vs. doing poorly.

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The players at the different levels aren't much better. As long as you continue to develop your game you will be able to beat them. As you move up, players get a little bit tighter, and a little bit trickier. If you truly were a >1BB/100 winner at level "x" then I think that you will almost certainly be an instant winner at level "x+1". That said, you may not experience this success for several (like even 20) thousand hands because of variance. This may mean you have to take several shots to move up successfully, but the point is, if you have a significantly +EV edge in one level, then you should have at least a slightly +EV edge when you move up. This assumes that you don't let the new levels of money mess with your head.

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My suggestions for moving up:

1. Try using tiltblocker if that will help you from getting upset about losses

2. Take shots (50, 75, 100 BB's) and treat that money as if it's already completely lost. This requires some mental toughness on your part.

3. Play less tables than usual. Another option is to mix in tables. Play 3 1/2 tables and 1 2/4 table, or 2 of each. This will let you autopilot the other ones and focus on the higher stakes games.

4. Review your play. You should already be doing this anyways, but make sure you don't slack off when moving up.

5. At least when at the microlimits, try not to play without a bonus or rakeback. This will soften the blow of losses. However, once you get up to higher levels, it becomes impossible to compensate losses with bonuses, so be prepared for that.

6. Don't be afraid to move down if you know you are getting beat. As Bernie Mac says in the movie "Guess Who", "Pride ain't nothing when it comes to matters of the heart." Well, he was also right about poker it turns out. There's no shame in moving down.

7. Don't identify yourself as an "x-limit" player. If the games are good, try playing a level higher, and if they're especially bad, you may even want to move down. I sometimes play 3 different levels at a time.

8. Practice good table selection when you move up. I think this one is self explanatory.

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Here are some specific responses:

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think I'll ever play more than 2 tables again because I believe anything above that and I just can't physically absorb all the information I need to.


[/ QUOTE ]

I know how you feel. 4 or more tables can be VERY overwhelming. However, it is certainly possible to get all the information that you need to excel at many tables. Your BB/100 may suffer a bit, but your BB/hour will increase greatly. If this is not important for you then that's fine, but be aware of it. One thing I like to do is avoid opening all 4 tables at once. Open up 1 and get good reads. Then add another and get reads on it. Continue until the desired # of tables is reached.

[ QUOTE ]
There's another deception going on in my head. Whenever I try to get more aggressive, I seem to lose more (and more often).

When I think I have the best hand, I usually don't. When I think I have the worst hand and it's checked-down or I call the river, sometimes I lose, but sometimes I'm amazed that I take down the pot with such garbage.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like you're having some confidence issues. Your problem in moving up probably has less to do with your ability than your mental state. Work on that. Also, when playing aggressive, the pots you lose will be bigger, and you will probably lose more often. But don't forget that the pots you are winning are much bigger too. Aggressive poker is high variance, and you need to be prepared to deal with the swings. This means not tilting, and constantly looking at your play objectively.

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If you read this far, thank you.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

this post should be quoted every time we get a thread about moving up in limits.

nice work Jax

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.


[/ QUOTE ]

I find it hard to believe that after 100,000 hands you can be quite far from your true winrate. And, yes, I've taken statistics courses.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

I loved Jax's post, but there's something that is working for me (and a couple of my friends) that he didn't mention.

It's the "cold swimming pool" method of moving up in limits.

You know you can play and beat $1/$2. You make money and continue to grow your bankroll. Super. Keep doing that. Now, dip a toe in the $2/$4 pool. Play one table for an evening, see how it goes. Pay close attention to how the game is different. Between sessions, study those skills you weren't using in $1/$2 as much that are going to be more important. Play a few sessions at 1/2, recoup your losses (if any), continue to make progress. Rinse and repeat until $2/$4 is where you feel ready to play.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
I find it hard to believe that after 100,000 hands you can be quite far from your true winrate. And, yes, I've taken statistics courses.


