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AlamedaMike
2K Club
Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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 Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:54 am Post subject: Being stuck |
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What are the odds of being stuck and then becoming unstuck during a session? I was curious to find out even though the answer is somewhat meaningless. Well, out of 160 3/6 and 6/12 sessions I was stuck 94 times and became unstuck 22 times. I won 93 times. So, I was stuck 74 times and remained stuck. therefore, the odds are not good it seems - small sample but I find it interesting.
One reason that I mention this is that Ian said in his book, I think, that certain consideration need to be taken when you find yourself in a session and are losing. I need to read it again. In order to preserve your bankroll you might need to leave a session when you are still stuck. |
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Silvershade
Joined: 18 May 2005
Posts: 365
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not really surprised, it seems to me that getting stuck early at best leads to a small loss, Perhaps it affects our play and perhaps Poker is just streaky..... |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Silvershade wrote: | | I'm not really surprised, it seems to me that getting stuck early at best leads to a small loss, Perhaps it affects our play and perhaps Poker is just streaky..... |
Poker is streaky for sure... TPM goes into how losing big pots affects you and that is the 'way' to get stuck early on. An interesting dimension of the game.
Last night I lost $200 in a 1/2 hour, rebought $200 and then cashed out $660 in a 6/12 game 2 1/2 hours later. That got me to thinking about the subject. I settled down and vowed to play better, and I got lucky. |
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taz115
Hzamm9rd, Yo!!!
Joined: 08 Oct 2005
Posts: 8476
Location: Edmonton, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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It is most certainly meaningless in terms of playing optimal poker as it is a function of your win rate, the length of your sessions and how much you are stuck.
If you play a session that is 10 hours long and your stuck after 30 mins for 5 bets you have a good chance of becoming unstuck if your earn rate is 2 bets an hour.
Cards or luck is not inherently streaky. Our brains lump together similar information to make it appear that way but the deck doesn't care what hand you had last deal, or for the last hour ect. |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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| taz115 wrote: | It is most certainly meaningless in terms of playing optimal poker as it is a function of your win rate, the length of your sessions and how much you are stuck.
If you play a session that is 10 hours long and your stuck after 30 mins for 5 bets you have a good chance of becoming unstuck if your earn rate is 2 bets an hour.
Cards or luck is not inherently streaky. Our brains lump together similar information to make it appear that way but the deck doesn't care what hand you had last deal, or for the last hour ect. |
Often, I do not know how much I have in front of me since I do not always stack my chips neatly. I can usually tell if I am ahead or behind. If I start to become concerned then it is a sign that I need to think about taking a break because I am in dnager of becoming results oriented.
My goal is still; make the best decisions that I can - one decision is when to take a break, when to play the next hand, etc.  |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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| I forgot to say what I mean about being stuck. I mean that I have lost 1 rack and rebought. |
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Primitive
Odin Incarnate
Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1895
Location: Oslo
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| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:59 am Post subject: |
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| AlamedaMike wrote: | | I forgot to say what I mean about being stuck. I mean that I have lost 1 rack and rebought. |
Hmmmm,
You seem to be obsesed about small swings (in BBs, not $). Poker is by nature a streaky game (loose live games even more so) and swings of 20-30 BBs are the norm, not the exception. If you can't handle normal swings, either emotionally or economically: play lower. |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Primitive wrote: | | AlamedaMike wrote: | | I forgot to say what I mean about being stuck. I mean that I have lost 1 rack and rebought. |
Hmmmm,
You seem to be obsessed about small swings (in BBs, not $). Poker is by nature a streaky game (loose live games even more so) and swings of 20-30 BBs are the norm, not the exception. If you can't handle normal swings, either emotionally or economically: play lower. |
Thanks - I am not obsessing, obsessing, obsessing.. 
Skip to recap:
| muttering to self wrote: |
The game is one of variance. The standard deviation measures this. My STDEV is higher in 3/6 as it is in 6/12. What does that tell you?
