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You don't understand math.

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I have a master's degree in it actually, lol.

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If you have a master's degree in math, and you understand how much variance there is in poker, the idea of a 200BB downswing should be easy for you to grasp.

Use some sample numbers of a 2BB/100 hand win rate and a 15BB/100 hand standard deviation (typical numbers for a winning limit player). Over 5000 hands (50 * 100), you would expect a win rate of 100BB, and a standard deviation of 15 * sqrt(50) = 106 BB. A 200 BB downswing over 5000 hands would only be a 2.8 standard deviation event - rare, but not extrodinarily so. For players who play hundreds of thousands of hands per year, it would not be too unusual to encounter a 200 BB downswing.

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If you change your BB/100 assumption to 3+, that's what I was expecting most expert players around here won. If it isn't, and the real number is more like 2/100, then yes, I should expect to see more of these downswings posted about I suppose. That having been said, it is still a rare enough event that I wouldn't have expected to see it posted about so often here. I think it must be a combination of poor players who don't realize it, the high-variance style Diablo posted about, the sheer number of people posting here, and tilt that results in so many posts about downswings. Plus, poker players are easily the world's biggest whiners. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

Maybe I shouldn't be so paranoid about it, but damn if reading these boards doesn't make me a bit jittery sometimes.