Cris et al.

[Moonsugar]

Enough!

Let's give all of our egos and feelings (and my eyes!) a break and stop all this nonsense.

[CrisBrown]

Sorry All,

Some of this will be taken as a whine by some, and I apologize in advance. It's a whine with a purpose.

I've had a really BAD week, and I let it color my responses here. At this point, I am feeling so beaten up (at the tables) that I should probably take a week or two off. I took a day off, and came back today, and I thought I played pretty well. I went a combined 1:6 though, and here were four of my five losing hands:

* The 3:1 beat in the "Bad Play or Bad Beat" post, which I guess most people have said I played correctly.

* AQ all-in vs. what I correctly read as a blind steal. Stealer had 54s. Flop was 4-5-5. This was probably an over-aggressive misplay, although I was a 2:1 favorite when the money went in.

* AJ in the BB, and I call a min-raise from MP. Flop is K-Q-6. I check, raiser checks. Turn is T, giving me the Broadway straight. I push, raiser calls with 66. River: 6. I think I played this one correctly -- I was a 3:1 favorite when the money went in -- but if anyone thinks otherwise, please say so.

* 44 in LP, and I limp behind another limper. CO min-raises, SB and BB call, and I call. Flop is 4-8-K. EP bets 120, I smooth-call, and CO raises to 240. SB, BB, and EP fold. I push. CO calls and turns up AA. Turn: K. River: K. Again, I think I played this one correctly -- I was a 10:1 favorite when the money went in -- but I'm open to being told otherwise.

The other two were the terribly misplayed JJ hand that I described in a previous post, and a 4th place finish when my 77 lost to A9o (and I'm fine with that).

I'm not saying I'm the unluckiest player alive. I'm not. I do make misplays, especially when I get frustrated. I know (intellectually) that these are just the routine kinds of swings that are inherent in tournament poker. But wow, it can really get emotionally brutal when it's happening....

Anyway, it has been unbelievably frustrating, and I let that frustration leak out here, in my responses to other people's well-intentioned comments, and I apologize.

Cris

[DrPhysic]

Cris, et al:

I sympathize. Really I do. I even post a bad beat myself occasionally. My aces full of kings that was beaten by quad Aces a couple of weeks ago, was brutal at the time, but was posted as much as anything because I found it funny.

You will occasionally see me make a post, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, to the effect that “Poker God has been on my case so long I forgot what I did to hack him/her off.”

Nobody seems to get it. For once, I will spell it out.

If you really believe in luck, or poker gods, or rabbits feet, or bad beats, or etc, and have any real intention of winning, you probably shouldn’t be gambling. People complain about having a bad (multiple choice) hand, game, week, month, etc. The fundamental problem here is that the human psyche just is not normally up to waiting out a true statistical sample. We get frustrated when a few hands, or games, or weeks don’t go our way. A statistical sample on which we can evaluate our skill, luck, lack of either, etc is NOT one game, 20 games, even 100 games, and certainly not the maybe 1000 hands that we played this week.

PokerAZ made a post recently that was the most intelligent one I have seen in a while. It was an honest evaluation of his play over his first 20000 hands. Then he asks the question: “Is 20k hands enough to draw any real conclusions?”

Well, it’s not bad, but if you were treating this as a normal 40 hour a week job, that’s less than 2 months at 65 hands an hour. Wait a while. The numbers will be more meaningful at 6 months, especially if your early experience was climbing a steep learning curve. You probably didn't learn your regular day job in the first two months.

I am by no means suggesting that we quit posting hands, be they good bad or indifferent. “Did I play this hand well, even though I got beat?”, or “How should I have played this?” are intelligent and meaningful questions from which one might learn something. But crying about having had a bad hand or week etc, is so far short of a real statistical sample as to be meaningless. In the short term, you are going to win some and lose some. If you are playing good poker, if you have taken the time to read, and learn, what is in the better poker books, if you are making an effort to play intelligently and trying to win not just sitting at the table enjoying yourself, then over a large number of hands, and a long period of time you will be a winner. Just don’t let the frustration get to you in the short term, because it is statistically insignificant.

Edit: There is one further note on the subject that I think should be made. Many if not most poker players lose money over the long term. If you enjoy the game, enjoy sitting at the table, BSing with the guys, having fun, and the losses are within your budget, so what? Poker as a hobby is probably no more expensive than golf, or bowling, or riding roller coasters, and none of us started out any of them with the intention of winning the pro tour. So winning is not the only objective, even though it is nice when you do. In this group, and with poker players in general, we tend to put a great emphasis on winning. To the point possibly, of lying to ourselves and others about our long term results. But if you enjoy the game and it is a fun hobby, what exactly is wrong with that, as long as you are not losing the family farm or gambling with the kids' lunch money? Have fun, it's as good a recreation as any other.

Doc [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Paul2432]

A statistical sample on which we can evaluate our skill, luck, lack of either, etc is NOT one game, 20 games, even 100 games, and certainly not the maybe 1000 hands that we played this week.