I was just wondering how many times I had to rebuy more chips and then was able to come back and win. E.g. come from behind. I would love to sit down and just flat win. But, we know that is not going to happen. There are swings that are a natural part of the game. You have to risk chips to win chips. I could look at the other side of the coin. How many times I sat down and won without being stuck? That was 41 out of times that I won.
So 41/160 I sat down and won with my original buyin, 22/160 I sat down rebought chips and won. 63/160 I won.
Does this tell me anything - well, yes, quiting a session has nothing to do with the amount of money you have in front of you - but, we knew this already; didn't we Ian?
Now a number that is interesting: 24 times out of 160 sessions I lost and never rebought chips. So, I might want to figure out why I quit those sessions? Did I run out of time, tired, had somewhere else to go, felt out classed, etc.
(note: a poker pro told me [back when he was playing full time] that he would play for 4-5 hours, take a break, shower, eat and nap, and then come back for another 4-5 hours)
Same token I quit the session 41 times when I was a winner and did not rebuy chips.
Does it matter if I rebought or not? No, except that might affect my emotional state. Something to think about is to write a short note to myself why I quit the session? StatKing has a note session but you can not report on it. |
To recap:
bankroll and session managment (won 40%)
Won when did not RB = 26%
Won when rebought = 14%
Lost more than buyin = 45%
Lost less than buyin = 15%
This does not address how much $. My stats float - now $4.5/hr and STDEV $98.
Bottom line.
Does this analysis help me in any way? I am thinking about that.
One of the books that I read mention something like playing for 10 hours and being even as a natural outcome of a session.
Session = a break in playing the game since it is one long poker game with intermittent breaks (does changing tables equal a session? IRS thinks so).
Edit - it does concern me that 45% of the time I lost more than my original buyin. This statistic does not bode will for my performance.
The current issue of CardPlayer has a nice article that address this subject. A pro at bay 101 used to win $350 a day at 40/80 over the course of his playing career - it did not matter to him if he won or lost during a give session. |
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Silvershade
Joined: 18 May 2005
Posts: 365
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| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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I think realistically that although it might be ideal to be indifferent to how a session goes the reality is that most of us wont in fact be indifferent to it. Given this I think there's something to be said for not rebuying if you arent sure that you are going to be able to play your A game with those new chips.
Perhaps tou should try tournament poker, one beauty of tournaments is that if you take a beat or go card dead you are simply out leaving you no chance to tilt anything off at that point or even to play an underpar game. |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Silvershade wrote: | I think realistically that although it might be ideal to be indifferent to how a session goes the reality is that most of us wont in fact be indifferent to it. Given this I think there's something to be said for not rebuying if you arent sure that you are going to be able to play your A game with those new chips.
Perhaps you should try tournament poker, one beauty of tournaments is that if you take a beat or go card dead you are simply out leaving you no chance to tilt anything off at that point or even to play an underpar game. |
I had given that some thought - not MTT - but to work on only one buyin at a time. Because, this very well might take some players, that lack the maturity (such as myself), and move them off their A game.
Then I got some advice that I need to allow for bigger swings during a 'session' and that limiting yourself to one buyin might not be giving yourself a chance.
This has led me to this analysis. In MTT poker with re buys you need to go thought an analysis before you rebuy. Similar in live ring games, I think.
Maybe one thing is to just make a larger buyin and be done with it. Maybe $200 for 3/6 and $400 for 6/12.
For now I do not plan to make any changes to the way I play just be aware of it. |
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Silvershade
Joined: 18 May 2005
Posts: 365
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 5:27 am Post subject: |
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Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying not to rebuy, just not to do it unless you are sure your game will be unaffected by the fact that you are stuck a buy in. The ideal is certainly to be able to rebuy and play well ( assuming that playing well gives you an edge over the particular table ).
For me, over time i have found that I dont deal that well with the swings in cash games, I play well so long as things go my way but my game does suffer if the cards are cruel, ultimately this has simply led to me not playing them anymore, I chose the tournament route and havent regretted it, I am a bigger winner playing tournaments and also enjoying my poker far more.
