2 days in the life

[Mendacious]

Ok-- this is partially a venting post, and partially relates to Ribbo's comments about success v. stats. in another post.

Yesterday was the worst imaginable day for me. I played significantly more at higher stakes. I will swear to you for the most part, the table compositions was NOT especially good, and I did not play outside my normal game particularly. I just suffered one bad card after another. If I bet the pot with a +ev hand, I got called and lost. If I made midsized bets on the flop-- to wait until the turn to shove it-- I got blocking cards on the turn. Just every card that fell was wrong everytime. And they were most wrong when I had the most money in the pot! Sure there were bad decisions made along the way, but honestly, we all make them-- we just hope our good decisions are more profitable. Overall the only really big mistake I made was playing WAY too long on a shitty day at higher limits.

Anyway... this is yesterday.



Ok, this was today.
You can be sure I was NOT playing optimally today after suffering an asskicking of epic proportions yesterday. Also, I would say the cards ran about how I would expect, and not particularly lucky. For instance I lost $150 on a pot where TWO guys drew to club flushes on me and no back-up on the turn where I had a made straight AND a flush draw of a different suit...and of course their suit came. Anyway. I would defy to predict the results from the statistics.

Today:

[Chamonyx]

What do your positional stats look like? Were you trying to push your good hands too early when OOP?

[emptyshell]

Just to state the obvious, the sample size is way too small to say anything about the usefulness of stats. I also think hand categories (similar to Goops, but perhaps set up better) are much more useful.

[Mendacious]

Errr, my point was I don't think you'd find anything that deviated in my play significantly. These two days with wildly divurgent results are in every other respect statistically the same. I just got hammered repeatedly when I shoved all-in-- and virtually everytime it was +ev when I shoved. I even checked with simulation programs.

For the most part the only thing I would have done differently was stop playing or move down.

Which is actually pretty freakin important.

[Wintermute]

Mendacious, look up the standard deviation in your win rate of BB/100. Divide it by sqrt(5)--that's the CLT at work--and I suspect you'll find that win rates of -40 BB/100 are not that unusual for 500-hand samples, probably just over a single std. dev. of the mean. (May be more severe for you if you have a less variance-susceptible style of play in comparison to me, as I would imagine.)

You will experience much worse episodes of running bad, and for much longer--it's an unfortunate consequence of poker.
(As you know, however, the reverse effect--bad players having relatively frequent spells of running good--is what keeps the pond stocked.)

[Mr_J]

What's the typical standard deviation of a PLO8 player??? Probally silly to ask since it probally totally depends on style of play. What's yours??

[Mendacious]

Running bad didn't bother me so much. The stupidity of letting it go on at higher limits bothers me much more. I play more aggressively at these tables, so variance is higher for me on these tables than lower limits.

[Wintermute]

[ QUOTE ]
What's the typical standard deviation of a PLO8 player??? Probally silly to ask since it probally totally depends on style of play. What's yours??

[/ QUOTE ]

66 BB/100

[Mendacious]

Its been awhile since I've taken statistics. How do I find the standard deviation on my BB/100? Please tell me I can get this from Pokertracker in a simplistic way.

[Wintermute]

[ QUOTE ]
Its been awhile since I've taken statistics. How do I find the standard deviation on my BB/100? Please tell me I can get this from Pokertracker in a simplistic way.

[/ QUOTE ]

session notes --> more detail

I looked at a couple other players, they are closer to 30 BB/100, but they play more full ring.