Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[Irieguy]

I'm starting to think that keeping stats may be bad for my game.

I've been playing poker for 15 years, and winning for a few without ever keeping track of anything other than winnings I had to claim on my taxes. Then internet poker comes along and it's like a glorious gift from the heavens. These people are bad, bad, bad bad bad, and I finally see the much over-used poker phrase "giving away their money" applied to a group of about 40,000.

I'm cashing out more than I'm buying in and I'm happy. But all the smart people keep talking about their ITM and ROI and EV and I don't see how it matters much, but I read and think a little more and decide I should keep track and see how I do. So, I play 500 SNGs and track my ROI and my ITM and I prove to myself that I'm winning... and now I know how big my johnson is compared with all the other people who claim to have big johnsons.

But here's the problem: I used to have two kinds of poker emotions-
1. Running good (happy), and
2. Running bad (sad).
Now I have 8 poker emotions:
1. Winning at a rate greater than my long term ROI (happy)
2. Winning at exactly my long term ROI (indifferent)
3. Winning at slightly less than my long term ROI (sad)
4. Realizing that I'm negative for 10 tournaments (pissed)
5. Realizing that another OOTM will drop my ITM% below 42% (depressed)
6. Realizing that I've lost 78% of the time with the best of it over the last 57 showdowns (raging hatred)
7. Realizing that I'm setting a personal OOTM record (homocidal)
8. Completing detailed analysis of past 100 SNGs, deciding to stop playing between 1200 and 200pm, tightening up 5 handed, eliminating the suited-connector limp from my early stage play, becoming less aggressive with weak kings short-handed and more aggressive with big Queens, and finally figuring out how to stop leaking when getting check-raised only to get 7 consecutive 4ths and 3 10ths in the next 10 $55 SNGs (suicidal).

Then I read Aleo's post about his statistically improbable super-turbo-horrendo bad spell and realize that most of his mental anguish is being caused by the fact that he knows precisely how improbably his streak is and how long it will take to repair the ITM and ROI% he worked so hard to build over months and months and a thousand SNGs.

Hmm. Maybe a cashier history is the only spreadsheet I need. Maybe hand histories on the replayer is the only part of a result I should review.

Play the right way,
Irieguy