ITH Poker Forum

[BamaHockey437]

I finally think im taking that first step into becoming a successful poker player, and thats by slowly being able to deal with the enormous swings.

I started a new rakeback name on FTP Dec 17th depositing $200 within 2 weeks I was playing my best poker primarily throught SNG's and was at $700.

Then I swear once the new year came around the poker gods decided to screw me. I have seen many post complaining about swings and bad beats. One guy said to keep stats of your coinflips or your all in hands, because in the long run, youll be a winning player if you get your money in with the best hand. I have been on a very bad swing and now my BR is at $472 with a 8% ROI and a avg profit of $2 sng.

Well this month, I have been doing EXACTLY that and just doesnt seem to be working.

Here are my stats.
When Im a 60-40 fav, Ive only won roughly 25% of them
on my 85-15 Ive only won roughly 35% (KK and AA both lost twice to underpairs in the same day)
And I cant count how many times Ive lost to a 3 outer.

So even though this is a crying post, my main question is, If I know I can play solid poker and build a bankroll like I did in dec, what is the best way to be able to deal with swings like this?

The way Ive been running, I just dont feel like its meant to be for me, its almost as if the poker gods want me to stop playing their game.

[Piemaster]

One statistic you don't include is how many SNGs is your bad run over? This is very important, because long-term results only really shine through over a large number of trials.

So even though this is a crying post, my main question is, If I know I can play solid poker and build a bankroll like I did in dec, what is the best way to be able to deal with swings like this?

I think you need to look back at your December results and be brutally honest with yourself. What you almost certainly experienced is a large upswing. In other words, you were 'getting lucky' and earning far more that what your long-term expectation should indicate. This is the other side of variance that people rarely talk about. When they are running well they tend to put it down entirely to their good play, but that is rarely the case. Maybe your coin flips were holding up 65% of the time rather than 55%. Maybe your 85% chances were actually giving you 95%.

Try to take a longer term perspective. You started off with $200 and you now have $472. This indicates (but doesnt prove, because you still may not have played enough games to be sure) that you are probably a winning player. In the long term, you are going to run welll for periods (like you did in December) and bad for periods (like you are doing now), but in the long temr you will win money, even if it's not as much as ou feel you should be winning when you are running well.

If you accept this and see the bad periods for what they are, effectively payback for the good periods, then you should be able to play through them. It's not easy, but once you have more results under your belt, you will start to see the swings inherent in poker and how unimportant the short term is.

[taz115]

Also worth noting that a 20% ROI for SNGs is considered pretty good at the higher levels. I’m not sure what is achievable at a $2 buy-in (I think that’s what your playing) but if your Decemeber ROI was 100% or something that will not continue long term. Sometimes players have a hard time grasping the downswings because they think their upswings are the norm and that they should happen like that all the time.

[BamaHockey437]

well I started with $5 buy ins because with a br of$200 thats roughly 40 buy ins (a safe backup) and I wouldnt move up until i had 45 buy ins of the next level, so now that Im at at least $450 BR, i am playin $10 sng's

[doubleup]

Rollercoaster....of loveeeee.....rollercoaster, ba doop doop doop. Dude, it's the swings of poker. If you always gained and never lost you wouldn't be paying poker. I agree with the above posts. You probably had a few months of catching cards and earned way over the EV and now it's catching up with you. You're still +258 to your initial BR so there's really not much to worry about. As long as you haven't modified your playing in the last month, you're fine. Keep playing solid and slowly your br will build back up and then down slightly again...

[ciaran]

Also worth noting that a 20% ROI for SNGs is considered pretty good at the higher levels.

20% at pretty much any level is very good these days. If you're name isn't POTRIPPER, 20% at the 27s or above has to be nearly unachievable in the long run.

Plug in a finish distribution that gets you to 8% ROI in this, http://www.rvgsoftware.com/ROISimulator.exe, and see how bad you can run even if you are a winner. Then realize that you almost certainly haven't played enough games to determine you're actually a winner yet by plugging your actual results in to the confidence calculator here, http://www.aleomagus.freeservers.com/Spreadsheet/.

FWIW, a player who's actually an 8% winner has like a 10% chance of running into a 20+ buy-in downswing over any given 100 game stretch. If 10K SNGs is a "lifetime" (many pros play considerably more), roughly half of 8% winners will have a downswing at some point in their lifetime of 56 or more buy-ins, and 10% will have one of 79 or more buy-ins, and basically every single player at that level will have at least a 30 buy-in downswing at some point.

Welcome to the world of variance.

[ciaran]

Just eye-balling my graphs at the 27s and above I've had downswings of 30-50 buy-ins a few times. Or, since endpoint picking is tricky, you can look at those as 800-1000 game break-even. I've also had +30 buy-in heaters in the space of 100-200 games a couple times, so there's a good side, too.

[theOMEGAN]

true it gets ugly and at time I swear my ip is kinxed. there was a weekend of heave action on my part and got my chips in with the best of them and wouldn't you believe it. not once did AA KK QQ AK AQ KQ hold up to be a winner. Remind you I kept track of this and flopped the a total of a 175 times, with 0% return.
But things are slowly turning around, but I still have my reservations on any starting hand.