Give me a clue about variance

[stokken]

I have no less the 31 registrered tournaments in sucsession where I have been 70% favourite or better to win the showdown on flopp and hence gotten all my chips in the middle and been called with not one showdown won. And in 28 of the cases it was HU

I am rapidly loosing faith and all kinds of crap thoughts are creeping into my mind

I feel physically ill, and this is not bs post I need someone to elaborate on variance please.

Best regards Stokken

I will let the more experienced players comment on variance, but if you are feeling ill with regards to poker, it might be best in taking a break from the game.

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And in 28 of the cases it was HU

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are you playing HU SNGs? This may be a reason for such large amounts of variance, even when you are getting it in with the best of it.

Otheweise you'd be making a lot of 2nd place cashes...

[CieloAzor]

It sounds like the reason you didn't win any of these hands is because you're only counting your bustout hands. If you won one, you went ahead and busted on another one later. Getting it in on the flop with over 70% equity 31 times in a row is a pretty amazing feat. Are you playing way too tight and then shoving in your last few chips every time you hit a nice flop? You'll always get sucked out on eventually.

[bigfishead]

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I will let the more experienced players comment on variance, but if you are feeling ill with regards to poker, it might be best in taking a break from the game.

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Excellent advice.

Tournaments can be very very frustrating. I have gone 15 months since winning my last tourny. Yet recently, in the last 6 weeks I have had a 2nd, a 3rd, and a 4th. And in all 3 of those occasions I got my chips in on my final hand as a HUUUGE favorite. Yes it was frustrating to lose those hands. No question about that. I wanted the win in all 3 cases.

In the month of November, I finally started playing on Stars...I had heard about the tournaments so decided it was time to give them a try. I played 20 MTTs. I finished in the money only 15% of the time. Zero high finishes and it was a losing month certainly. Normally I run between 30-38% in the money.

But in the last 2 weeks 2 FT's in $10r and $5r events and 5k more in my bankroll.

Take a break, have patience as hard as it can be at times, and have a spare mouse at hand for those bad beats!

[ansky451]

Bust out hands are not your tournament. Bust out hands are very often unimportant parts of your tournament. If every time you are all in you have the best hand, that is not a good thing. You want to accumulate chips, bluff, resteal, play super aggro on the shortstack, and with all these things you are not going to always have the best hand. It is ok to lose on a bluff. Or to take a coinflip and lose. You don't always have to be a 70% favorite to stick your money in. If you can't handle going 30 tournamnets without a cash, don't play tournaments. Play sit and gos, play cash games, play rock paper scissor. Honestly, bad beats are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your main concern should be to make sure you aren't playing worse because of the beats, and to make sure you are learning from your mistakes.

[jubeirm]

[ QUOTE ]
I have no less the 31 registrered tournaments in sucsession where I have been 70% favourite or better to win the showdown on flopp and hence gotten all my chips in the middle and been called with not one showdown won. And in 28 of the cases it was HU

I am rapidly loosing faith and all kinds of crap thoughts are creeping into my mind

I feel physically ill, and this is not bs post I need someone to elaborate on variance please.

Best regards Stokken

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When I first read this I thought there was no way. A simple calculation tells us just how impossible this is:

(.3)^31 = 6.1 x 10^(-17) = 1/[1.6 x 10^16]

Those are some long odds! Ok, so this is obviously not what is happening. How often do you find yourself all-in? Lets assume that everytime you are all-in you are also a 70% favorite. Perhaps you are doing this a few too many times per tournament?

Suppose you go all-in with a 70% chance to win each time at most 5 times in every tourny. In other words if you survive all 5 you win. What are the odds of busting out early:

1 - (.7)^5 = 83.19%

The probability of doing this 31 times in succession is 0.003331888 or 300:1, which is not so impossible. In fact if you own excel you can build a quick table of such probabilities with three columns:

A = "Times All-in" = 1,2,3,...
B = "Prob. of Busting" = 1-(.7)^A
C = "Prob. of 30 in a Row" = B^31
D = "Odds X:1" = 1/D

You should find that between A=10 and A=11 your chances of doing this around 50%. Suddenly your run is not so astronomically impossible. The "take away" from all this is that perhaps your playing style leads you to these finishes. I would be curious to know/see:

How big are the tournaments?
How often is your stack the shortest, 2nd shortest at the table?
How often do you go all-in during the tournament?
How often are you REALLY a favorite in these all-ins?

I can't say how to fix or what to do about this. But I know its a genuine possibility because its exactly how I play. I've been playing mid-sized tournaments and spend a lot of time getting ground down (by my over tight play?) till I am forced to go all-in, sometimes not as a 70% favorite. If I survive and double up then the slow decline begins again till I go all-in. Rinse and repeat. Take a look at your games if you have them over the past 30 tournaments and let me know what you find. Hope this helps.

--Jubei

[BPA234]

Jubeirm:
Excellent response and I believe that you hit on the why when you cite the grind down reasoning.

[Solitare]

[ QUOTE ]
I have no less the 31 registrered tournaments in sucsession where I have been 70% favourite or better to win the showdown on flopp and hence gotten all my chips in the middle and been called with not one showdown won. And in 28 of the cases it was HU

[/ QUOTE ]

I just went through a grim period like you describe. 34 tournies with one cash, 23 in a row without a cash. In that period I must have had 15 tournies where the hand I busted out on or was crippled by I went in as a 70-90% favorite. 3 times I flopped two-pair only to run into flopped sets. KK ran into AA twice.

It was varience, and it sucked.

But I came out of it. And as often seems to happen after emerging from a huge bad luck streak, I came out en fuego. Scored a 1st and 3rd in over 5 tournies. Helps to forget the runner/runner nightmares I was subjected to.

You will come out of your bad streak too.