[ezinestein]

Hi again,

I was thinking...

Imagine Mr. Hotshot comes to this forum... says he’s played 1000 hands at Party and is up 15BB/100 hands. He says the game is easy and starts bragging about all the losers who say you can only beat the game for 2-4 BB/100.

What a butthead right?

And what does Mr. Butthead (formerly Mr. Hotshot) find when he returns?

“Hey buddy... whatever you say... don’t worry the down-swing is coming! You can’t sustain that 15BB/100 long term. 1000 hands is the short term. You will lose! If I were you I’d move down a limit... because it IS coming... etc... etc... etc...

Now, let me see if I’ve seen this correctly...

Some people believe in variance and standard deviation only as long as a player is UP too many BB/100 in a ‘thousand’ hands. These people KNOW that this player who carried 15BB/100 for 1000 hands MUST come down and level off.

But when it comes to variance and standard deviation when a player is DOWN 15BB/100 for a thousand hands... these people believe that the math no longer works?

The thing I seem to stupid to ignore is...

(And the assumption here is... that this player IS a winning player. And I don’t mean me... I mean a REAL winning player.)

Swings are real in any 50-50 game. A quarter will not alternate equally... heads... then tails... heads... then tails indefinitely. There are clumps, groupings, swings... what ever you want to call the math. We might even decide to call it variance and standard deviation.

For a ‘winning’ player Hold’em is not even a 50-50 game. There is a +EV. And like I said... for some reason I seem incapable of ignoring variance. I may not know why it exists in the universe, who created it, or what actually causes it... but I certainly can’t deny that it’s there. And not only when a player is UP... but when she’s DOWN too.

And please don’t misunderstand... when I started this post... it was simply because I was curious after I went down a large number of BB in an extremely short number of hands. It didn’t put me on tilt. I didn’t scream and yell. And I didn’t snatch my head bald. I’ve already mentioned that I play the $.50 tables... so even the biggest down-swings I’ve encountered are laughable in terms of financial loss.

But I do enjoy thinking and evaluating things. And just because I tend to do most of that thinking in the shower or while taking a crap, doesn’t make it any less interesting to me.

But, I’ll admit... after reading a few of these posts I’m thinking again. And this time I'm actually wondering... can it really only work ONE way?

Thanks for many of your responses.

Kindly,
EZ