A Statician's take on RUNNING BAD!

Every poker player has his own favourite bad beat story and in every poker forum there's a bunch of whiners posting bad beat hands and complaining about running bad. People love to get sympathy from fellow grinders and want to be reassured that they aren't playing badly, only "running badly".

I don't believe in running badly, and today you'll learn why running bad is just a myth. The first reason is because we have selective memory. We remember the bad beats vividly because both hands get to showdown and we lose. Losing money hurts. Losing big pots hurt more. However, there's a ton of other spots where we lose money and yet we don't think as much of it (unless you're a perfectionist). For example, not valuebetting the turn or river. Or not value betting bigger. If you realize after the hand that you missed a 100$ value bet on the river, then you've just lost 100$. You should feel this emotional pain as much as when you get sucked out on. That's a free 100$ you just wasted. But missed hypothetical bets aren't remembered as much as suckouts. This myth gets perpetrated even further on lp (especially by Oddeye and formerly by Capaneo) by posting all the hands where they got the money in as a favourite and lost.

Another example is getting pissed off when your opponent "sucks out" on you with T3s hitting two pair on the flop, turn, or river against your overpair. Well buddy, if he hadn't improved, there's no guarantee that he would have called any of your flop/turn/river bets. In fact, if he had missed the flop completely, he would have just folded and you would have forgotten about that hand. How many times did he fold T3s on the flop and lose his 4-5bb? It's impossible to know because he didn't show. How many times did he try to set hunt and whiff-fold? In fact, you have to be lucky in order to get paid off. If you have AA and your opponent calls with T3s, 71% of the time he flops nothing. What is a good flop for you? You want him to flop one pair, or a flush draw. 27% of the time he flops one pair, and 11% of the time he flops a flush draw. And think of all the good turn cards you need for him to continue. For example if the flop is T56 and the turn/river are two of {JQKA} it'll be hard for him to call you down. The board has to run off nicely for him to call you down. In fact you need really improbable flops to come in order to get paid off. Like A33 flop. But perhaps you still believe in running bad.

The main reason people believe in running badly is because they do not understand statistics. A common running bad myth is the "OMG I lost all my coin flips today. I should be up half the equity in those pots". This myth is perpetrated by thinking on an expectation level (correct) applied to a small sample of hands (incorrect). The reasoning used is this: "since each event is independent, the probability that I should have lost those 7 coinflips in a row is .5^7 = 0.007. "OMG BAD BEAT. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I lost ANOTHER coinflip. This is so unfair." Let me debunk this myth with the following sequence of 100 randomly generated coinflips (http://www.random.org/integers/?mode=advanced)

2221212221222212112221222121211112222222121211222111112211222222211211121111222122111221111212112211

If you are player 2, then there are:
2 sequences of length 7
0 sequences of length 6
0 sequences of length 5
1 sequence of length 4
6 sequences of length 3

Even though a sequence of length 7 has a probability 0.007 of occuring when you flip 7 coins, the key difference here is that we are flipping 100 coins. The sequence 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 could theoretically occur between hands 1 through 7, or 2 through 8, and so on. This now becomes a combination problem and these tiny 0.007 probabilities add up. If you're a multi-tabling grinder, then you will get into a ton of coin flip situations. Formally, there is actually a mathematical proof of the following fact: if you specify a string of arbitrary length, I will guarantee its existence if you allow me to generate a long enough random string. Now quite rightly if you ask me for 100 consecutive 2s, I will need a very very long string. Way more than the total number of hands that you will play in your lifetime. However, on a practical level, it is a mathematical certainty that you will lose 5 or 6 coinflips in a row many times in your poker career.

Now think of the "i lost a ton of set-ups today i.e. set over set overpair vs overpair" myth. The same reasoning occurs as above. By itself, getting specifically KK vs AA preflop is extremely unlikely, but if you play enough hands, it is a mathematical certainty that you will get dealt KK vs AA in back to back hands. Ask Leatherass or Nananoko and I guarantee they will have legendary set-up stories.

