Questions to people doing this for a living, from same:

[Cosimo]

How many hands per week do you get in?

Swings are normal. You have a 35% chance of hitting a flush draw but that doesn't mean you literally win every third time. It is perfectly normal to go 4-5-6 draws without hitting, and every once in a while go 9 draws. Pocket pairs hit a bit worse than once every 8 times; you could go 20 or 30 such pairs without flopping a set. That's perfectly normal. You shouldn't expect to hit a set if you haven't hit one the last seven times. With pairs once every 17 hands, it's possible to see a 500+ hand run with no sets. Not just possible; likely. Like once a week. And once every couple months, it'll happen twice in one week. And once a year, it'll happen twice in one week, and when you do hit a set, you'll lose it anyway or only win barely more than the blinds.

Plan for the long run. Don't start changing your play just because you run bad for 100 hands or so.

The see-saw got to me until I realized that the cause was variance. I knew the only way to get around that was to play so many hands that variance fell to insignifigance. I would like to play 50,000 hands this month but expect that I'll only get 25,000 in. That's still leaving me with a good chance of having a break-even week, but I know I'm far less likely to have a break-even month.

[R_Ellender]

You're right, the job does suck at times, but it's a parachute when your falling helplessly into a downswing.

[troy5168]

I fought that upstream battle for quite sometime, a little background might be necessary, I've been playing cards for 25 years so I'm not one of those that got hooked because of the ESPN coverage of the WSOP or because of internet poker, I grew up in family where poker, sports betting and horse racing were normal everyday activities, I know, terrible parents lol, anyway, along comes internet poker, COOL, I don't even have to leave the house! Well, things started out pretty well and before long that was the only place I played. Then I noticed things were turning, not for the good either. I agree with someone elses post that sometimes there's too many choices and that might have been part of the problem, the bottom starting falling out. Went to the casino again for the first time in YEARS and doubled my buy-in each time in just a couple hours in my first five trips. Sorry for rambling so long but needless to say, playing on the internet WAS THE PROBLEM! I'm now back to playing exclusively live and doing quite well. The problems I had were, too many games (screwed with my focus), and I found internet poker to be one dimensional. I do so much better when I can see everyone, talk to them, no distractions like the phone, the tv, the kids, surfing the web. IMHO, screw the internet, if you're serious, play live where you can get good reads on your opponents, you spend hours with the same people rather than minutes. YOU CANT BEAT LIVE PLAY!

[mtrubo]

Sorry, don't have anything constructive to add. But, just wanna be nice and thank the people for the very useful posts [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Evalias]

Thanks for your responses all. I believe I'm going to start playing a bit more live NL games and will just keep more of a work schedule in terms of the play I put in.

Dealing with variance in a short-term fluctuation, I think especially as creatures of need, is a difficult thing to handle sometimes.