People Who Quit

[einbert]

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Why cant players who read books and go to the forums be at least break even players?

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Most people hate doing actual thinking and will do a great deal to avoid it.

[jokerthief]

They could be good players who are on the bad end of the variance curve and just don't know how long the long run can actually be. For example they could be only single tabling and hit a bad run of cards for 5,000 hands and it's enough to discourage them.

[Al Schoonmaker]

Thank you. I just read the article and enjoyed it immensely. I could not see any way to contact Jay. Do you know how to do it?

Regards,

Al

[Sniper]

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Thank you. I just read the article and enjoyed it immensely. I could not see any way to contact Jay. Do you know how to do it?

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I haven't seen an email adress for him anywhere.

If anyone has access to the binghamton alumni database, he graduated in 1964 and they may have his email listed there.

[AZnuts]

As an analogy, a lot of kids play little league baseball, but what percentage actually move on to a higher professional level? The game itself figures that out, and filters the winners from the losers.

It's the nature of all competition, and the attraction for the competitors.

No need to feel sorry for players; they enjoyed the challenge even if they decide to stop.

Specific to poker, some just have enough money to keep on giving even though they are losing players and know it - just like an entertainment expense.

[threeonefour]

isn't break even the hardest type of player to become. i think people should start elminating that phrase from their vocabulary. it is very very very unlikely that any player consistently has an EV of exactly zero.

you are either a winner or a loser. of course many times you do not have enough information about someone's play to conclude which they are.

[Orpheus]

I think the claim that it is difficult or impossoble to be a "breakeven" player is over-objectifying the term. I suppose such stark criteria are a natural reaction to a game with so much uncertainty and long term variance.

Beyond a certain point (maybe ±0.5BB/100), any additional "precision" is meaningless arithmetic. What does it mean to call a player with +$0.01 or +$1 after a million hands --or a billion-- "a +EV player"? Even after a trillion hands, they could be -10BB after their next hand. There is nothing magic about "a million hands" that makes it more accurate than "a million and one" and since any player is outnumbered at the table, it is *probable* that a +$1/million player will go negative within 10-20 hands (and will recover later, through a jackpot). Is he REALLY +$1/1,000,000 or -$10/1,000,010? Both are equally accurate.

Given the inherent variance of the game, the boundaries of "knowably breakeven" are certainly at least ±1 pot/lifetime and probably ±1-3 top sessions/lifetime (the player's largest winning or losing sessions are clearly atypical). It's like the probability cloud of the Schreodinger wave equation in quantum mechanics -- in reality, there *is* no single objective value. (or, if you prefer, "No one can even know exactly where they are in their variance 'cycles'.")

Moreover, any player is constantly changing [learning, forgeting, encountering drifts in venue conditions, affected by internal or external life conditions, etc.] Few people ever play a million hands, and those who do will change so much over that time, that their million hand average is probably a LESS accurate than the stats for their last 10K-100K hands -- and every diehard 2+2'er knows that "large but not statistically large" samples in that range is barely enough for a reasonable guess of whether a player near breakeven is slightly above or slightly below zero EV after rake.

Also, EV isn't uniformly distributed, and certain psychological forces, and even wise choices keep players closer to breakeven than they could otherwise be. Less disciplined players may play looser when winning, and tighter when lossing. Dedicated students often take hits to their EV (in BB/100) as they move up in stakes, begin to play smaller edges, or broaden their game range--all of which are +EV in dollars over the long term, but tend to reduce EV until those skills ae mastered. I mean, who cares if moving to a higher level permanently reduces my BB/100 -- I'd rather +1 BB/100 in 5/10 than +100 BB/100 in .01/.02!

Im'not saying that most players aren't strongly and distinctly +EV or -EV, to a high degree of certainty. I'm just saying that defining "a breakeven player" as someone whose profit is "exactly $0" is meaningless.

[revots33]

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I dont know can anyone answer this, Why cant players who read books and go to the forums be at least break even players?

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I was playing with my brother-in-law once on a $25NL table. He had KQ, and the flop came 3QK. Someone bet $3. He folded. He said he figured with that size bet, the guy must've had a set.

Bottom line... he's cheap. He read the books, but he could not bear to risk even 3 bucks unless he had the absolute nuts. He's a smart guy - and much better at math than I am. I have no doubt he has the intelligence and ability to be a winning player. But some people are just not cut out for gambling.

[Jorge10]

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I was playing with my brother-in-law once on a $25NL table. He had KQ, and the flop came 3QK. Someone bet $3. He folded. He said he figured with that size bet, the guy must've had a set.

Bottom line... he's cheap. He read the books, but he could not bear to risk even 3 bucks unless he had the absolute nuts. He's a smart guy - and much better at math than I am. I have no doubt he has the intelligence and ability to be a winning player. But some people are just not cut out for gambling.

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My friend is just like that, and he sadly is a losing player I dont know if thats the cause, but it could be.

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He's a smart guy - and much better at math than I am. I have no doubt he has the intelligence and ability to be a winning player. But some people are just not cut out for gambling.

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[anecdote] I played with a guy who would often fold AK before the flop, because it had "no potential to turn into a big hand". [/anecdote]

I think a player starting out tight and less gambling-oriented has potential to do better than players who are gamblers by nature and must work to tighten up and get a grip and their emotions.