You've just lost 7 coinflips in a row. Doesn't this mean it's more likely that I'll win the next one? Shouldn't it regress to the mean? Nope, this is commonly known as the gambler's fallacy. The next event is independent of the previous 7 and therefore still has a 50-50 chance of happening. The correct interpretation of "regression to the mean" applies to the following situation:

Over the last 10k hands you've won 2bb/100 hands. You play 100 hands and win 10bb/100 hands. In the next 100 hands how much should you win? In this case you will "regress to the mean", meaning you should win between 2bb/100 (mean) and 10bb. The most common analogy given is population height. If the average male is 5'10 but both parents are 6'10, the son's height will be between 5'10 and 6'10. His most likely height is not 6'10. Another common analogy is taking medicine when you're at your sickest. Most of the time you will regress to the mean-get well-and you will attribute your cure to whatever quack medicine you just took, but in reality you're just statistically regressing to the mean.

Now before I go off on too much of a tangent, what does this mean for your poker career? There is no such thing as running good or running bad. You will see spikes in all directions, however, your long term profit will regress to the mean. What you make in poker is actually what you should have made. If you lose money over a long period of time, it is because you are a losing player. Poker is a negative-sum game (RAKE RAKE RAKE), therefore skill is mandatory to break even.

[edit]: I think there's been some confusion about my last paragraph and I don't agree with the phrasing. The point I'm trying to make is to not focus on these short good and bad runs. They will inevitable occur as in any random sequence of events. You are guaranteed to run bad over a long enough stretch of hands. The key point is that you should not blame expected statistical occurrences of these runs as the main downfall of your poker career. It is useless and a waste of time to think about things out of your control. Instead, as a poker player, focus on what you can control: checking, betting, and folding.

Let me conclude with a Penn & Teller quote
"running bad is...bullshit"

I likey. Thank you

In my point of view "running bad" isnot the problem almost every time but how this affects your game.Playing scared money,missing value bets or even tilt shoving junk to find out that villain has the nuts(etc) usually happens after 3-5 coolers,bad beats whatever.I always thought that learning how to deal with this is the most important skill that makes a poker player better than others.
(and guess what i cant deal with this heh )

Very nice post. Hopefully this will help change my mindset.

"STATISTICIAN"

^^

I disagree, you can definitely run bad over a short-term period, and that's what most players mean when they talk about running bad. The longer the hand-sample they reference when complaining of running bad, the less likely they are in fact running bad. But it has happened to me, it has happened to my friends, and it has happened to many players on this site, you CAN run bad for 30k hand stretches at a time. You talk about regressing to the mean: this is true, that's how poker works when you play in the long run. When you run bad, your short term results do not match your EV (which is actually the mean you speak of), they swing wildly away from it.

You talk about strings of 6 or 7 coin-flips lost in a row as if it is standard. It clearly is not. This is what we would correctly define as running bad.

I think you'll find if you ran multiple string simulations of 100 flips, you would not commonly see 2 strings of 7 2's. You don't see a single 6 or 5 string in that sequence. In a 100 flip sequence, you'd have 93*0.007 (I think) chance of seeing a sequence of exactly 7 flips in a row. It is still quite improbable.

On August 23 2009 03:22 Day[9] wrote: "STATISTICIAN"

liking it

i don't get the point of this post, everyone knows there's more to running bad than losing flips or not getting your "share" of equity over a given sample of hands.

i mean how can you say "running bad" is a myth, it's a qualitative observation lol.

Great post I've always had this mind set.

so this mean i should stop when im up huh? coz every fucking session im up 3 to 6 buyins then lose it all when i reach my hand goals. i usually think "oh well, itll regress to the mean tomorrow". following day exact same thing happens so yeah its just bullshit. some people's luck just run out faster and aren't really sne material lol

nice post

well whamm actualy.. maybe you should finish your session earlier.. if that shit is happening to you a lot
maybe your focus goes down in last few hundred hands and you are autopiloting or something like that

this would be useful on a forum strictly for people who ONLY play live poker and have played for less than 2 years

we get it already

well myth there's still non-believers in this thread!

