peterbirks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peterbirks) wrote2010-04-19 08:08 pm
peterbirks) wrote2010-04-19 08:08 pm
Not-very-well-disguised-bad-beat-story
I'm beginning to despair on Pokerstars. I know it's variance. I know that the long run is longer than you think. I know that, one day, you will hit a run that you can't believe possible. I know all these things. But looking at the stats brings home to me what an incredibly high-variance game poker is. Indeed, it's clear that in pre-internet days there would be social players who could play an entire life of poker, and end up winners, solely because they were lucky. In terms of the B&M poker player's life cycle, it actually doesn't all "even out in the long run", because, in B&M, you could play all of your life and not even reach what in poker terms is "the long run".
Here's the graph in big blinds on Stars this month (mainly $1-$2, a fair bit of $2-$4).
Depressing enough, eh? But it's only 10,000 hands. That's only 300 hours of live play -- about two to three months for a pro, maybe a year for a regular social player.
So, here it is for this year.
Nearly all of it at $1-$2. In cash terms, this is 11 buy ins below EV, or $2,200.
This is 68,000 hands, or over 18 months' live play for a pro, or six years' play for a regular social player.
Surely we are reaching the long run by now? Oh no. Here we have my last 100,000 hands, or about nine months' play for me on Stars.
This is about three-quarters $1-$2, with most of the rest 50c-$1. It equates to $2500 less than EV, $970 winnings instead of an "expected" $3,500.
It also equates to about three years' play live for a pro, and well over a decade for a regular social player.
For the 100,000 hands previous to this, I actually ran "in line" with EV. I certainly wasn't more lucky than I had a right to expect.
Here's the 155,000 hand graph (everything that I have on HEM), more than 20 years of B&M play for a regular social player.
At which point, I fear, that even I start to feel the strain. The only thing you can do is "carry on". And I like to think that I have one of the best "anti-tilt" personalities at the table (where "tilt" takes the form of "not spewing your cash and making plays that you know are bad"). I feel sure that most players would have cracked in the face of numbers like this, falling either for the "if I bet bigger, that will make my hand better" fallacy or the "what's the point of playing properly when that just costs me money" fallacy, or the "I'm going to call here, eeven though I know I ave been outdrawn, because I want to prove how unlucky I am" fallacy.
I haven't fallen into any of these traps over the past nine months. I've just kept going. But, I'll be honest.
It's fucking getting me down.
_______________
Here's the graph in big blinds on Stars this month (mainly $1-$2, a fair bit of $2-$4).
Depressing enough, eh? But it's only 10,000 hands. That's only 300 hours of live play -- about two to three months for a pro, maybe a year for a regular social player.
So, here it is for this year.
Nearly all of it at $1-$2. In cash terms, this is 11 buy ins below EV, or $2,200.
This is 68,000 hands, or over 18 months' live play for a pro, or six years' play for a regular social player.
Surely we are reaching the long run by now? Oh no. Here we have my last 100,000 hands, or about nine months' play for me on Stars.
This is about three-quarters $1-$2, with most of the rest 50c-$1. It equates to $2500 less than EV, $970 winnings instead of an "expected" $3,500.
It also equates to about three years' play live for a pro, and well over a decade for a regular social player.
For the 100,000 hands previous to this, I actually ran "in line" with EV. I certainly wasn't more lucky than I had a right to expect.
Here's the 155,000 hand graph (everything that I have on HEM), more than 20 years of B&M play for a regular social player.
At which point, I fear, that even I start to feel the strain. The only thing you can do is "carry on". And I like to think that I have one of the best "anti-tilt" personalities at the table (where "tilt" takes the form of "not spewing your cash and making plays that you know are bad"). I feel sure that most players would have cracked in the face of numbers like this, falling either for the "if I bet bigger, that will make my hand better" fallacy or the "what's the point of playing properly when that just costs me money" fallacy, or the "I'm going to call here, eeven though I know I ave been outdrawn, because I want to prove how unlucky I am" fallacy.
I haven't fallen into any of these traps over the past nine months. I've just kept going. But, I'll be honest.
It's fucking getting me down.
_______________