Confused

[shipitfish]

I am so confused by poker at this point, I wonder if it is even possible to have a mathematical certainty to win -- even over the long haul. I'm playing at the lowest limits, at 1/2, 2/4, and some 3/6 on Party Poker. I have lost every single night for the five nights I've played; a full $300! At one point, I actually got good starting hands for five hands in a row, flopped the best hand, value bet all the way, and was rivered by three outers every time (in one pot, a guy capped on the flop, turn and river with me when he was drawing to six outs. And he hit). But, the details of the beats don't matter. The sheer volume in a compressed time span is the only curious part. The volume just amazes me.

This game cannot be won without luck. And, frankly, I believe the bankroll levels that you actually need to ride out unlucky years are substantially greater than suggested in any literature. 300 big bets is surely not enough for Limit HE.

I frankly have a hard time understanding the players whom I've met who say they have never had a extended bad run. Save one lucky night at Greg's game in Boston in February, I have not had serious wins this entire calendar year. My game has not radically changed. I avoid playing with "scared money" by dropping down limits. I am playing tight-aggressive poker. I reread chapters in poker books every night. I keep logs.

In fact, when I am losing like this, I look constantly over and over again at my play, much more carefully than I am winning. Indeed, I think my biggest EV losses come when I'm winning a lot. I get careless, feeling invincible, and I play looser than I should.

When I am this deep into losses, I find myself looking at single bets, convincing myself somehow that saving one big bet here or there would have made the difference. But, then I realized that tiny edge of skill can't make a real difference. Luck always makes the real difference. I'd have to find a dozen situations where I could save one bet before I can make up for one lucky 2-outer that someone caught on the river.

Anyway, instead of asking you to listen to more of my bad run rantings, I'd like to hear two things from my readers that would be a big help to me:

• What's the worst run of BBs in limit you've ever had in a row, how long was it, and how long before your bankroll recovered?
• Where online are the best limit games at the lower end right now (I'd like to optimize game selection to the maximum if I can)?

I'd appreciate your help.

Comments

[roryk.livejournal.com]

Have you been keeping track of your wins the whole time? Do you have any idea what your BB/hour or BB/100 hands is? Your standard deviation? If you know these numbers you can calculate the probability you will go through a
downswing of X bets over a certain amount of time or hands.

From the few limit-poker posts I have seen on here, you seem to not value-bet well and push small edges. If you throw in a little tilt, you might not be beating the game.

Part of the problem is when you are winning, and you are dumping bets because you are playing too loose, you are not winning, you are losing. If you dump when you are ahead, then you aren't going to beat the game for much, if it all, because you need those lucky streaks and need to maximize your value when you have them, not just piss the money away because you are running good.

The swings in limit poker are huge. I've gone through multiple 250 BB swings, one time over the course of two days. 300 BB is not enough if you want to play at a limit full time like as your job and what not. If you can put money back in, 300 BB should be fine.

I don't know if your game has changed at all since Greg's, but I posted what I had observed from your live play on there. There were a couple pretty big leaks, I remember.

Loosness when running well and data

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

I have all the data since I started playing above .10/.25 back in the old days of my college home games. Basically, I have all the data since I started playing serious poker. That's the good news.

The bad news is I've kept it in a non-parsable format, thinking "well, I have the data, I can always go through and organize it." I think I'll make it a weekend project so I can actually do calculations out of the data rather than just have it sitting unorganized in a big text file.

As for the leaks from Greg's game, as far as I can tell, I've plugged those based on your comments from long ago.

You are quite right that I don't push marginal edges as much, and when I am losing I am much less likely to do so. I am honestly a bit confused about your advice on value betting the river that you've given me before. I used to take a pretty standard Sklansky "underdog if called" approach to river play, and you've pointed out a number of instances where you think betting the river was right. I've tried your strategy to my peril; I don't think it works for me. I frequently find myself getting raised far too often, and then I take your advice about not folding when the pot is huge, but I am always beat.

I have recently returned to my Sklansky-style river play, and found at least that part of my play is solid. I induce a lot of river bluffs, and I've even seen hands checked behind me when I was losing. I don't see myself missing a lot of bets because of it. Almost all of the time, it's busted draws (and people play some goofy draws in low limit) that are checking behind me. I'd rather check and induce bluffs.

I think I leaked away a lot of winnings in the old days when I was running well, and when I start winning again, I need to carefully watch my play to make sure I don't, as you say, "piss away" winnings on loose play.