I don't think you're giving the people on this forum enough credit, I'm pretty sure most of the players and almost all of the winning ones know your points and agree. However, if I played 20K hands this weekend and got KKvAA 50 times, I'm pretty sure we can say I was running bad. We also acknowledge running good, and if you view each players' hands as one piece of a really long "string" then it's pretty easy to see how one person can run poorly over a decent sized sample.

We get it man, do you actually think anyone on LP thinks that the odds of winning a flip get better just because they lost one earlier?

On August 23 2009 05:48 whamm! wrote: so this mean i should stop when im up huh? coz every fucking session im up 3 to 6 buyins then lose it all when i reach my hand goals. i usually think "oh well, itll regress to the mean tomorrow". following day exact same thing happens so yeah its just bullshit. some people's luck just run out faster and aren't really sne material lol

What you think your mean is and what your mean actually is are two completely different things.

A lot of us here think our skill level is greater than it actually is. We have sessions where we easily win 5 buyins. We then think this is normal but in fact, our true mean might have only been 1 buyin. You may just have hit one of many of those many 5 strings of heads.

Another thing to consider is this: we always think about expected value when we lose and say "should have won 60% of x". Do you guys think the same when you win? If you win a pot as an 80% favourite, are you thinking "geez, I should have only won 80% of x. I got lucky. Phew." It's the exact same situation but (early on in my career for myself) I would think "damn right, I deserve that pot."

So maybe you are up 5 buyins in 5 straight hands. But your true equity in those 5 hands might only be 3.5 buyins.

Hey I ran good last month and I've been running bad this month since the quality of my play hopefull havn't deteriorated and the games I sit in is probably about the same as far as difficulty goes. Even so the results differs with between 70 and 100 buy ins or so for the medium stake I've played over this period. Over a long enough sample this is obviously not important, but to say that I've not been running good so far by coming to the point I am today is just ridicules. To begin with I could've goon broke the first hour I played and then probably missed a year or so of poker before I tried again.

To the forum: I'm not trying to insult anybody's intelligence on this board. Even though a lot of us are regulars on this forum and have met each other in real life, there are a ton of beginners and lurkers on this board. I myself just made a sequence of 100 random numbers yesterday and was quite surprised at how often "large" sequences occur. You can try for yourself at the link I provided.

I think many people here underestimate how little of a sample we actually generate playing online and how big of an impact a run-bad/good at a certain period of time could have. A run bad during a move-up as opposed to a run-good could mean a difference of several months. To have a truly good sized sample we'd need several years of play.

How big is our poker time-line? Many of us are in it for a few years then out. In that case variance is highly important. A run-good to shoot us up into the nosebleeds as opposed to a run-bad that keeps us at 100nl could mean the difference between going full time pro or working for Acme Corp.

On August 23 2009 09:32 SpeedyJack wrote: I don't think you're giving the people on this forum enough credit, I'm pretty sure most of the players and almost all of the winning ones know your points and agree. However, if I played 20K hands this weekend and got KKvAA 50 times, I'm pretty sure we can say I was running bad. We also acknowledge running good, and if you view each players' hands as one piece of a really long "string" then it's pretty easy to see how one person can run poorly over a decent sized sample. We get it man, do you actually think anyone on LP thinks that the odds of winning a flip get better just because they lost one earlier?

I totally understand where you are coming from. The point of the article is to explain that you will run good and run bad with 100% mathematical certainty. You should expect with 100% certainty to have sessions where you lose every time you got it in as a favourite. Getting emotional is an irrational behaviour to a very common occurrence.

A quick retort to the (50 KK vs AA argument). Sure you can use that one statistic to bemoan the poker gods, but during that 20k hand, how often will you have QQ vs JJ or KK vs TT, etc. If you add up your equity in every single hand preflop you will undoubtably find that you ran normal.

