[SheridanCat]

Welcome to the world of poker and these forums.

I need to dig my Poker Tracker rant out of mothballs. Okay, okay, people find it useful. So be it.

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I am a new player and have only tracked about 2650 hands in pokertracker. A little over a week ago I started to play on Party and was up about $100 playing mostly .5/1 and then lost most of the $100 playing 1/2. My first reation was "I suck", "I'm an idiot", etc, etc.


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I'll be the first to say it (okay, second to say it since you already said it). Your sample size is terribly, terribly small. You can't find anything very signficant out about your play from so few hands.

I should also point out that losing $100 at 1/2 is no big surprise. It's only a 50BB downswing - if you don't experience 100BB downswings with some regularity over the course of your career, I'd be suprised. Especially just starting out. Even winning players will experience 200BB downswings.

Basically 1/2 was just too high for $100 to fade the variance.

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Then I found myself thinking "I never seem to hit a set with my pocket pairs".


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Danger, danger!. Very results oriented. Rest assured, you will hit sets the proper number of times over your lifetime. It's all one big poker game, and it's the long run that counts.

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Off to pokertracker. I found some problems with specific hands like K-10o


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If you never play this hand, you'll do just fine. It's dangerous and crappy but has the unfortunately side effect of looking not that bad sometimes.

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, but I also found that of the 2650 hands I had a pocket pair 159 times which I think is about right. Of the 159 I made a set 13 times and of those 13 times 5 were lost to a flush or straight. Of the 5 sets lost to a flush or stright 2 were Kings.
The norm for making a set is 1 in 7.5
159 / 7.5 = 21.2


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Okay, when you had a set you won about 62% of the time. I suppose that's not bad for your sample size. The problem is, the sample size is too small. If you're a tight player, you played maybe 700 hands of that 2650 total in PT.

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Well, I'm 8 under average for making a set and it also seems that winning 8 of 13 when making a set is a little low also.
By having pokertraker to see this it has restored a little of my lost confidence.

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Well, I guess PT has helped, but I'm not sure it's helping you put your mind where it should be: the long run.

I feel like I'm being too rough with you here, so I apologize for that. I'm directing my comments at everyone, really. I'm just trying to point out that it's all one long poker game and worrying about variance over such a short term is hazardous.

Regards,

T