The Small Sample Size Blues

[Cerril]

So I've had my ups and downs, my winrate has done a lot of fluctuating, dealt with -100BB days and +100BB days... I know I've got a long way to go before I can draw any conclusions, but after a session I'll pop open PT at my current limit, look at my numbers, nod sagely and then boggle -

5900 hands... Wow, that's just a drop in the bucket! All my conclusions just got deflated in an instant, all my thoughts of planning around a percieved winrate (with some reduction for likely luck) just got thrown out the window. Violently.

I've been playing for what seemed like a long time (it's not), and I've barely got the 2-day numbers of some people, and way under the weekly stats of many. And these are people that experience huge swings on a regular basis! So I have absolutely no clue whether I'm in the middle of a swing or not.

Anyway, the thing that occured to me wasn't any of that. I've been a faithful (sometimes lapsed) student of all the admonitions, 'Here's a +3xxBB stretch of 5000 hands from last week, and here's a -3xxBB stretch of 5000 hands from the week before,' so I knew to scrap any hope of drawing conclusions for another three or four times my sample, and then consider them weak.

No, what surprised me was how demoralizing that was. I'd been working my butt off to achieve this tiny sample. I'd made good money doing it too! But I've accomplished almost literally nothing that can't be summed up with a lucky roll of the dice, and maybe 53% (or whatever) of my sessions really aren't going to be winners in the long run, it's going to be more like 47% and I'll be a loser for as many BB as I'm currently winning! I was panicking! I don't play a lot of hands. A good day might approach 1000 but that might be it for the week. Some weeks I play fewer hands still. Much of my time is done researching (reading, posting, thinking, discussing) or whatnot, I don't have the circumstances all the time to just sit and play.

So I figure I've gotta end this with a question, since what's the point of a whine if I can't at least get someone to help me adjust. Here goes:

How do the rest of you who only play a limited number of hands per day/week/whatever deal with the first 25k hands at a new limit, especially when you aren't sure if you belong there?

[Bluffoon]

You ease into it and you evaluate your play independent of results very closely.

[CrisBrown]

Hi Cerril,

Ignore your results for the time being. It sounds as if you're using PokerTracker or some similar utility. If you are, rather than looking at BB/fortnight or whatever result-oriented stat pricks your interest at the moment, look at the hands you've lost the most money on. Go back and reply every hand you lost badly, with the Win% and Pot Odds views open. See where you're making -EV plays. With the "bad beats," i.e.: where you made +EV plays and still lost, see if you passed up any greater EV plays.

In short, critique your decisions and learn from your mistakes. The results will take care of themselves.

Cris

[Cerril]

Good thoughts... it's just that after awhile (and not that long at this limit, but I've done a lot of limit-hopping) I was thinking I could move past the 'evaluating my hands' to 'evaluating my game'.

Obviously it's just a confidence issue, so I'll scale back and keep looking at the nuts and bolts and try to reign in my desire to look at the machine.

[CrisBrown]

Hi Cerril,

[ QUOTE ]
I was thinking I could move past the 'evaluating my hands' to 'evaluating my game'.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think if you look only at your losing hands, you'll be able to identify trends which are bigger than the specific cards in play. For me, that's the essence of "evaluating my game." I'm really not all that concerned with picking apart BB/hr or whatever, at least not for the first six or so months at a new level. I'm more focused on trying to identify areas for improvement, and fix them.

Cris

[bisonbison]

Cerril, it's very simple to conceptualize and very difficult to accomplish: you have to stop caring about your results and start caring about your level of play.

Let's start with a one hand session:

You sit down at a table and post in the BB. You know MP1 and the CO pretty well. You're dealt 72o. There are 4 limpers to the button, who raises. The SB calls. You fold.

Session stats:
VP$IP: 0%
PFR: 0%
BB won: -0.5
BB/100: -50/100.

Those are some lousy stats. You got cold-decked for your entire session. Nonetheless, you played perfectly for your entire session. No one could argue with that.

But you say you want to keep sitting? Okay, well imagine you've sat at this table for 10 orbits, about 2 hours online, and every single hand you've been dealt is 72o. You've never gotten a free flop in the BB, so you've seen no flops in 2 hours and you're now down 7.5BB, which is a lousy -7.5 BB/100. And you've played perfectly for the entire session.

We all have winning sessions where we play poorly and losing sessions where we play well. And we have sessions where one big draw hitting or missing makes the difference between a winning session and a losing one.

Over time, I'm sure it will become clear to you that you are a winning player, but there is no way to determine how good a player you are outside of individual decisions in individual hands. That's what it boils down to.

When you get to that point you can self-identify your strengths and weaknesses and work on those, but you have to understand that the stats look more authoritative than they are because the game of poker is so wildly variant.