Another day, another (lost) dollar
Dec. 21st, 2005 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksTo say that the holiday hasn't quite panned out as planned might be considered the understatement of the year. Another $200+ loss at the Wynn yesterday put me into negative territory for the holiday. Not quite what I was expecting after being $1,800 in the black four days in.
It also made it nine losing sessions out of the last 10 and, perhaps most dispiritingly, three on the trot at the Wynn. Are the players better there? It didn't seem like it at first. Perhaps this is all part of the standard deviation that is poker life.
What is incredible about losing sequences like this is that they are so tiring. And this is one of two reasons that I can think of at the moment (although when I am less tired, more might occur to me) why it can be so hard to pull yourself out of running bad. If you are tired, it's harder to play well.
The second factor is that, if you see players who are loose and passive doing well, while you are doing badly, it's hard not to imitate them. This is all subconscious and marginal, but it must have an accumulative effect. You tend to raise less in marginal situations (because you begin to see demons everywhere) and perhaps you call more often in multi-wayers than you should, because you see other people do it time and time again and get paid off.
Of course, this is the opposite of what you should be doing. Either you should be quitting the game (but there does come a stage when you run out of new games to find), or you should be playing even more tightly and even more agressively.
So long as you do not "steam", then there is always hope. "Tilt", and Feeney's somewhat disingenuous definition thereof, is not an all-or-nothing factor. You can continue playing at less than your "A" game and still pull yourself out of a bad run; you just need a slight bit of good fortune. However, if you go steaming tiltastic, no amount of good fortune will get you out of it. You will go very broke. So, the trick is to maintain what semblance of control you can, to keep your game together to the best of your ability. It isn't your best game; you know that. But it's some kind of game that, if things turn out nice again, will win you money.
Notwithstanding all that, it would be hard to call the last 10 days an enjoyable experience. You might sit there at the table thinking of each hand in terms of "I made three-quarters of a big bet in expected value there" (sometimes, actually, considerably more than that), but after several days of this, with your chips constantly shrinking in number, it can get a bit tedious and, to a certain extent, depressing. The short term is, indeed, longer than you think.
And then you start saying to yourself "I bet they are all thinking, 'well, that's what he's writing, but he must be doing something wrong. If he wasn't , he wouldn't be down'." And, yes, this kind of self-doubt begins to seep into the bones. And that makes it even harder to carry on playing properly.
One can see why poker players turn to the craps tables, or to Blackjack. Because you sit there at the card table, playing positive EV poker, and it keeps going wrong. So that little demon on your shoulder says to you 'hey, man, what's the fucking point? The positive EV plays are coming up negative. Why shouldn't the negative EV plays come up positive for a short time?' And craps is a lot easier than this is, your demon says, as well as being more fun. 'Let's hit the dice table, man!!!'
And so our poker-playing hero leaves the hold'em game and wanders over to the craps table. And, perhaps the worst for him, he does indeed win. He gets out of 10 hours-worth of poker losses in about 10 minutes flat. And so the positive reinforcement/negative reinforcement cycle sets in. When the cards run bad, hit the dice table! Except that life isn't like that, not in the long run, and the next time, the bad run at cards is followed by a bad run at dice, or Blackjack. And, the next thing you know, our hero card player is just another sad washed-up nipper railbirding the final table of a tournament.
To that extent, I keep the faith. I know that I've got a positive expectation in the game I am playing. The nearest thing that I have got to self-doubt here is that I have sometimes wondered if I can beat the rake. But then I see another fish appear, play like a moron, and walk away $100 to the good, and I know that, in the long run, I can.
Just not this trip.
So it goes.
++++
So, here's the kind of hand that can go wrong again and again for a long time.
BB: Ah Kd
MP1: Jh 3h
MP2: 8s 8d
CO (hero): Tc 9c
Six limpers on round one. Big Blind declines to raise her AK off. $24 in pot
Flop comes Th 7h 2s. Check round to MP2, who bets. I raise. BB and MP1 call. At this point I have 37.5% equity (the same as the J3 flush draw, as it happens). So I am getting three-to-one for my pot equity bet about a 7-to-4 shot. $56 in the pot.