Good luck finding a solution that works for you though. |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, I understand. As I said I play MTTs online. The strategy is much different as you know. As my mom used to say "I'm not a spring chicken anymore" My endurance for long MTT sessions is not all that good so I stick to ring games. Guys that have been playing a long time seem to still be able to play well even in there 60's or 70's like Doyle, but not me.
After 3-4 hours I am done for the day. Sometimes I will play up to 9 hours but by then I am starting to lose concentration.
If I were 25-30 it would be much different. |
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toronexti
53o
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 4240
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 2:18 am Post subject: |
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| AlamedaMike wrote: | Thanks, I understand. As I said I play MTTs online. The strategy is much different as you know. As my mom used to say "I'm not a spring chicken anymore" My endurance for long MTT sessions is not all that good so I stick to ring games. Guys that have been playing a long time seem to still be able to play well even in there 60's or 70's like Doyle, but not me.
After 3-4 hours I am done for the day. Sometimes I will play up to 9 hours but by then I am starting to lose concentration.
If I were 25-30 it would be much different. |
You can start slowly increasing you're session time (say by 10 minutes a week or w/e - it's really fun playing a 15 hour session  ).
As for the stuck/unstuck you might want to try buying in for 50BB instead of the 20 or 30 you're doing now. This also has the advantage of intimadating newer players coming in who don't know you bought in for that much to begin with. |
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AlamedaMike
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Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 2042
Location: Alameda, CA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 10:39 am Post subject: |
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| toronexti wrote: | | AlamedaMike wrote: | Thanks, I understand. As I said I play MTTs online. The strategy is much different as you know. As my mom used to say "I'm not a spring chicken anymore" My endurance for long MTT sessions is not all that good so I stick to ring games. Guys that have been playing a long time seem to still be able to play well even in there 60's or 70's like Doyle, but not me.
After 3-4 hours I am done for the day. Sometimes I will play up to 9 hours but by then I am starting to lose concentration.
If I were 25-30 it would be much different. |
You can start slowly increasing you're session time (say by 10 minutes a week or w/e - it's really fun playing a 15 hour session ).
As for the stuck/unstuck you might want to try buying in for 50BB instead of the 20 or 30 you're doing now. This also has the advantage of intimadating newer players coming in who don't know you bought in for that much to begin with. |
For endurance I need to exercise more and take a few refresher breaks.
Buying in for 2 racks (33BB) is a good idea - 3 racks (50BB) would be even better since that is the upper bound for a session I think. . Normally in a live game you buy a rack of chips which is only 16BB - not all that much to work with since a hand played to the river is 3BB without any raises along the way. Lose two hands and buyin for 10 more BB (3 stacks).
When I played 15 sessions of 20/40 the normal buyin was 2-3 racks ($1000-$1500) or 33-50BB. That seemed to work well. I need to give myself more room to work with. A normal swing in a session is easily +-30BB.
I played y'day and I was 1) card dead 2) missed 90% of the flops and 3) made one draw - I won two hands (QQ - FH, 67o - nuts) and lost 20BB in an hour, then 13BB more and too a break.
I need to read TPM again. There is more to winning than knowing how to play a given hand (strategy).
Thanks |
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taz115
Hzamm9rd, Yo!!!
Joined: 08 Oct 2005
Posts: 8476
Location: Edmonton, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 11:53 am Post subject: |
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Do you play short when you get down to less than 12BBs?
This is a bad idea if you do... because you cannot maxmize your wins when you have a good hand and you get all-in or you can't properly protect your hand from draws if you run out of chips in the middle of a hand.
16BBs is not enough to start with in my opinion. If you lose one pot your short. I'd buy-in for 32BBs regardless of what other players are doing and I'd probably rebuy if I got down to less than 16 to 20BBs.
Be sure to have enough chips in front of you to maximize your EV when the time comes. |
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