I know it's non specific but.....
What sort of variance to people here experience as a general rule.
Around the end of October, I deposited 100 bucks at inter, and started playing .50/1.
Eventually clearing out of that site with my bonus and a profit of 150 two weeks later. Giving me a roll of three fifty. Moved to Ub and began playing 1/2 getting the roll up around 800. Cashed out a couple hundred for Christmas, and had some standard losing days winning days etc.
Lately, and for about the last three weeks I have been on a massive downswing, losing big in sessions without feeling like I've made any major changes to my style. I've read sshe and try to employ it's principles while remaining a little creative, and trying to mix the game up from time to time. It seems not to matter where I'm playing, be it party or UB.
So my question I guess is are these sorts of severe downswings typical, or was I running very lucky early on. Are there leaks that commonly explain these sorts of swings?
My roll has been kicked down quite a bit, and is in the area of a little over 200 now. So moving to .5/1 again seems to be advisable. Just wondering ultimately what people's experiences have been.
P.S, I searched for a similar thread to this, and there was one, but noone replied to it, so I hope I didn't miss something.
Cheers
Around the end of October, I deposited 100 bucks at inter, and started playing .50/1.
Eventually clearing out of that site with my bonus and a profit of 150 two weeks later. Giving me a roll of three fifty. Moved to Ub and began playing 1/2 getting the roll up around 800. Cashed out a couple hundred for Christmas, and had some standard losing days winning days etc.
Lately, and for about the last three weeks I have been on a massive downswing, losing big in sessions without feeling like I've made any major changes to my style. I've read sshe and try to employ it's principles while remaining a little creative, and trying to mix the game up from time to time. It seems not to matter where I'm playing, be it party or UB.
So my question I guess is are these sorts of severe downswings typical, or was I running very lucky early on. Are there leaks that commonly explain these sorts of swings?
My roll has been kicked down quite a bit, and is in the area of a little over 200 now. So moving to .5/1 again seems to be advisable. Just wondering ultimately what people's experiences have been.
P.S, I searched for a similar thread to this, and there was one, but noone replied to it, so I hope I didn't miss something.
Cheers
Comments
Moving to 1-2 on a BR of 350 is leaving yourself short. 300 big bets is the number generally advised for full ring games (I've heard 500 for 6-max). Hard to tell without any specific information if you have any major leaks, but playing 2 weeks at any given level and then moving up probably is a good indication that you were on a good short-run upswing. I'd suggest tracking your results in Pokertracker. Personally, I'm off to a fantastic start to 2006 with about a -75BB swing at 3-6 myself. I'm not panicking, but at the same time it's frustrating, although I don't think my table selection has been very good either (stupid bonus whoring). 150-200BB swings aren't unheard of, the only way to get through them though is to make sure you're properly bankrolled in the first place...
There's no room for creativity in LLHE.
The variance you're experiencing is well within a reasonable range. You could be losing due to leaks though. It is rare for a new player to experience immediate success without taking some loss... Post some of your hands on this forum if you would like some critique.
Reading SSHE is a good start, it does take a while to implement SSHE properly - I find that it can mess you up for a little while until you learn to apply it correctly.
OK, everyone says this. And I mean everyone. Can anyone with first hand experience describe the elusive "SSHE is temporarily destroying me" phenomenon? Personally, I've felt much better about my game since reading it, learning to think in terms of pot equity, fight for big pots, leave the tiny ones, etc. If anything (and maybe this is just me) I think reading SSHE got me out of a stupidly compulsive raise or fold decision process. I'd say I'm better now at actually making "solid" calls, given certain situations of pot odds, players left to act, whether I want people in the pot with me or not, etc. If anything, sometimes I wonder if it's made me become too passive (I don't think you'll hear that one very often). Thoughts?
Also, I never folded on the river.... Ever.... now I do.... Sometimes.
I've posted about this in the past...
Basically, the first time you read SSHE you can do things like:
0) Violate the cardinal rule of what a tight aggressive player is: Tight preflop, Tight in small pots and Aggressive in large pots. You'll fight to the bitter end to win a 3BB pot.
1) Raising every button bet with any pair OOP.
2) You will think that every decision in poker is a raise or fold situation (I find it interesting you pulled the opposite opinion)
3) You will call most rivers because the pot is too big
4) You will call most turns because the pot is too big
5) You'll never bet/fold when someone check raises you and you hold nothing. You'll always call that bet and then fold the next street.
6) You will make the stupidest continuation bets ever. Like in the SB when you hold AK and the flop is 234 against 10 opponents.
7) You'll justify away a lot of bad plays via pot odds.
I read a great oneliner about the 2+2 (SSHE) poker mentality. A 2+2er is more likely to bet with 4% equity than call with 20%. It's caused by the aggressive nature of the book and a slight misapplication of the sample hands. If you miss the subtle differences and player reads that Miller provides, you can become an insane maniac and fodder for today's passive opponent.
EDIT: Added link to old SSH argument:
http://pokerforum.ca/forum/index.php?topic=3888.msg32602#msg32602
I found I was already too much in this state of mind. For some reason the whole counting outs, backdoor draws, peeling the flop when you have the odds thing just spoke to me and it got me to cool down a bit (especially with overcard outs in multiway pots I think). Although I can see how someone could take the opposite.
I've found myself in this spot on occasion actually, usually on a flop C/R when I'm on a continuation bet. Now defining nothing, is a better question (sometimes I'll have overcards, sometimes an underpair).
I think I was making these bets long before SSHE came along...
I think I've managed to tune SSHE to the game I'm playing. While SSHE is a great book, I don't know how applicable it is to some of the tighter LLHE games you'll find online (ie not on Party). Now the B&M on the other hand, good god yes...
I was probably in that spot at one point too. Looking to make "solid" laydowns in big pots when I knew I was beat, ignoring when pot odds dictated that I should call.
I found reading Jones had me always worried about getting myself into dominating situations, and I was always more focused on how and when to play certain hands preflop than what my play would be post-flop.
Eg. I'd panic that playing KJs UTG is too loose and that I'd have a giant leak in my game by playing that hand, whereas it's dictated more by what the table conditions are, and how I'd play it post-flop than whether I played the hand in the first place or not.
I remember hearing lots of stories like "calling is usually the worst option" (which is sometimes true) and I also noticed that PT calculates AF as bet % + raise % / call %. Hence, I kept hearing aggression was good so I vowed to play more aggressively. I got to the point where if I was undecided what to do, I'd take the aggressive route and raise. Looking back, I'd be raising a middle pocket pair with no draws on a K high flop into a passive player and of course they'd call me down with TPNK and I'd just shake my head and say, "Well at least I played it aggressively!"