On August 23 2009 04:15 PokerDoc88 wrote: I think you'll find if you ran multiple string simulations of 100 flips, you would not commonly see 2 strings of 7 2's. You don't see a single 6 or 5 string in that sequence. In a 100 flip sequence, you'd have 93*0.007 (I think) chance of seeing a sequence of exactly 7 flips in a row. It is still quite improbable.

actually if you look at player 1 there are a couple of string of 5 or 6.

I agree with most points you made in this thread, but "running bad" still exists.

You would not argue that running "good" does not exist, do you? Jamie Gold surely ran good for example, and running bad is basically the same thing as running good, it just means that you are either way above or way below your "expectation" to win.

Now, determining your true expectation to win is almost impossible due to the highly random structure of this game and due to so many factors that are impossible to measure.

What I liked the most was the part about that the human brain's perception is heavily skewed and that many people think they are running bad when in reality they are not, it's just that the bad things are memorized stronger and that when they win a pot with 80% equity most people are really thinking that they "deserved" to win 100% of the pot when in reality they "deserved" only 80% of it. That is definately a good valid point, and I couldn't agree more.

But the main thing I am getting at is that I still think that its possible to run very bad, even more than most people would think, it is just that is is VERY unlikely to happen, but it still does. Some people will definately run worse than others during their lifetime career. I would assume that the distribution resembles a bell curve here with extremely bad running players at one side(very few of them) and extremely good running players at the other side(also very few), but the main population just running about average.

The more hands you play, the more the LIKELINESS of your win rate to come closer to your expected winnings, but that doesnt mean that things will "even out".

For example, you can have expected winnings of 100$ over 100.000 hands. Now you only won 98$ over these hands. That means, you ran 2% below your expectation, or to say, you ran 2$ below your expectation.

Now, you play 100.000.000 hands, your expected winnings should be 100.000$, but you win 98.500$ so basically you came a lot closer to your expectation ( 1,5%) but in total terms of money your gap got bigger.(-1.500$ below EV).

Ah well pretty unstructured but yeah.

On August 23 2009 09:57 Maynard! wrote: I think many people here underestimate how little of a sample we actually generate playing online and how big of an impact a run-bad/good at a certain period of time could have. A run bad during a move-up as opposed to a run-good could mean a difference of several months. To have a truly good sized sample we'd need several years of play. How big is our poker time-line? Many of us are in it for a few years then out. In that case variance is highly important. A run-good to shoot us up into the nosebleeds as opposed to a run-bad that keeps us at 100nl could mean the difference between going full time pro or working for Acme Corp.

I also agree with that, very good point.

thanks to this thread, i can now lol at hands like this to people who run like jesus against me everyday hahaha

Submitted by : whamm!

PokerStars Game #31957217008: Holdem No Limit ($0.50/$1.00 USD) - 2009/08/23 8:56:32 ET
Table Kitalpha II 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: rocco13579 ($40.35 in chips)
Seat 2: dwq2300 ($16.30 in chips)
Seat 3: orena22 ($26.20 in chips)
Seat 4: DaveyDoWin ($94.60 in chips)
Seat 5: JP917 ($157.90 in chips)
Seat 6: Hero ($100 in chips)
Seat 7: Klaus20 ($100 in chips)
Seat 9: Large1337 ($20 in chips)
Klaus20: posts small blind $0.50
Large1337: posts big blind $1

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
rocco13579: raises $2 to $3
dwq2300: folds
orena22: calls $3
DaveyDoWin: folds
JP917: calls $3
Hero: calls $3
Klaus20: folds
Large1337: folds

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $13.50)

   
rocco13579: checks
orena22: bets $23.20 and is all-in
JP917: raises $131.70 to $154.90 and is all-in
Hero: calls $97 and is all-in
rocco13579: folds
Uncalled bet ($57.90) returned to JP917

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $230.70)

   

River (Pot : $230.70)

   

Showdown
JP917: shows (four of a kind, Sixes)
Hero: shows (a full house, Nines full of Sixes)
JP917 collected $147.60 from side pot
orena22: shows (two pair, Eights and Sixes)
JP917 collected $80.10 from main pot