[/ QUOTE ]

you'd be surprised.

Online you can play 100K hands in a couple months. I've heard people say that ran good for 100K hands, and then there win rate came back to earth.

Teh long term for a true winrate is a lot longer than most people think.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

nice post, i agree with you completely.

as far as multitabling goes, in my personal experience, i'm not overwhelmed with 4 tables. I can comfortably play 5. i think it depends on your goals and even then these goals are liquid and move about/combine freely.

edited to say: goals can be some sort of ratio combination of making as much money as possible and excelling in skill as fast as possible.

assuming you are a winning player at your chosen level, if your goal is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, you should add as many tables as you can while maintaining a semi-decent winrate.

my personal goal is to increase my skill as quickly as possible moreso than increasing my income. Playing less tables allows more focus on playing individual players and applying concepts to specific situations.

when multitabling, you can witness situations where you think a concept applies and apply it. what may be happening is that there is information there that you missed that makes that concept incorrect in that situation. This leads to mistakes and is the reason why you won't beat 4 tables for 4BB/100 just because you beat 2 for 2BB/100.

These errors however are usually small errors and account for only a slight decrease in winrate in most, but not all, cases.

my personal goal is to increase skill and move up to higher levels. i want to get rid of these slight errors in my game because as i move up they cost more and more and may become exacerbated by the better players i will encounter.

multitabling doesn't allow my the focus required to refine my game to the extent I want to.

getting reads by opening one table at a time is a good idea, however, by the time you get reads on all the players and get to that 4th or 5th table, odds are at least half the 1st table is going to be new players. having 4 tables open with constantly revolving players makes it impossible to keep up with high quality reads.

I personally get more satisfaction knowing i'm really outplaying my opponents than cramming in 8 tables and autopiloting ABC poker. i have a feeling autopiloting ABC isn't going to work very well at 30/60.

in essence, i feel if your goal is making the most money possible at your level, multitabling is the way to go. ESPECIALLY if you have rakeback and bonuses.

if you're goal is to move up as fast as possible AND be able to get right in there and already be playing better than your opponents, you do yourself a favor by playing 1 or 2 tables and working on refining your game. you'll always be playing better than most, if not all, of your opponents and the sailing will be much much smoother.

these are all just my personal thoughts and opinions from my own experiences. each player is different and i don't doubt there are players out there that can 20 table and have perfect reads on every opponent. There will always be someone smarter, faster, stronger, better playing than you.

figure out where you stand as a player, both in knowledge and innate skill, and capitalize on your excess and/ or lack of either.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

here's a quote of a post from GuyOnTilt. I can't find the link, so sorry.

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

GoT did some calculations and concluded that it's possible for a "true" 1.8/100 winner to win like 3+bb/100 or .5ish bb/100. Combine this with the fact that players are bound to change their play from the beginning of a meaningful stretch of hand to the end, and obsessing over your bb/100 rate is little more than an act in futility.
-James



[/ QUOTE ]

Come on. This way oversimplifies things. Just because it's possible for a 1.8 player to run at 3.0 or 0.5 doesn't mean it's likely. As the number of hands increases the level of confidence in the BB/100 number undoubtedly increases, but that does NOT mean that the number is meaningless after 25k or 50k or 100k.

In other words, to paraphrase Peter_Rus' idea, is it possible that someone running at 2BB/100 after 50,000 hands is really a losing player? Yes, possible. Is it likely? No. Stated another way, just because something isn't "statistically significant" doesn't mean it's meaningless.



[/ QUOTE ]

Eh, I'm getting questions now about this so I figured I'd specify. I ran 100 samples of 100k hands each for a 1.80 wr, 16.90 sd player (or 100 different players with the exact same true winrate and sd under the circumstances). Note this test would assume winrate is constant per 100 hands, i.e. no changing game conditions, no tilting, etc. Out of the 100, the highest wr was 3.47 and the lowest was 0.42, with the total wr over the 10 million hands being 1.95, meaning the player(s) was/were running hot for these 10M hands, and not just by a little, yet still one of these samples was as low as 0.42 bb/100.

