A good example of how long swings can last -- why taking shots is bad.

[JoshuaD]

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That's all my hands since I got pokertracker back at the beginning of december. 3.79BB/100 after 80,000 hands on average. I'm nowhere near that good. I've got some big leaks in my game. But here I am, 80,000 hands later, running nearly double what I should be. Some would conclude from my 3/6 stats that I'm probably an "above average" 3/6 player, while I think calling me even a 2BB/100 winner at 3/6 is optimistic. 13,000 hands is nothing. 80,000 is nothing.

I can easily go another 80,000 hands and run half of what I should be running. I could play exactly the same game, and have the results change entirely.

At first, I was awed that CDC ran 60,000 hands break even, but now it makes sense. The swings in poker are longer and bigger than we all expect.

This leads me to conclude that "taking a shot" at a limit is a terrible thing to do. It's too easy to run good for 10,000 hands, convince yourself you're beating a game, and in fact be a loser there. Just because you play TAG doesn't mean you're a winner. I still think there's a good 25% chance that I'm losing at 3/6, even with how I've run so far. I would hate to find that out taking a shot at 5/10 or 10/20.

I'm not sure how interesting this is to anyone else, but I think it's really important to put things like this in perspective. I know I have trouble not caring how well I do. Looking at things this way has helped me, maybe it will help you guys too.