|
|
|
September 06, 2004The Play's The Thing
Posted By:
 hdouble
"The spirit that I have seen You know I'm running bad when I have to break out the Hamlet for the introductory quote. I, too, have also seen the devil, only it took on the unpleasing shape of bad beat after bad beat. The last 6 weeks have been testing my poker mettle, and the bad run reached its apex (hopefully) with a terrible session on Friday night at Hollywood Park. At least Paul and OJ were there to witness the beats, otherwise I might think the poker gods were playing tricks on me. Luckily for me, I've never been a very results-oriented player. I think I owe that to the blackjack world. In the mind of the card-counter, every bet simply represents a coin flip where the coin is slightly in your favor. The coin falls whichever way it will, but all you can do is bet when you have a positive expectation. I remember counting cards for hours and being happy just to get a positive EV situation, where the count went sky high and I had a chance to win some money. Win or lose, at least I got a chance to play. And in poker, usually the odds are strongly in your favor when you put your chips in the pot. But it's still a gamble, even if you're a 65% favorite (I'm picking a high number just to make a point here). Over and over again, I get emails/read posts/hear from new players that go something like this: "I'm only playing premium hands but I've lost $xxx in my first month, what am I doing wrong (or poker is all luck), etc. etc." Poker is a skill game in the long run, but short term results of any repeated gamble answer to variance, not skill. As an example, lets say I play 10 hours a week for a month, and average about 40 hands an hour. That's 400 hands in a month. Suppose I play very tight, and end up seeing 20% of flops, because I only play premium hands. That means I've seen 80 flops with my premium hands. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that in each of these 80 hands, I'm a 65% favorite. What is the probability that I have a losing month? This simple model ignores the rake, but for simplicity's sake, lets assume that the cost of the blinds is (40 orbits)*(1.5 small bets) = 60 small bets = 30 big bets. That means we must win 30 big bets just to cover the blinds, so let's say that's 5 pots (assuming each pot is 10 BBs, and we invest 3 BBs, then 5 pots nets us 35 BBs, give or take a few). Winning 45 hands will put us ahead for the month (since we play aggressively). Even in this dream-like example, where we always come in a 65% favorite, we will still lose at least 45 of our 80 hands 6.5% of the time. We lose at least 30 of our 80 hands 36% of the time, which means that every third month should be a break even month with our 65% favorite figure. Of course, all this stuff depends on game dependent variables such as looseness, aggressiveness, and so on. But it's still a scary thought. But enough math. The point here is that although poker is a skill game, it is still gambling. The last few weeks have been a test for me. The bad beats have grown too numerous to keep track of, and my only solace has been that my performance has been (for the most part) good, and I can reluctantly lay the blame on variance. However, adjustment to the bigger game has been a bit painful, as tougher games require different strategies. Adjusting to the aggression has been difficult, especially playing hands like KQo heads-up against aggressive players. But for the most part, the 15-30 players at Hollywood Park aren't much different than their 6-12 counterparts, just a bit more aggressive and tricky. Luckily, I have the wisdom of Sergeant Rock (Thanks Iggy) to help keep my focus on performance rather than results. "Result = Performance ± Luck The best player and the worst player in your game both have winning days and losing days. In the short term, that ± Luck stuff can easily prevail, and can (often does) If you are "Performance Oriented," and focus your attention on your So I will keep focusing on my performance, and putting my chips in when I'm the favorite. The whole concept of "bankroll" is meant to protect us from these outrageous slings of fortune delivered by the poker gods. One of my favorite sayings of my favorite football coach was: "Greatness is measured by how you respond to adversity." I'm not sure if running bad qualifies as adversity, but I'm gonna do my best to respond in a big way. Posted by hdouble at September 6, 2004 05:59 PM | TrackBack  Maximize your profits: learn how to use the most powerful tool in online poker. Comments