On the subject of sample size, obviously 100 trials is far too few to come to any reliable conclusions. But these results made me think of variance and the long run in LHE quite differently. If two people playing the same game were to present to me their last 100k hands and one was earning 0.5 bb/100 and the other was earning 3.5 bb/100, who would I think was the better player? Obv, the 3.5 guy. But how much doubt would there be in my mind as to whether he was better or not? Apparently there should be room for some. Winrates just do not converge NECESSARILY until millions and millions of hands. For some they will, sure. Some of us will run close to our true earn for our lifetimes and will rarely or never venture to the upper amplitude of our SD. Others will run hotter than our true earn lifetime; some a little and some A LOT. Same goes with running cold. Some of us will find the very outer bounds of what our SD is capable of, and others won't even get close.

So what determines who among us will get rich and who stays stagnant or drops down? Better players will have a better chance at success of course, and success on a greater scale. But even a WCP could very conceivably end up having to drop down to lower limits while a mediocre player may rise to the big games, maybe never even realizing they're as good as they truly are. It might not even be a stretch to say this HAS happened.

So poker skills being equal, what determines who becomes and millionaire and who keeps playing 15/30? I don't know. QM? Sure. Maybe God DOES play dice with poker, I don't know. What I do know is that this (along with continuing to learn and appreciate Zen philosophies) has helped me come to realize that results, even on an extremely broad or lengthy scale, should be meaningless to me. And I don't mean meaningless in the sense of how I view the game now. I mean in the sense of how I feel I should STRIVE to view the game. We as a group have trained ourselves to not care about 200 bet swings, about 20k hand down periods. None of that comes naturally of course, but as we learned more and more about the nature of LHE we came to accept those things as just part of the package and we learned to deal with it. In the same way, I'm attempting to continually make myself immune to results, period. Not just short-term, but long-term as well. I want to approach this game theoretically and conceptually, without the hint of any wins or losses clouding my judgement. Ridding my conscious from any and all results, period; that is the goal. I'm not there yet by a long shot, but given what I think I know about this game and the philosophy and approach I feel is best for me, my goal is to be constantly progressing toward that state.

GoT



[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

The whole concept of playing x thousand hands to find out your winrate is flawed. Most people do not play the same poker for x thousand hands, they learn and improve, or tilt or get lazy / play badly.

I don't think you can pin down your winrate any more firmly than 'This is what i have won' and 'This is what I expect to win'.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

There are a lot of helpful tips in jax's post.
These arent necessarily more important than any of the others, I just wanted to single them out because I for one didnt put as much stock in them as I should have when I started moving up.


[ QUOTE ]

7. Don't identify yourself as an "x-limit" player. If the games are good, try playing a level higher, and if they're especially bad, you may even want to move down. I sometimes play 3 different levels at a time.


8. Practice good table selection when you move up. I think this one is self explanatory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Those two are very important to my current rate. To me, winning 2BB/100 at X limit is much more beneficial(psychologically) that winning 1BB/100 at 2X limit.

There's no shame in moving down if the game is that much better. You have hundreds of tables to choose from online, quit being lazy and actually "choose" one!

[ QUOTE ]

If you read this far, thank you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Anyone that read that far should be thanking you.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Great post Jax. And also along the lines of Pedigree's post, if playing 20k hands doesn't give you an idea of your winrate how many hands will?

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.


[/ QUOTE ]

I find it hard to believe that after 100,000 hands you can be quite far from your true winrate. And, yes, I've taken statistics courses.

