[Cosimo]

[ QUOTE ]
The chance of a moderate (4PTBB/100h) winning player being at -800BB after 30k hands is 1:13821 (3.8SD off expectation). Likewise, the chance of someone who is -800BB after 30k hands is actually a moderate winning player is 1:13821. In other words, OP is not a moderate winning player.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know this sounds harsh, but it's what the math tells us. If the mathematical assumptions are accurate, then it's grossly unlikely that OP is a moderate winning player.

But I challenge those mathematical assumptions.

Thing is, every hand is not the same. You only get aces once every 221 hands; pocket pairs once every 17. Suited hands about 20% of the time. You hit a strong hand or draw also about 20% of the time. In order to make good money off of the hand, you need an opponent who also has something, which might be 20% of the time.

In other words, I think most of the profit in SSNL comes in these rare events. We only VP$IP once every 6 hands, hit it once every 5, and have an opponent once every 5, and it gets to the river once every 5. In other words, once every 750 hands, we have a chance to win or lose a lot of money.

OP had 40 of these events. If each event is +- a stack, then OP won 16 of these 40 events. This isn't a complete model, tho, since there's also a lot of money won or lost before pots get this far. TPTK raised on the flop is a big -$, uncalled CBs are a consistent chunk of +$, etc.

My point is, I think these rare events have a standard deviation to their own. If you run bad in these rare, huge pot, big-hand-against-big-hand events then that will carry your entire winrate with it.

There's another "set" of large pot events, more frequent but with lesser payouts. And a larger set of moderate pot events, and then a huge set of small pot events. Every time you raise preflop and it's folded to you, that goes in the small pot pool. Or when you hit a limped pot, bet out, and everyone folds. Happens all the time, right?

The "truth" is obviously a continuum of pot-size events. If you boil it all down to one number, you get the EV and SD that PokerTracker spits out, and we all know and love. But I this "one number" model for SD is weak. It doesn't matter how often you get aces, or if your hitting sets as often as you expect -- profit comes from having a strong hand when an opponent has a slightly weaker (but still strong) hand, and that's a rare event.

This is also why playing against fish that are willing to put their stacks in with weak draws and low holdings will add to your winrate so much. You get big-pot events far more often, and you don't need as strong a hand to take them down.