Perhaps the right investment is to hire you to watch my limit play for 500 hands or so. What do you charge? (Only half joking....) Actually, Greg did just that for me (gratis) one Saturday afternoon the last time I was running bad, and he felt that I was playing a good, solid game. Perhaps it isn't my "when I'm running bad play" that is really at fault, but that looseness when I'm running well.

Changing limits and psychology

[(Anonymous)]

I think there are a lot of factors at work here, and I hope to be helpful by addressing some of them:

1. Recognize you're kind of depressed about changing limits
The tone and content of your blog entries suggest a real depression about playing the low limits. Your previous statement that you weren't going to write about it much because nobody is interested is patently false. After all, more people play low limit poker than high limit, so you're audience is going to be bigger. True, people that you previously played 10/20 with may not find the poker insights fascinating, but I'll bet that wasn't the only reason they read you.

You have to take into account your psychology on this. What may be easily blamed on luck may have more underlying factors.

2. Respect the game
Your comments have also suggested that you don't have very much respect for low limit LHE, and you think you can beat it too easily. That's ego, and that's probably contributing to your losses. I've seen it when we've played together at the Borgata where you were waiting for a higher limit seat to open up, and everyone else at the table saw it in you too.

I find that when I'm playing my best game, either .50/$1 or $6/$12, I approach each game, and in fact, each table, as an enigma. It's a puzzle to be solved, and while I know I'm smart enough to figure it out, I don't presume that I am infallible.

You are obviously a good player, and I have no doubt that in the right mindset, you are capable of beating any fair game.

3. Get a better tool
Just go get a copy of PokerTracker already. Even if you just use it to parse the hand histories into a nice exportable format for later import into mysql, that will be an improvement over what you've got now.

And maybe you'll find some of the features of PT useful for reviewing your game. I know I do.

4. A coach can't hurt
We all have friends who play, but few of us have enough confidence in our friends expertise to let them point out mistakes. This will be extremely difficult for you, as your weakness is not humility. If you were to find someone to coach you, I suggest you find someone whose judgement is esteemed enough in your eyes that you cannot easily dismiss their advice, and then let them sweat you.

from Katie

[(Anonymous)]

Bradley – From reading your recent entries, I think that you are definitely letting a relatively short bad run of poker depress you, which is probably affecting your game, no matter how sure you are that you are playing solidly. You’re questioning whether or not poker can be won – but you know that it can. Take a week or two off if you haven’t already done that. $300 is only 50 BB at 3/6, so nowhere near the 300 BB you are talking about as not being a big enough bankroll. I’m not sure about how bad the rest of the year has been for you, though.

The people you are talking about who claim they have never had big downswings may just have a different definition of the big downswing – I’m looking at my stats right now, and if I divide my play into multiple chunks of roughly 250 hours each of online play over the last 18 months (god I play too much poker, I’m surprised I still have a job), I haven’t had a losing chunk. Of course, within those chunks I’ve had lots of ups and downs, but that’s variance. I can’t really divide it into BBs & tell you my worst downswing, because I (a) played a lot of limit SNGs in the latter half of last year, and (b) changed limit levels dramatically and regularly based on how things were going; I just didn’t keep good enough records last year. Changing limits regularly is not certainly the best way to maximize my winnings (since I should just stick to whatever limit gives me the maximum profit), but I’ve found it is necessary for me to avoid a depression associated with a losing streak.

I used to have the problem you described, where when my visible bankroll on Pacific swung up above some arbitrary value, I’d feel good about my poker and start playing marginal hands for “fun”. I’ve solved this problem by taking advantage of Pacific’s horrendous cashout process, which involves holding your cashouts for processing for a couple of days before finally spitting them into Firepay. I immediately cash out when I have >$1K visible, and drop my Pacific cash to $500. Then, if I have to reverse the cashout (which you can do until Pacific processes it), I have to endure unbearable mental anguish, and so I play tightly to avoid going through that. It still happens, of course, but I think that it forces me to remember that it is real money. I have found that this is something that can be hard to remember on the internet, in contrast to live play where you have a tangible representation of your cash.

You know where I think the best games are – Pacific. But maybe Pacific isn’t the best place for you when you are in this mental state. You seem to imply that people drawing to their two-outers are breaking you (a ridiculously common occurrence on Pacific, certainly), but you know better than that. Those people drawing to their two-outers are throwing their money at you over time, since you win significantly bigger pots when they don’t hit them than you would if they just folded as the odds dictate.

Good luck...things will turn around!

Re: Loosness when running well and data

[roryk.livejournal.com]

Joe Tall on the 2+2 forums will analyze 1000 hands for $100 bucks, at least that was his rate a couple months ago. He is a strong player. It might be worth the $100 if you really think you have some bad leaks.