300BB downswings are not normal. PERIOD! - Page 3

MaxPower · #21 08-13-2005, 09:35 AM

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You're more likely to have a 300 BB downswing than go broke with a 300 BB bankroll.

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Huh?

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To go broke with a 300 BB bankroll, you will almost always have to have a downswing >300 BBs. Example: If you win 20 BB when you start, you have to go on a 320 BB downswing to go broke. OTOH, you can never go broke with a downswing < 300 BBs.

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Here is another example that illustrates how likely a 300BB downswing is. Lets say I have a 5% risk of ruin with a 300BB bankroll.

Let also assume that every time I win 100BB, I cash out and round my bankroll down to 300BB.

Each time I do this I start out with a 5% risk of ruin. What happens if I do this 30 times?

The chance of my not going broke each time is .95, so the chance that I don't go broke in all 30 trials is .95 to the 30th power which equals .21.

So there is a 79% chance that I will go broke (and experience a downswing of 300BB or more) during one of the 30 trials. Wow, that is depressing.

rigoletto · #22 08-13-2005, 09:51 AM

Well, the real question is: if 100 winning players tell me that they had a 300BB downswing, how many of them are experiencing a normal occurence?

ggbman · #23 08-13-2005, 09:54 AM

Both of your posts were fantastic Max, and i think that the last one really underscored why people have such trouble with bankroll management.

Obviously, the more hands people log in, the oppurtunities they have to experience this downswing. There are some things in Rigeletto's post that i agree with, and some ideas that i think need to be expanded.

Tilt does play a factor in most downsings, as it will make them worse and last longer. However, the idea that tilt and poor play is responsible for most downswings greater than 100 or 150bb is silly. I wasn't around here a while ago when people thought that a 100BB downswing was a big deal, but we should all now by now how silly that is. You can play very solid poker and lose that in ONE NIGHT.

Like Max was saying, if you consistently keep a 300bb bankroll and use your winnings for other purposes, you have a good chance of going bust in the long run. Now i would hope that when someone loses half of their 300BB roll, they would have the disicpline to move down, but you and I both know this doesn't always happens.

What this illustrates is what a load of crap the whole 300BB bankroll is. WHen i want to try a new stake level, i always have a minmum of 500BB, but these days i lean more towards 1,000. I know this is conservative, but it also helps pychcologically. If you have a 400BB roll and go on a 150BB downswing, well you no longer have the roll for your stake level. People need to be encouraged to gid rid of this "300BB is a solid bankroll" myth. It itsn't. That is all, and more than anything, i think this is what your post brings to light.

Gabe

Lestat · #24 08-13-2005, 09:55 AM

I agree with you and zee. A 300 big bet downswing is just about unheard of to a very good player with a nice edge. Unfortunately, even a very good player can suffer a significant loss of edge online. This does NOT have to be due to tilt, as you say, but very likely due to multiple tabling and such. So your post as it about 3/4 right.

For the record, I have never came close to losing 300 big bets in a live game. I came very close when I first started playing online, but I acknowledge my game needed many adjustments. Since I've made these adjustments I've been doing very well. Still, I went on a 185 big bet slide thru 2500 hands in the Party 30 game. Was my game off? Probably.. But I was playing the best I could muster at the time. Tilt was not much of a factor if at all.

This doesn't mean zee is wrong. In fact, it proves him right. But we who play online, must accept that our edge is considerably less than at live play. So bigger swings are to be expected. All we can do is play our best and try to adjust and improve. I'm sure if I wasn't 4-tabling a 30-60 that takes my total concentration to do my best, I wouldn't have lost so much during that time. But the fact remains, I'm still doing quite well in the game and I'm just going to have to live with the bigger swings.

MaxPower · #25 08-13-2005, 10:24 AM

I believe that the 300BB figure comes from one of Sklansky's essays where he estimates that based upon some assumptions (I cannot remember which book it is in). I also don't know what risk of ruin he was assuming. I think this was meant to be just a helpful heuristic, but it has morphed into some kind of fact.