I always love an entry that begins with a Hamlet quote. Posted by: Pauly at September 6, 2004 06:28 PMFor a second, that post title made me think I was reading a PokerGrub archive... This week will be better for you. Posted by: StudioGlyphic at September 6, 2004 10:11 PMWow...excellent stuff. Maybe I should play more blackjack ;). Hope things turn around soon. Posted by: doubleas at September 7, 2004 06:53 AMVariance and the importannce of playing within the 'proper' margin of one's bankroll was a difficult concept for me to wrap my brain around. It's only through experiencing it first hand have I begun to understand it - and that has come from time at the tables. (Love the Hamlet quote, btw. I'm a member of the 'Gert' club having played the role of Hamlet's mom several year's back... 8^) Posted by: Maudie at September 7, 2004 06:55 AMTo me, this is the most difficult concept to grasp for the intermediate player. Let me re-phrase, not grasp, but properly react to. Variance is food for tilt and understanding that the correct plays can yield losses is paramount to overcoming the short-term and thinking long-term. Especially at poker, where the feedback to your decisions are nearly instantaneous, focusing on the long-term is difficult to do. But over time, if you are willing, you can learn to discard the short-term losses such that they do not adversely effect your future decisions. Posted by: BadBlood at September 7, 2004 07:53 AMBadblood put it very well - I take a step back and analyze myself. Am I playing my game? Am I making the correct decisions? If I answer yes to both, I don't worry about it anymore and start again. Blu Posted by: Blu at September 7, 2004 07:57 AMwhen i run bad i push "all in" and let god sort it out. Posted by: sufi at September 7, 2004 08:54 AMI love a blog that starts with a Star Trek quote.... Oh, it's from Hamlet too? That's nice. Posted by: ToddCommish at September 7, 2004 10:24 AMGreat stuff as usual. It's always nice to hear that someone has reached, or is coming close to the ever elusive state of "Tilt-Proof". It gives me hope that someday I might actually get there! Posted by: JW at September 7, 2004 10:51 AMGreat post man -- soul searching stuff you've got there. It sounds to me like you've looked long and hard into the mirror even at the bottom of your game (in terms of results) and decided that you still like what you see. This is huge, and like you say, that kind of attitude sure sounds like it can position you to bounce back major league. What's that Izmet quote you use so often? "If you're playing goot, chips are flowing your way..." Posted by: -EV at September 7, 2004 11:58 PMi hear ya. This has been one of my worst weeks ever! its testing my poker fortitude, for sure. let me know if you do anything to break out of your funk besides putting chips in when you have the best of it. Posted by: helixx at September 8, 2004 02:48 PMI'm not sure if running bad qualifies as adversity Well, dang. If it ain't adversity, I'd sure like to know what the hell it is. As a wise man once said to me, you gotta keep firing at 'em as long as you have bullets. If you ain't got no bullets, put your gun back in the holster and get the hell out of Dodge, and go buy some more. There might be some poker wisdom in there, too. Posted by: Scott Chaffin at September 8, 2004 08:35 PMVariance, Volatility, and Vindication First off, I love your blog. It really is a great read and not just for all things Poker. And now that I'm all read up (it took a few weeks), I feel I can now comment. I have only been playing online since July and before that, played a dozen or so live tourneys. I’ve placed 2nd and 4th but have always finished in the top 25% of players, so I never thought it was just pure luck. I really study and enjoy the game for what it is. During my first two months of play I managed to net a return of nearly 240%. Or put a little less dramatic, I turned my $200 deposit into almost $500. I played maybe 1500 hands over those two months and I thought my results were quite excellent. This is where I began to envision growing my now $500 bankroll into a $1K then 2 and perhaps $10K within the year. I’ll just play my usual tight game and in no time I’ll be able to move on up the ranks. Of course, this is where I met volatility and variance. I was doing so well in my game (.50/$1, $25NL and SNGs) that I thought I should be playing in higher limit games. So I started to frequent the $2/$4 and $100NL games. Within a week of playing, I was now sitting at $80. Eighty BUCKS!! How could this be? How could I go from playing my game, top 10 hands poker, and be down $400? Well… the answer was real easy. I was playing way