Turn brings another deuce. Checked to me. I know from my reads on all three players that I am in front. I bet. Three callers. I now have 60% pot equity. I lose if a heart, an Ace, a King, a Jack or an eight comes. $88 in pot.
River brings a Jack. Checked round and the Jack-Three but-I-was-suited takes down an $84 pot after rake. Hero records a net loss of $20. But his expected return was a gain of a dollar or two pre-flop, $3.85 for his flop bet and a massive $11.20 for the turn bet. In other words, the whole hand gained me a theoretical win of a couple of big bets. But, it don't buy lunch when it loses.
++++
Wednesday is opening day at the Caesar's poker room, so I may take a look and take some pictures.
It also made it nine losing sessions out of the last 10 and, perhaps most dispiritingly, three on the trot at the Wynn. Are the players better there? It didn't seem like it at first. Perhaps this is all part of the standard deviation that is poker life.
What is incredible about losing sequences like this is that they are so tiring. And this is one of two reasons that I can think of at the moment (although when I am less tired, more might occur to me) why it can be so hard to pull yourself out of running bad. If you are tired, it's harder to play well.
The second factor is that, if you see players who are loose and passive doing well, while you are doing badly, it's hard not to imitate them. This is all subconscious and marginal, but it must have an accumulative effect. You tend to raise less in marginal situations (because you begin to see demons everywhere) and perhaps you call more often in multi-wayers than you should, because you see other people do it time and time again and get paid off.
Of course, this is the opposite of what you should be doing. Either you should be quitting the game (but there does come a stage when you run out of new games to find), or you should be playing even more tightly and even more agressively.
So long as you do not "steam", then there is always hope. "Tilt", and Feeney's somewhat disingenuous definition thereof, is not an all-or-nothing factor. You can continue playing at less than your "A" game and still pull yourself out of a bad run; you just need a slight bit of good fortune. However, if you go steaming tiltastic, no amount of good fortune will get you out of it. You will go very broke. So, the trick is to maintain what semblance of control you can, to keep your game together to the best of your ability. It isn't your best game; you know that. But it's some kind of game that, if things turn out nice again, will win you money.
Notwithstanding all that, it would be hard to call the last 10 days an enjoyable experience. You might sit there at the table thinking of each hand in terms of "I made three-quarters of a big bet in expected value there" (sometimes, actually, considerably more than that), but after several days of this, with your chips constantly shrinking in number, it can get a bit tedious and, to a certain extent, depressing. The short term is, indeed, longer than you think.
And then you start saying to yourself "I bet they are all thinking, 'well, that's what he's writing, but he must be doing something wrong. If he wasn't , he wouldn't be down'." And, yes, this kind of self-doubt begins to seep into the bones. And that makes it even harder to carry on playing properly.
One can see why poker players turn to the craps tables, or to Blackjack. Because you sit there at the card table, playing positive EV poker, and it keeps going wrong. So that little demon on your shoulder says to you 'hey, man, what's the fucking point? The positive EV plays are coming up negative. Why shouldn't the negative EV plays come up positive for a short time?' And craps is a lot easier than this is, your demon says, as well as being more fun. 'Let's hit the dice table, man!!!'
And so our poker-playing hero leaves the hold'em game and wanders over to the craps table. And, perhaps the worst for him, he does indeed win. He gets out of 10 hours-worth of poker losses in about 10 minutes flat. And so the positive reinforcement/negative reinforcement cycle sets in. When the cards run bad, hit the dice table! Except that life isn't like that, not in the long run, and the next time, the bad run at cards is followed by a bad run at dice, or Blackjack. And, the next thing you know, our hero card player is just another sad washed-up nipper railbirding the final table of a tournament.
To that extent, I keep the faith. I know that I've got a positive expectation in the game I am playing. The nearest thing that I have got to self-doubt here is that I have sometimes wondered if I can beat the rake. But then I see another fish appear, play like a moron, and walk away $100 to the good, and I know that, in the long run, I can.
Just not this trip.