The problem is that the assumptions that Sklansky made in that essay do not necessarily apply to every winning player in every game at every limit. Still people continue to believe that 300BB is some kind of magic number. For an skilled player in a soft game they probably need much less. For a very good player in the tough games we find online, we might need more.

To really know our bankroll requirements we would have to use Mason's or BruceZ's formulas. In order to use them we need to know our win rate, which of course we won't know when we are moving up to a new limit and can't even estimate accurately until we have a ton of hands/hours.

So I guess what Sklansky was tyring to do was to provide rule of thumb to use.

I also don't think it is that big of a deal to work off a small bankroll and occasionaly go broke. Presumably a winning player has some savings or assets that he can dip into or could borrow a stake from another winning player. Many of us are conservative and don't want to do that, but there is nothing wrong with it.

Noo Yawk · #26 08-13-2005, 10:28 AM

A) You are getting unluckier than your opponents for an extended period.

B) Your playing worse than your opponents for an extended period.

Ray Zee's original point was that you can do something about B, to keep an event like A from occuring.

Rigoletto's point is stop using A as an excuse for B.

Sklansky's point is that A is mathmatically possible, and 300 BB's is a good cushion to prevent going bust.

So basically, everyone is saying to worry about what's in your control, and let the math take care of itself in the long run. Deep.

BTW, I don't believe Ray Zee would have the same downswings given the exact same set of conditions as the players who have had these 300 BB downswings. So maybe there is some skill to this game [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img].

Paluka · #27 08-13-2005, 10:36 AM

You might be right that the commonness of 300 bb downswings is overblown for full game players, but you are certainly dead wrong for people who frequently play shorthanded.

ggbman · #28 08-13-2005, 10:49 AM

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I believe that the 300BB figure comes from one of Sklansky's essays where he estimates that based upon some assumptions (I cannot remember which book it is in). I also don't know what risk of ruin he was assuming. I think this was meant to be just a helpful heuristic, but it has morphed into some kind of fact.

The problem is that the assumptions that Sklansky made in that essay do not necessarily apply to every winning player in every game at every limit. Still people continue to believe that 300BB is some kind of magic number. For an skilled player in a soft game they probably need much less. For a very good player in the tough games we find online, we might need more.

To really know our bankroll requirements we would have to use Mason's or BruceZ's formulas. In order to use them we need to know our win rate, which of course we won't know when we are moving up to a new limit and can't even estimate accurately until we have a ton of hands/hours.

So I guess what Sklansky was tyring to do was to provide rule of thumb to use.

I also don't think it is that big of a deal to work off a small bankroll and occasionaly go broke. Presumably a winning player has some savings or assets that he can dip into or could borrow a stake from another winning player. Many of us are conservative and don't want to do that, but there is nothing wrong with it.

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At the same time, if you are beating your current game for 1bb/100 or more, there is a lot to be said for sticking it out for an extra month of 2 and having a very healthy roll for the nest level.

Chris Daddy Cool · #29 08-13-2005, 10:52 AM

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You might be right that the commonness of 300 bb downswings is overblown for full game players, but you are certainly dead wrong for people who frequently play shorthanded.

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Jeff W · #30 08-13-2005, 10:59 AM

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You might be right that the commonness of 300 bb downswings is overblown for full game players, but you are certainly dead wrong for people who frequently play shorthanded.

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I know this is the commonly held belief, but it seems to contradict the results we would expect mathematically. Swings should be dependent on SD/100 and BB/100.

Other factors may create the illusion that shorthanded holdem is higher variance: faster pace, higher aggression level, forced to play more marginal hands pre flop, etc.

My SD/100 at 6 handed and less games is ~17 and for full games it is ~15(~150k at 6-max and 100 at full ring), so I wouldn't expect a substantial difference in the size of the swings given identical winrates.