Summary
Total pot $230.70 Main pot $80.10. Side pot $147.60. | Rake $3
Board  
Seat 1: rocco13579 folded on the Flop
Seat 2: dwq2300 folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 3: orena22 showed and lost with two pair, Eights and Sixes
Seat 4: DaveyDoWin folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: JP917 showed and won ($227.70) with four of a kind, Sixes
Seat 6: Hero (button) showed and lost with a full house, Nines full of Sixes
Seat 7: Klaus20 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: Large1337 (big blind) folded before Flop

On August 23 2009 04:15 PokerDoc88 wrote: I think you'll find if you ran multiple string simulations of 100 flips, you would not commonly see 2 strings of 7 2's. You don't see a single 6 or 5 string in that sequence. In a 100 flip sequence, you'd have 93*0.007 (I think) chance of seeing a sequence of exactly 7 flips in a row. It is still quite improbable.

The math is non-trivial and I actually had to research it but you can find it here:

http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_l.../Polya/07468342.di020742.02p0021g.pdf
http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~ananda/STATMETHODI/Theory-of-runs.pdf

To summarize the first paper, the expected value of the longest run is about 5.6 for n = 100, and 6.6 for n= 200 and follows a logorithmic rate.
He also did an experiment where a student makes up what he thinks is a random sequence and compared it to a true random sequence. He then ran it through a computer program to see which sequence was more likely to be random. The major downfall for students is that their longest run of consecutive heads or tails was too short.

cliffnotes plz

On August 23 2009 10:56 royalsu wrote: Show nested quote + On August 23 2009 04:15 PokerDoc88 wrote: I think you'll find if you ran multiple string simulations of 100 flips, you would not commonly see 2 strings of 7 2's. You don't see a single 6 or 5 string in that sequence. In a 100 flip sequence, you'd have 93*0.007 (I think) chance of seeing a sequence of exactly 7 flips in a row. It is still quite improbable. The math is non-trivial and I actually had to research it but you can find it here: http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_l.../Polya/07468342.di020742.02p0021g.pdf http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~ananda/STATMETHODI/Theory-of-runs.pdf To summarize the first paper, the expected value of the longest run is about 5.6 for n = 100, and 6.6 for n= 200 and follows a logorithmic rate. He also did an experiment where a student makes up what he thinks is a random sequence and compared it to a true random sequence. He then ran it through a computer program to see which sequence was more likely to be random. The major downfall for students is that their longest run of consecutive heads or tails was too short.

that's actually cool

apparently nobody got my post

its spelled "statistician" not "statician"

also, how familiar with statistics is the op? (ps, don't say "very." i'm actually quite curious as I was a math major)

sorry day, I will fix the title
i basically have a degree in pure and applied math at waterloo but I'm not a statistician. So I've taken the standard university probability/statistic courses. I was reading john allen paulos' book "INNUMERACY: mathematical illiteracy and its consequences" and he mentions how people are so amazed at hitting streaks in baseball. Or the "hot hand" in basketball. The basketball example is especially fitting, since kobe bryant shoots at about 50% and yet he can have many streaks of 10-15 consecutive made shots. It's been shown that mathematically this is expected.

Kobe bryant has taken 18162 shots in his career. If you take his sequence of made vs missed shots it should look like a random sequence of {0,1}.

i read about the first half of what you wrote and saw some hypocrisies.

for example, saying you "missed a $100 value bet on the river means you just lost $100"

by saying this you are basically saying you dont understand hand ranges, expectation and variance. suppose on the river you are ahead of 90% of your opponents range. your opponent never folds a worse hand, so he calls with better 10%, folds 70% and calls with worse 20%. this means that the EV of your bet is $10, not $100.

i mean everything you are saying is just based on coinflip math. are you serious? do you really think running bad is a myth?