So it goes.
++++
So, here's the kind of hand that can go wrong again and again for a long time.
BB: Ah Kd
MP1: Jh 3h
MP2: 8s 8d
CO (hero): Tc 9c
Six limpers on round one. Big Blind declines to raise her AK off. $24 in pot
Flop comes Th 7h 2s. Check round to MP2, who bets. I raise. BB and MP1 call. At this point I have 37.5% equity (the same as the J3 flush draw, as it happens). So I am getting three-to-one for my pot equity bet about a 7-to-4 shot. $56 in the pot.
Turn brings another deuce. Checked to me. I know from my reads on all three players that I am in front. I bet. Three callers. I now have 60% pot equity. I lose if a heart, an Ace, a King, a Jack or an eight comes. $88 in pot.
River brings a Jack. Checked round and the Jack-Three but-I-was-suited takes down an $84 pot after rake. Hero records a net loss of $20. But his expected return was a gain of a dollar or two pre-flop, $3.85 for his flop bet and a massive $11.20 for the turn bet. In other words, the whole hand gained me a theoretical win of a couple of big bets. But, it don't buy lunch when it loses.
++++
Wednesday is opening day at the Caesar's poker room, so I may take a look and take some pictures.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Another lost dollar
Date: 2005-12-21 07:03 pm (UTC)I have to say I sympathise with your troubles - 9 days of losing would strain anyone's patience! I am just trying to come to terms with the fluctuations I am getting on Pacific. The trend is still positive, but the variation is much greater than I was used to on Laddies (where I was up about 3 times out of 4 in terms of sessions). I can now be down 30 big bets in a session without doing anything seriously wrong that I am award of. Then I can be up more than that next time out. However when you get a run of losing sessions like that it is very disconcerting, so I can just imagine (though I don't really want to) what 9 days might be like.
Hang on in there and the truth with out!
Re: Another lost dollar
Date: 2005-12-22 02:27 am (UTC)It's best not to think in terms of sessions (although it is a trap that, even with the best of intentions, it is hard not to fall into) as then you tend to try to protect wins and "get out" of losses. Far better to decide whether the game is good or bad, whether you are feeling good or bad, and decide from that point on whether you ought to carry on playing. As Mike Caro said. Don't worry about getting even. From this point on, you are even.
That said, the general consensus appears to be that, depending on how much better you are than the game and on how "swingy" a player you are, you have to expect downsides of between 150 and 400 big bets every so often.
PJ
Re: Another lost dollar
Date: 2005-12-22 10:09 am (UTC)Re: Another lost dollar
Date: 2005-12-22 11:07 am (UTC)It's good to hear that "Home" still survives out there - I'll check it out.
I found Pete's blog thanks to Niall Litton, who I dragged screaming and kicking out of retirement to play in Toby Harris's team in the World Dip Con team tournament 18 months ago (we came 2nd dammit).
By the way, does anyone know what became of the infamous Pete Doubleday? My wife was asking about him recently - she still remembers reading his zine with tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks!
Cheers
Brian
ps must find out how not to be "anonymous" on here.
The short term's even longer...
Date: 2005-12-21 08:12 pm (UTC)Re: The short term's even longer...
Date: 2005-12-21 08:16 pm (UTC)Re: The short term's even longer...
Date: 2005-12-22 02:32 am (UTC)Yes, I'd love to see you trying to cope with the 10-20 Omaha game in the Wynn. I'd make the over-under that you could survie before going on tilt about 45 minutes. I played some 1-2 mixed as part of the PokerBlogFest and after an hour or so I had to give up, the pace was so slow.
PJ
Re: The short term's even longer...
Date: 2005-12-22 09:07 am (UTC)Re: The short term's even longer...
Date: 2005-12-22 02:30 am (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 02:34 am (UTC)I've just about finished for the holiday now, so I can comment on the upside vs downside thing in my next blog (coming v soon to a computer near you!).
Yes, I remember me getting out the computer during the first 15 minute break. I think it was to upload some photos, actually (from camera to laptop) so that Iggy and others could see them.
PJ