above bankroll, which equates to more volatility, and add to this, variance, which I really just started to consider, and my play was quickly squashed. To me, variance is really just cash flow deviations within your play over time. And since I play a ‘low’ variance type of game, I thought I was covered. $50 swing here, $75 there but when taken into account with playing higher volatility games, I was beginning to push up poker daisies. My bad beats were numerous but nothing that shouldn’t be expected. During my bankroll crash in the 3rd week of August, I managed to get beat when I was holding AA, KK twice, QQ three times and this, which actually deserves a paragraph, AK. Not because it’s AK, which I have a hard time playing in large multi-handed games, but because I was dealt it 5 times in 8 hands! I couldn’t believe it. One was suited and the others were off. The odds of be dealt AKo is 110 to 1 as it is. The first one I overplayed and got beat, the second hand I was outdrawn on the river. The third, fourth and fifth hands were beat by a river straight, and small trips. I couldn’t believe it; I’m still scared to play AK after that run. That string of variance basically conditioned my expectation of ole Big Slick. Where am I now? Well I took some time off…. Okay, it was week but it felt like a month. I brought my game limits back down to minimum and just played my game. I’ve placed 1st and 2nd in half of the 8 SNGs I’ve played which brought my overall SNG win ratio to nearly 25%. I think it’s time to get PokerTracker. I play Hold’em and Omaha, but lately my Omaha play has been superior. I’ll probably start playing that about half the time now. My biggest SNG was last night when I took first in the 2 table $10+1 Omaha Hi/Lo for a $69 net. My bankroll has recovered significantly since I started playing again on the 4th. From my $80 valley, it has climbed back up to $315 within the last 5 days. That my friend is a near 400% return but who’s counting, I just want to play focused poker. Now if I could just continue to be cognizant of both Volatility and Variance and hope that the Poker Gods are smiling down on my b-o-r-i-n-g low risk play I should do well over the long run. I guess this is where the Vindication part comes in. And I do feel vindicated now, having been through this drawdown, the realization of volatility within a given bankroll, and that variance is a real entity that disguises itself to the winner of a bad beat as Luck. cyphersum I play at Party whenever I’m not working as a Technical Designer for Boeing, getting my BFA in Digital Design, or spending time with my wife and 2 kids. Posted by: cyphersum at September 9, 2004 03:35 PMGreat post. Thanks for talking about the bad beats. I've been there a lot this past week and after a while I begin to doubt. I know that variance is something that we all must live with, but, man, does it HAVE to come all at once? Can't we have it nicely and evenly spaced? -grin- Posted by: Glenn at September 12, 2004 08:34 PMi've been reading your blog on and off for months and really enjoy it. sorry that my first comment is a nitpick, but your math in this article is a bit off. if you play 10 hours/week, 40 hands/hour, that comes out to 400 hands/week, not 400 hands/month. all of the subsequent calculations are tainted. also, i could not figure out where the 45 hands/month number came from, or the 6.5% and the 36%. anyway the general concept is clear, you can't expect to win (or even break even) all the time, no matter how skillful you are. peace, j Posted by: ChezJ at September 28, 2004 05:20 PMCypher - My god. Thought I was reading a post about myself. I started playing online in December. After losing a couple of $30 investments (learning), I turned my next $50 investment into $325 in about a month. In the last 5 days, I've lost about $200. I was winning 1st/2nd in $10/1 single table tournaments regularly, but haven't won anything in awhile. I also moved up to $1-2 limit. I even ventured into the $4-8 live ring at a local casino, but after losing $24 on the first hand with my K Q, I got tight and decided to cash out after an hour. Sum total, when I dropped another $35 last night, I couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing wrong. I feel I am playing tight-aggressive, but just keep getting beat. I'll keep at it, drop back down in my limits as Daniel suggests and keep playing the way I know how to play. Thanks for all the posts, gang. It truly is uplifting to know you don't just SUCK! ha hah ha. Good luck all unless you're up against me! Posted by: Wildcat_Jim at February 1, 2005 12:35 PMPost a comment
|