running bad is not bullshit lol. just look at winrate/standard deviations. a common winrate is 2ptbb and a common standard deviation for that winrate is 50ptbb. whats that mean? that losing at 100ptbb for 100 hands is only 2 standard deviations outside of the norm. which off the top of my head is about 3% of the time? so every 3000 or so hands you should have at least 1 100 hand stretch where you lose 2+ buyins.



heres a program where you can input ptbb and standard deviation and print out samples of 100k hands. after refreshing just once i received this sample:




as you can see, this sample had a person up 20 buyins after 20k hands and he finished roughly even. that means he had an 80k hand stretch where he lost 20 buyins. he is a winning player and this simulation does not take into account tilt, missed bets, anything, just math and what a real statistician would look at, not some random sequence of coin flips rofl.

it would NOT take long to press f9 and find a large losing sample over this many hands.

for the program go here:
http://www.anskypoker.com/2009/06/100k-hand-variance-simulator/ just click on variance simulator and open it in excel, play with the ptbb/standard deviation and press f9 to get new simulations

On August 23 2009 10:56 royalsu wrote: Show nested quote + On August 23 2009 04:15 PokerDoc88 wrote: I think you'll find if you ran multiple string simulations of 100 flips, you would not commonly see 2 strings of 7 2's. You don't see a single 6 or 5 string in that sequence. In a 100 flip sequence, you'd have 93*0.007 (I think) chance of seeing a sequence of exactly 7 flips in a row. It is still quite improbable. The math is non-trivial and I actually had to research it but you can find it here: http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_l.../Polya/07468342.di020742.02p0021g.pdf http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~ananda/STATMETHODI/Theory-of-runs.pdf To summarize the first paper, the expected value of the longest run is about 5.6 for n = 100, and 6.6 for n= 200 and follows a logorithmic rate. He also did an experiment where a student makes up what he thinks is a random sequence and compared it to a true random sequence. He then ran it through a computer program to see which sequence was more likely to be random. The major downfall for students is that their longest run of consecutive heads or tails was too short.

really great discussion guys.

I rembember this study - where he asked students to make their own random sequences.
They had dramatically wayy too short consecutive runs, was quite surprising actually.

hit f9 4 more times and got this one. 50 buyin downswing over 70k hands. as a 2ptbb winner over 70k hands you should expect to win 28 buyins. that means this player at one point was about 80 buyins under EV after 75k ish hands.

if a player started out a poker career with a stretch like this then there is no way he will ever become the player who would reach his full potential. he would be convinced poker is not beatable and would never learn properly because he ran so completely horrible from the outset that his emotional state about poker and his confidence in the game would be crushed forever. this is another form of running bad and being unlucky that people tend to overlook.

royalsu, instead of thinking of running good/bad as a sequence of 1's and 2's, you can view a session as a random walk on a number line (stepping left when you lose and right when you win).

I like this interpretation considerably more than runs, as i think the math involved with random walks is more interesting. For instance, given any point on a number line, there is a 100% probability you'll arrive at that point using a random walk. cool stuffs

Yeah day statistics is pretty counter-intuitive sometimes. I'm going to read up on that when school starts.

Daut I'm not saying that bad runs don't exist. In fact I'm showing precisely the opposite, that bad runs are very common. You can easily go broke in poker from a bad run.

What I'm trying to point out in this article is how people think about bad runs and expected value. For example, if you're playing a session and you're up or down 5 buyins really quickly, this shouldn't be surprising and there should be no emotional feelings to a totally normal and common occurrence.

You bring up good points about that 100$ missed value bet and a lot of people never even think about it from the point of view you just described.

I really dont understand the point of this post. Bad runs are a part of poker, thus they dont exist. Que?

From talking to peeps on msn I've realized that my article is a bit misleading.

Clarification: my point is that bad runs are way more common than you would expect. The viewpoint I want to change is all those grinders who complain about ONE session being so unfair, so unlucky. Then blaming that one session for ruining their profits for the month. Those unlucky sessions are inevitable.

