Stats post...

[krishanleong]

Wow, I haven't been gone long and already a ton of stats posts. I just wanted to give you a little heads up about playing shorthand and stats.

First off if you are playing shorthand, be ready for extreme variance. Nowhere else has a 3 BB/100 winner lost 600 BBs. Nowhere else have we seen an 800 BB downswing. Nowhere else can you find a winning player breaking even for 100K hands.

Extreme variance.

So you are losing over some hands and you are really worried you aren't a winner. Here is the thing. You just can't tell. You can't tell now after 5,10,25K hands. You won't ever be able to tell what your BB / 100 is.

Thanksfully that doesn't really matter. All that matters is that you play the best poker you can and always strive to improve. That's it. Stats posts can help you get better if you have obvious leaks. (Not defending properly, folding river bets to much, too passive or too agresive postflop) But just because you aren't winning isn't a good reason to post stats. You can learn all you really need to know about stats from reading other peoples stat threads.

I'm going to leave you with a snapshot of some of my play at 10/20 as well as a graph. This isn't even as bad as it can get but hopefully it will help some of you understand the kind of variance in shorthand poker. Good luck at the tables.

Krishan