Ups and Downs - They Screw with your Mind

[Trent]

Limit Poker is a swingy game that fucks with your mind. I Just moved up to 5/10 as I was getting bored with the 2/4.I was a loosing player at 2100 hands, sitting at -0.7 BB/100. 100 hands latter I won an extra $500 and now I'm a winning player at 1.7 BB/100. One bad session now will make me a loosing player again. It doesn't matter if I play good or bad. My mind can't handle it. It needs the positive feedback of a good win-rate.This just goes to show you need a large sample size. I makes sense when my SD is $216/hr (21BB/100). I'm going to wait until I hit 10k before I read anything into it. Until then I will just have to assume I'm not a fish.Actually my biggest fear is that I am just a breakeven player. Their must be a lot out there. I can hear them all "I'm just having a bad run, other people have had 50k bad spells, and even 100k. I'll play for 200k hands, I'll be a winner then". After 500-1000 hours of poker, or 10-40 weeks, he's broken even.This is a tuff game to beat. It requires a lot of discipline and self-awareness. I'm finding this is the hardest thing to achieve in poker; strategy and tactics are simple in comparison. I haven't read a poker book that covers this aspect of the game, but it is so important.Trent.

[yoyo]

I hear ya Trent. However I have some bad news for ya - 10K hands is nothing. A terrible player could run at 4bb/100 for 10K hands. I also recently moved up to 5/10. I won a bit, then started tracking with PT. After 8000 hands, I was on 3.2bb/100 - loving it. Lost $2500 in next 3000 hands, and my bb/100 has dropped to around 1. I'm quite sure that both you and I are winning players, but like you, my biggest fear is that I might be just barely a break even or maybe a 1bb/100 player. Even if we had 100K hands, it would still only provide a rough guide and guarantees nothing. 2+2 posters have shown PT stats where for 100K hands, they run at 1bb/100 and another 100K hands, they run at 3bb/100, ostensiably playing the same winning poker.PokerMike had a 50,000 hand breakeven stretch at 30/60 where we can be sure he was playing winning poker. A 50,000 hand breakeven or (god forbid) losing stretch would be very demoralising for little players like us. It's a sick game. Worm said in Rounders - "In the game of life, women are the rake." I say - "In the game of life, women are the swings."Swings are scary, scary, scary stuff.yoyo

[PokerMike]

Barry Greenstein's new book deals with a lot of the stuff a pro has to be prepared for other than just strategy. Its a good read.On the subject of swings, well there isn't too much you can do about them. There are some things you can do though. If you have a big winrate then you will finish most sessions up and won't go through as many long break-even stretches. So study up and always try to sit at soft tables/don't tilt/play your A game etc...