On August 23 2009 13:18 royalsu wrote: Daut I'm not saying that bad runs don't exist. In fact I'm showing precisely the opposite, that bad runs are very common. You can easily go broke in poker from a bad run.

well in your op you said running bad is a myth, which i think is the only thing most people would disagree with.

What I'm trying to point out in this article is how people think about bad runs and expected value. For example, if you're playing a session and you're up or down 5 buyins really quickly, this shouldn't be surprising and there should be no emotional feelings to a totally normal and common occurrence.

yeah but this doesn't have anything to do with statistics. understanding variance doesn't make someone immune to psychological frustration when they lose a bunch of buyins. it's an issue of maturity and composure.

i remember a test a while back where ppl write heads/tails randomly but people never actually put anything like HHHHHH in a row whereas random did.

and i doubt ur a statistician cos a) u cant spell it b) i didnt see any stats or nothing there (i studied stats in college)

On August 23 2009 14:17 genjix wrote: i remember a test a while back where ppl write heads/tails randomly but people never actually put anything like HHHHHH in a row whereas random did.

bah see above posts i mention this very fact

I dont get it, bad runs occur and some people will get bad runs that never gets evened out, while others runs good for life. When 10 millioner players are playing you will have some statistical anomalies in both ends of the spectrum its not like everyone will have the same luck in the end

So you're a "statician" eh? I believe it's called statistician.

You would probably know that if you were one though.

PS: Forgive me if this has been pointed out already. I saw this thread title on my phone and had to reply. Will read it when I get home.

On August 23 2009 09:19 [vital]Myth wrote: this would be useful on a forum strictly for people who ONLY play live poker and have played for less than 2 years we get it already

nah not rly
articles like this really helped me solve my tilt issues

wtf? only read op but is this for real

-ok dauts good

but you really need to clarify what your article is about. i think people realize that 5bi downswings are completely likely in small sessions, yet dealing with them isnt a matter of some statistical misunderstanding they have.

basically what this means is that you never run bad. you run as expected by the statistics.

On August 23 2009 22:35 spets1 wrote: basically what this means is that you never run bad. you run as expected by the statistics.

I think you're missing the point. Statistics he showed clearly prove you can run bad.

The point he was trying to make is that people experience bad runs and find it hard to fathom that they are running so bad, when it statistically is feasible.

I think the problem with a lot of us low stakes guys is that when we start poker a lot of our friends and family are like "omg that's gamb00ling!" and we're madly in <3 with poker so we come to the defense with "nah, no it's not skill will persevere in the long run!" But we're new to the game and are still honing such skills. Obviously the friends and family are partially right and luck must be acknowledged as a factor of this game and to not acknowledge it will only lead to overestimation of your skill.

But don't use bad luck as an excuse for sucking and humility is key when running good.

LOOOOOOOOOOOL

Submitted by : whamm!

PokerStars Game #32000867905: Holdem No Limit ($0.50/$1.00 USD) - 2009/08/24 11:46:59 ET
Table Werdandi 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: LoggerRythym ($259.95 in chips)
Seat 2: Billardär ($99.80 in chips)
Seat 3: I_h8_p0ker ($100 in chips)
Seat 5: Hero ($100 in chips)
Seat 8: 7thChakra ($174.05 in chips)
Seat 9: Laarsson ($106.20 in chips)
Hero: posts small blind $0.50
7thChakra: posts big blind $1

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
Laarsson: folds
LoggerRythym: folds
Billardär: folds
I_h8_p0ker: raises $2 to $3
Hero: raises $10 to $13
7thChakra: calls $12
I_h8_p0ker: folds

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $29.00)

   
Hero: bets $20
7thChakra: calls $20

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $69.00)

   
Hero: bets $67 and is all-in
7thChakra: calls $67

River (Pot : $203.00)

   

Showdown
Hero: shows (two pair, Kings and Sixes)
7thChakra: shows (a full house, Queens full of Sixes)
7thChakra collected $200 from pot
7thChakra said, &quot;omg so sorries&quot;

