Reasons for downswings?

[GrunchCan]

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Luck plays no part in poker

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You're being sarcastic?

Serious question.

[Bluffoon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Luck plays no part in poker

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You're being sarcastic?

Serious question.

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Sorry I really should have qualified that. In the long term luck plays no part in poker.

[GrunchCan]

Depends on what you define as the long term. If you think its 10,000 hands, I'd not even call that the long-term, and you can easily have big enough streaks that effect your 10k results enough to qualify that period as a downswing.

If you, like me, think its closer to 150k-200k hands, then I'd tend to agree.

[Dave H.]

Variance = luck

[obsidian]

When I have a bad session or big down swing it usually isn't because my cards suck. It is usually because someone else's cards are just slightly better than my pretty good ones.

[elindauer]

hi johnzzz,

A systematic approach would be to load your hands into PT and then look at how often you are being dealt various combinations of cards, how often you are winning with them, and how much you are winning with them.

For example, you should get AA every 221 deals. You should win about 80% of the time, and average 3BB / hand.

You can get similar stats on how often you should make a flushes, trips etc at showdown, how often a flush should hold up, etc. It would take some time, but examining these stats in pokertracker should get you started.

If you see an anomaly, like AA is only holding up 50%, it's probably just bad luck. You can review the individual hands though and post some of them asking for advice. Maybe you aren't playing aggressively enough and are failing to protect your cards. Maybe you are giving too much action. Look for the stats that are out of line, and post hands from these sections.

Good luck.
Eric

[elindauer]

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You won't find a single experienced player on this forum who doesn't believe that variance plays a part in poker. If you doubt that, take a poll to convince yourself.

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FYP.

what is luck?
if it's just variance, mathematical explainable, it's ok
or is it some kind of god, you make it up and there's no defenition of it, it just is, you can't control it and blahblah... then it should be the same with or without luck, but the cards would never be dealt because everybody should be dealt exactly the same cards every time again,,,
i not only don't believe in luck, i think it's nothing. it's a name for what happens, has happened in the past, like physical laws or something.

didn't make myself very clear did i?
..sorry for my english btw:P

[masse75]

Everytime you experience a downswing, the terrorists win.

Downswings are caused by masturbation.