A lot of hands are needed to evaluate results. Not that many hands are needed to evaluate the play. That is the point of posting hands here.

Paul

[DrPhysic]

I am by no means suggesting that we quit posting hands, be they good bad or indifferent. “Did I play this hand well, even though I got beat?”, or “How should I have played this?” are intelligent and meaningful questions from which one might learn something.

I agree completely, Paul.

Doc

[Al_Capone_Junior]

[ QUOTE ]
The fundamental problem here is that the human psyche just is not normally up to waiting out a true statistical sample.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely true. Great line Doc.

Yesterday some JERK beat my friggin aces!!

Day before that, my KINGS!!

Anytime I don't win, I HATE it. But them's the breaks. Overall I win a bunch.

al

[La Brujita]

Good post Doc. Can I just add if you play enough you go through big swings. Part of becoming a good player is not worrying too much about the outdraws. I lost $600 in three hours last night and slept like a baby. And believe it or not I suffered some bad beats along the way.

And I just want to add, if anyone who posts here regularly is doing well or wins a tournament I sure as heck want them to post it. It makes me feel good about myself and all of us since we are an online poker community. I will be happy to come sweat any of you. I have never won one but when I do I will post it here and hope people come cheer me on.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

Good attitude.

You'll win one soon enough, it just takes time. I suggest sticking more to the smaller ones, not the 1400+ player ones. Personally I have won at least a dozen tournaments outright, but the biggest outright win was 350 players or so. I may never win a 1400+ player tourney because I rarely enter them.

I always hope my tournament writeups get read a lot, but I am usually very detailed and probably lose many by the end. Oh well, I like to be thorough! If you win one, I will read it.

al

[William]

Great post Doc [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

To the point possibly, of lying to ourselves and others about our long term results.


[img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] BINGO ! [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

Take care,
William

[CrisBrown]

Hi Doc,

[ QUOTE ]
If you really believe in luck, or poker gods, or rabbits feet, or bad beats, or etc, and have any real intention of winning, you probably shouldn’t be gambling. People complain about having a bad (multiple choice) hand, game, week, month, etc. The fundamental problem here is that the human psyche just is not normally up to waiting out a true statistical sample. We get frustrated when a few hands, or games, or weeks don’t go our way. A statistical sample on which we can evaluate our skill, luck, lack of either, etc is NOT one game, 20 games, even 100 games, and certainly not the maybe 1000 hands that we played this week.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 100%, and that's why I said I don't think I'm the world's unluckiest poker player, or anything close to it. Swings happen. The idea is to win more in your good swings than you lose in your bad ones, and to be ahead of the game when things are running "average."

One of the things I do when things are running like this is to drop down in stakes. I hate losing, period, but this at least minimizes the financial hit. I know I'll win back the money I've lost this week, once I've taken some time away from playing, let those negative feelings wash away, and can go back to playing my game well.

But all of that is intellectual knowledge, and it doesn't change the emotional response. Even the best players in the world -- and I'm certainly nowhere in that category -- can get emotionally rocky when things are running bad. I'm certainly not immune to it, and I don't think anyone else here is either. We all know bad swings happen to everyone, but when they happen to you ... they still hurt.

I was watching a friend play last night, chatting with her on the phone, and someone's AA lost to TT when a T fell on the flop. The player with AA typed "unbelievable," and my friend agreed. I said "Is it 'unbelievable' when you roll a six-sided die and it comes up 6?" She said no, that was not unbelievable, nor even unusual. "Well," I said, "that is what just happened with the AA vs. TT hand. TT will win one time in six."

The difference, though, is emotional investment. When you get AA, though, from the moment you see those cards pop up, you start looking at your stack and other people's stacks, figuring out where you'll stand in the tournament after you win this pot. You're investing emotion in that hand.

My friend will often say (on the phone, to me) "Oh please, somebody, raise." She's already investing in that hand. Then, when someone pushes in ahead of her, the investment gets even greater: AA, and she's getting the action she wants. But then that damn Ten (or whatever) falls ... and all of that emotional investment goes down the tubes. It's not the one-in-six unlikely outcome that hurts; it's the lost emotional investment.

(As an aside, I think this is why getting outdrawn at the river hurts worse than getting outdrawn at the flop; we've had more time to make a greater emotional investment.)

Now, I suppose it's possible that some among us are Spock-like, emotionless creatures, but I doubt it. Yes, after a while, you're used to seeing the one-in-X hit, and you try not to get as emotionally invested in a hand. But I think it's still there, and it still hurts.

And I suspect that, by and large, when people post a truly bad beat story here, they're really not looking to hear how they played the hand fine and got outdrawn, or whatever. That may be the text of the response they hope to hear, but I suspect the subtext is something else entirely. At some level, they want to hear: "No, it's not you. You are not uniquely cursed. There are no poker gods out to get you. You're not being punished for some imagined sin. You just lost a hand of cards. That's all."

Because, for all of the logic and mathematics, when it comes to our emotions, we're all primitive creatures.

Cris