Summary
Total pot $203 | Rake $3
Board  
Seat 1: LoggerRythym folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 2: Billardär folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 3: I_h8_p0ker (button) folded before Flop
Seat 5: Hero (small blind) showed and lost with two pair, Kings and Sixes
Seat 8: 7thChakra (big blind) showed and won ($200) with a full house, Queens full of Sixes
Seat 9: Laarsson folded before Flop (didnt bet)

I think you can be on a downswing for a while, even like months. If you play a sick amount of hands, they should naturally last shorter on average, as variance decreases. But since lots of internet players have pretty aggressive bankroll management (like 25 bi's to move up) and not always optimal self-control (to play as usual and move down) it's inevitable ppl go broke or lose most of their roll. But I think most of the regs know all that's been said in this thread?

Playing more hands doesn't decrease your variance. Your variance will always be constant assuming your style isn't changing.

The only thing that will decrease variance is a higher winrate. This is mathematically proven using standard deviation.

On August 24 2009 11:59 RICHI8 wrote: The only thing that will decrease variance is a higher winrate. This is mathematically proven using standard deviation.

lol wat?

On August 24 2009 11:59 RICHI8 wrote: The only thing that will decrease variance is a higher winrate. This is mathematically proven using standard deviation.

false

On August 24 2009 11:59 RICHI8 wrote: The only thing that will decrease variance is a higher winrate. This is mathematically proven using standard deviation.

seriously if this was intended to be funny i absolutely love it

going to showdown less will also decrease variance as well as playing less 3bet pots.

edit: this is also mathematically proven. i'll post graphs later.

On August 24 2009 14:26 RICHI8 wrote: going to showdown less will also decrease variance as well as playing less 3bet pots. edit: this is also mathematically proven. i'll post graphs later.

i think you misunderstand what variance means lol.


essentially variance has a direct relationship with standard deviation. changing your winrate around while leaving standard deviation in no way changes the variance you go through. its just scaled at a different level. i.e. if you are a 100ptbb winner you will not really go on losing stretchs but the variance you experience will be centered around 100ptbb instead of 3ptbb.

I'm pretty sure the only way to decrease variance would be to decrease std dev...

On August 24 2009 15:19 SpeedyJack wrote: The only way to decrease variance would be to decrease std dev...

Variance is the square of the std dev.

Daut is so good at explaining things

On August 24 2009 11:59 RICHI8 wrote: The only thing that will decrease variance is a higher winrate. This is mathematically proven using standard deviation.

best post ever

WTF IM A STATICIAN.

Sorry I'll stop messing around here.

On August 24 2009 17:06 RICHI8 wrote: WTF IM A STATICIAN. Sorry I'll stop messing around here.

i call

my take on RUNNING GOOD!

On August 24 2009 15:18 Daut wrote: Show nested quote + On August 24 2009 14:26 RICHI8 wrote: going to showdown less will also decrease variance as well as playing less 3bet pots. edit: this is also mathematically proven. i'll post graphs later. i think you misunderstand what variance means lol. essentially variance has a direct relationship with standard deviation. changing your winrate around while leaving standard deviation in no way changes the variance you go through. its just scaled at a different level. i.e. if you are a 100ptbb winner you will not really go on losing stretchs but the variance you experience will be centered around 100ptbb instead of 3ptbb.

well he wasnt accurate in what he said but its understandable what he tried to say and in that he is right.

i love this thread

full of STATICIANS !

meh, variance increase with the number of hands, but less than
the winrate, although we would only play a pure noise game.
SD( n ) = sqrt( n/100 ) *SD
WR( n ) = WR*n/100
(where SD and WR are your standard HEM/PT stats, and sqrt the square root function).

Actually since i added heavy maths to my game , im in a losestreak and especially in coinflips or 65/35 situations in either position.i dont know if its psycology or poker maths, but whenever i "read" my opponents hand and decide to play a hand coinflip , or decide to go all in with 65% favor me or 35% as an underdog i just lose the hand, and ofc blame luck in either case ;/

Math is idiotic?

lol baal
hahah so good