[/ QUOTE ]

GoT did a simulation, 100 1.8BB/100 16.9SD/100 winners at a certain level

after 100k hands for each the winrates varied from 0.5(roughly) to 3.5(roughly I don't have the exact numbers offhand) and the overall winrate for them all over 10million hands was 1.95

if your winrate can be off by .15BB/100 after 10million hands, it can be off a ton as shown after much smaller ranges

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.


[/ QUOTE ]

I find it hard to believe that after 100,000 hands you can be quite far from your true winrate. And, yes, I've taken statistics courses.

[/ QUOTE ]

GoT did a simulation, 100 1.8BB/100 16.9SD/100 winners at a certain level

after 100k hands for each the winrates varied from 0.5(roughly) to 3.5(roughly I don't have the exact numbers offhand) and the overall winrate for them all over 10million hands was 1.95

if your winrate can be off by .15BB/100 after 10million hands, it can be off a ton as shown after much smaller ranges

[/ QUOTE ]

you're late...see my post above. Also, you need a new avatar. Whenever I see obsidian's posts it makes me think he's you. Also, Christmas is now over and you need to give me my new avatar by New Year's

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

The key is identifying what is different. The "average" player at the new level is usually just a tad bit better at something (or somethings) than the "average" player at the old table. Figure out what they are, make an adjustment to your general strategy, and get reads on individuals (as always).

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Which reminds me of a book:

"Zen in the Art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel

Well worth the time spent reading.

--klez

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Hey Jax, very nice post. But what about the flip side? If someone is beating a certain level for .5BB/100 over 50K hands, isn't it as likely that their winrate over 50K hands is greater than their "true" winrate, i.e. they are a breakeven/losing player, and moving up levels is probably not what they should be doing?

I know nothing about what type of player badplayer is, but don't think we should just say "short term winrates don't matter". I just don't think that just because someone posts on 2+2 that means we should assume they're a winning player. I think what Aaron wrote above is right on, that you need to be able to adjust to the new level, and basically figure out how to adjust enough that you have an edge over the competition. Maybe badplayer feels that he has a big edge at 1/2 and his results are just variance, who knows.

Hope this wasn't too argumentative or anything, you likely know a lot more about all of the stuff than me, and I think everything you wrote about adjusting to a higher level and strategies to help is great (a lot of my troubles in moving up probably could have been avoided had I read your post a few months ago).

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
Great post Jax. And also along the lines of Pedigree's post, if playing 20k hands doesn't give you an idea of your winrate how many hands will?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is the hard part, as Jax mentions there is so much variance that it is very hard to know where your "true" winrate is from your empirical winrate.

Here is an exerpt from a post by MrWookie from a while back that I thought was really nice:

[ QUOTE ]

My personal metric is, for play at a particular level, to know to within two standard errors (about 98% confidence) that I am a winning player. That is, that my win rate is twice or more as big as the uncertainty of my win rate. To compute the uncertainty of your win rate, take your standard deviation per 100 hands, usually about 15 BB/100, and divide it by the square root of the number of hands you’ve played divided by 100 (the number of 100 hand blocks you’ve played). Playing 20,000 hands with this standard deviation will yield an uncertainty in your win rate of 1.06 BB/100. Thus, you’d need a win rate of 2.12 BB/100 to know with 98% confidence that you were a winning player. Depending on your personal level of boldness or paranoia, you may be satisfied with 84% confidence (uncertainty = win rate) or 99.9% confidence (uncertainty = win rate / 3). Of note is that 20,000 hands at a win rate of 2.12 BB/100 will net you 424 BB, which, combined with the 300 BB you started with, gives you a bankroll sufficient to play at twice the current limit. An interesting side effect of this metric is that players who are truly crushing a particular level will advance more quickly, since they will need fewer hands to reduce their uncertainty to half (or whatever) their win rate, while players winning less are encouraged to stick around longer, hopefully learning new lessons that bring their win rate up along the way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
1. you literally let the curent money you are putting into the pot affect your play. In other words, you won't make a slightly +EV move because you don't want to see your money going into the pot.


