Normal Frequency of Losing

[Dwayne]

I play 6-12 and 10-20 casino Texas Hold'em ten six-hour sessions per month. Most of my opponents are typical uniformed card room regulars. On any given night there at most three opponents that I respect as good informed Hold'em players. For the past eighteen months the frequency rate of a losing session has been one in three. These losing sessions have been generally uneventful with few bad beats. Typically it is six boring hours of mostly folding bad cards before the flop. When I do get good starting cards the flop seems to miss me more than it should during that session. When I call a bet to fill a straight or flush draw I miss. When I fold a straight or flush draw because of poor pot odds, the card that would made me the winning hand appears on the river. The good cards seem to skipping over my seat.

I realize that in one session not enough cards are dealt to display the true laws of probability. I don't ask for deck changes or lucky seats. I take a 15-min break every two hours to restore my patience. I continue to play because the next hand is independent of all the other previous hands, the game is good, I am making good decisions and I am not on tilt. The other players can be beat and will pay me off if I could just make a hand. My losses are no more than 1 ½ to 2 times my original bye-in and I consoled by reminding myself that I made good decisions. If I played those same cards the way most regulars play I would have lost three times that amount. Then the next two or three sessions I get the same amount of good and bad hands as everyone else and I grind out a modest win of 1 to 2 times my bye-in. This frequency of losing is wrecking my average hourly rate.

My question is this: What frequency of such a described losing session should a good player expect as normal? Has this happened to you? What did you do about it? Can anything be done about it? Am I playing too long in such a losing session?

[Copernicus]

Break down your "sessions" into hours so that you can track an hourly standard deviation. Youll need too many "sessions" to arrive at a session-based standard deviation.

[Dwayne]

What value of standard deviation indicates good poker play? Can standard deviation or any other analysis tell the difference between bad play and a short term run of bad cards(also known as bad luck)?

[Al Schoonmaker]

One in three is not bad at all. It's not great, but it is FAR better than most people do. You must remember that the rake at these stakes is so large that only about 10% of all players win over the long term.
I agree with the importance of computing your standard deviation, but there is no need to do it yourself. Just keep your records on Statking or CPA.
Regards,
Al

[J.A.Sucker]

The frequency of your losses is dependent on three things:

1. Your hourly EV (expectation, a function of your ability vs. your opponents)
2. Your hourly Std Deviation (swings, a function of the aggressiveness of your games)
3. How long your session are.

Put another way, suppose you play sessions that are 1 hand long. Your skill enters very little into this single outcome, and you're EV matters little; it's all std. deviation that determines if you are a winner or a loser. Conversely, if you were a guy who played a session that went on forever, if you are a winning player, regardless of your std deviation vs. EV relationship, you'll always be a winner (provided that you have an adequate bankroll to never go broke). This is how all good gambling games work. In the short-run, your results are determined by standard deviation (luck) and in the long run, the cream rises to the top (to the casinos in table games, and good players in poker).

Now, for your question, you can calculate what your frequency should be with a very high precision in the following manner:

1. Your expected earn for a session is (Hourly rate)*(session length); suppose you're a 20/hr winner (excellent 10-20 player) and you play the 6 hour session you mentioned. You would expect to win 120 a session, on average.

2. Your session std deviation scales a little differently due to the nature of std deviations (see GTAOT or any decent stats book for more info), and it goes as the (Std Dev)*(# hours)^0.5; for a "typical game" playing a winning style, you will likely have a std deviation of about 10BB/hr at the midlimits (higher if you have aggressive opponents, maniacs included), so about 200/hr for the 10/20 example. Your session std dev is thus 200*(6)^0.5 = 200*2.45 = 490 bucks.

So, you would expect to be up 120, but this has a spread around it, due to short-term luck, which is significant in poker. In fact, to lose, you only need to be down (120/490)= 0.24 std deviations, something that is named the Z-score value (which you can look up on the internet). A Z of 0.24 occurs with P = 0.095. So you will win or break even with a P = 0.5 + 0.095 = 0.6. 60% of the time, so your experience is exactly what you would expect.

The only caveat is that you should realize that average earns take a long time to converge due to the short-term luck factore, so your EV value may be waaaay off, since it can be dominated by "running good" for (or bad) awhile. Std deviations converge to the correct values very quickly, however. All these statistics count on the quality of games remaining the same, which is not actually true, but is usually close enough that you just have to deal with it.

I know that this doesn't seem very psychological in nature, but you need to realize that even for an outstanding player, they will lose quite often, and that's what makes poker a great game for gambling large stakes of money on, day in and day out. The live ones actually think that they can win, and they do, sometimes.

This is just my opinion, but I'm Just Another Sucker.

[Dwayne]

Thanks for each of your replies. I will work up the numbers and see where they fall. All I can really do is continuously try to improve my game. I true unbiased measure of performance will be helpful.

The only other thing I can do is after three or four hours of boring unplayable poker hands is just quit for the day. I know it will not help the numbers becaouse the next hour you play is exactly that, the next hour you play. But it may help me feel better and have a better frame of mind going into the next session.

[Dwayne]

[CMangano]

"3. How long your session are."

So would it then make sense that if someone played online only, and played 2 hour sessions only, they could expect to have more losing sessions than someone who played 8 hour sessions since there will be more short term luck involved?

[Nottom]

Exactly, the longer you play the more your hourly rate can begin to dominate your standard deviation.

Another way to look at it it an 8 hour session is just 4 2-hour sessions. The 2-hour player might book 2 winning and 2 losing sessions and be up a bit after all 4, while the 8-hour player just books one win for the same play.

[slider77]

What would be interesting would be to see what the distribution of win rate per hour looks like. I don't know if it would look normal (as in bell shaped). Anybody plotted it out?