[/ QUOTE ]

According to general gaming theory, depending on your utility of money, it may be worth giving up some portion of EV in an effort to reduce variance. Therefore it may be rational to do this. It's also rational to take -EV gambles, like getting fire insurance for your house and stuff like that. What players should avoid, though, is making a slightly less EV play than they know is possible, without understanding their utility of money correctly and without understanding the difference in variance between the two plays.

It's also possible that depending on someone's ROR threshold, they may choose to play with a given bankroll but will be forced to avoid certain plays that have too high of a VAR/EV. I.E. when you're under-rolled, you have to avoid certain +EV plays. If this still leaves you +EV overall, it may be rational to play while underrolled, as long as you play correctly given your bankroll.

This is really advanced gambling theory stuff, and I'm not sure of the math of it: plus you'd have to make a simulator to judge the std dev of various situations... anyways, it's not as bad as you think it is, probably, maybe. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

(Sorry, had to defend my title.)

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

I'm at point #7 right now, and I'd just like to say that I agree so far. Good post!

Personally, I'm not sure if I'm able to do something like play under different game mechanics (playing 1/2 and 2/4 isn't hard, but playing 2/4 and 3/6 is hard because of the blind structure... playing LHE and NLHE has proven to be very difficult).

Your point about being willing to move around the limits is very insightful. I'm kinda curious if you do a lot of bonus hunting and that's why you would be used to playing different game levels.

I know when I play paradise I play anywhere from 2/4 to 8/16, and often multiple levels, but on party, I don't generally bother. I've also played a mix of 2/4 and 3/6 on pokerroom, but I'm not happy with my performance at either site while playing multiple levels.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ok, some of these posts are kind of bothering me, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. I am going to be kind of a nit to all of the people talking about winrates, because in all honesty they don't mean much. Even after 100k hands at a given limit you still may be quite far from your true winrate. That being said, since not many of us have the time to play a million hands at each level, we must infer some things from short term results.


[/ QUOTE ]

I find it hard to believe that after 100,000 hands you can be quite far from your true winrate. And, yes, I've taken statistics courses.

[/ QUOTE ]

How close would we be, with a standard dev of 15/100 and a 95% confidence level?

I'm asking because I don't know, not just to be a smartass, but I'm curious, because I'm hopefully going to be moving up limits soon. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Edit: 99% confidence level too, if you don't mind.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Firstly, thanks for the GOT quote Jax.

Secondly:
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Most people do not play the same poker for x thousand hands, they learn and improve, or tilt or get lazy / play badly.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sure, or game conditions change or whatever, but you can view these things as an agregate, and the alternative to this is just to say that you'll never know if you're a winner, which is probably not true.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
To me, winning 2BB/100 at X limit is much more beneficial(psychologically) that winning 1BB/100 at 2X limit.


[/ QUOTE ]

Replace 2x with 3x and you've got me down too. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]


How close would we be, with a standard dev of 15/100 and a 95% confidence level?

I'm asking because I don't know, not just to be a smartass, but I'm curious, because I'm hopefully going to be moving up limits soon. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Edit: 99% confidence level too, if you don't mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even I know the answer!!! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Assuming that after 100,000 hands you have a winrate of 3 bb/100, and a SD of 15 bb/100, the .95 confidence level is:

[2.070307452, 3.929692548]

so, we can be almost an entire bb/100 off from our "true" winrate. (I think).

The .99 CI is: [1.778176881, 4.221823119]

And that's even bigger.

So basically, you can never really know your "true" winrate.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
One thing I like to do is avoid opening all 4 tables at once. Open up 1 and get good reads. Then add another and get reads on it. Continue until the desired # of tables is reached.

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That's great advice, thank you. I notice that when I open 4 tables at once, I just can't track everything. And I was wondering why, because after 10 minutes, those tables are not a problem at all. You say it's that I take more time for my decisions as I don't know players yet? Very probable.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

Shadow, you rock. In fact, I'd say that you almost invariably rock. You're +EV. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

OOC, how did you come up with that range? It's been like 2-3 years since I've learned this.

--Dave.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

linky from FAQ

This might be what you're looking for. Bisonbison's formulas are for /100 hands rather than /hour. You can have a lot of fun playing around with the ranges

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

DavidC:

Yes, indeed, I do fuking rock. More than you can imagine, even. But y'all can just ask your girlfriends to find out. Yes. All of them.

jaxUp:

Ugh, that link would have made my job a lot easier. That's a good link, everyone, and does exactly what the actual math does.

later.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

I agree with the above post, especially regarding playing scared and the quality of players at the higher levels.

Playing scared - as long as you view it as MONEY you're putting in the pot, then you're gonna be in trouble. You have to return to the fundamentals and do what you know you should do without letting your fear and emotions control you. This is often why wealthier ppl do better initially in poker. Because they don't fear losing that money. To a guy making $100k a year, playing 2/4 is like a guy who is making $25k a year playing .5/1. It's all relative. Don't play 2/4 like a guy making 25k a year. Act like you deserve to be there.



Player quality - I believe that the $2/4 players are WORSE on avg than the micro limit players, especially in the casinos. They are the ones who make a decent living and want to gamble for fun and don't care about losing money as long as they can hit a big pot occasionally. The micro level players are often trying really hard to learn to play well, which is why they are there. Yes, there are some real idiots there, but no more than in the 2/4 games.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

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It's also rational to take -EV gambles, like getting fire insurance for your house and stuff like that.

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What you're describing is part of Prospect Theory, which is what won Daniel Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economics. And while he described this phenonenom, he didn't advocate it, and in fact described it as a human ERROR (i.e. irrational) in judgement*... unless the consequences of NOT taking that risk were unacceptable (e.g. your house burns down and you have nothing or you die and your family is bankrupted). The only time i see this being relevant in poker is in a tournament where you have a limited amount of time/hands to win the big prize. In day-to-day poker, taking -EV risks will lose you money in the long run.


* Tversky & Kahneman. (1974). Judgments under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1130.

Tversky & Kahneman. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453-458.

Kahneman & Tversky. (1984). Choices Values and Frames, American Psychologist, 39, 341-50.

Kahneman, D. (1991). Judgment and decision making: A personal view. Psychological Science, 2(3), 142-145.

Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky, "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk", Econometrica, XVLII (1979), 263-291.


I recommend all these papers to anyone learning poker.

Re: Moving Up Is Hard To Do
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


How close would we be, with a standard dev of 15/100 and a 95% confidence level?

I'm asking because I don't know, not just to be a smartass, but I'm curious, because I'm hopefully going to be moving up limits soon. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Edit: 99% confidence level too, if you don't mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even I know the answer!!! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Assuming that after 100,000 hands you have a winrate of 3 bb/100, and a SD of 15 bb/100, the .95 confidence level is:

[2.070307452, 3.929692548]

so, we can be almost an entire bb/100 off from our "true" winrate. (I think).

The .99 CI is: [1.778176881, 4.221823119]

And that's even bigger.

So basically, you can never really know your "true" winrate.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you have to remember that it's a bell curve, so you're far more likely to be near the middle of that range than near the edges. In fact, without further evidence of the actual parameters, you must assume that your sample mean is the most probable value. I'm not saying it IS the parameter value... just that it's more likely to be the actual value than any other value in that range due to the inherent probabilities in bell curves.

What you're describing is the 95% and 99% CIs, so it's "possible" that your actual winrate is really outside that range....but not likely. The odds are that it's nearer to the sample mean.

If you do a linear analysis of your variance and find that each block of 5k hands is statistically similar in variance (there is a test for this) to the others, then you can assume that your winrate after 20k hands is your actual winrate for that type of play. Some would argue that 10k is enough if you're a very consistent player.