PLO Variance *sigh*
Posted by Gerhardt Goll
Posted by
Gerhardt Goll
posted in
Beats & Brags
PLO Variance *sigh*
http://oi48.tinypic.com/rich9w.jpg
Loading 18 Comments...
i've included references where appropriate for further research or message me for personal guidance
the downswings never end - if you want to further your poker career, sound mental game is key when dealing with prolonged periods of negative variance. If you can keep playing well despite the downswing its a lot easier recovering with only minor losses compared to tilting off and destroying your bankroll when things go bad. some things that have helped me:
playing lower limits helps regain confidence
having a stop-loss for my highest limit OR when shot taking (Nguyen, T. How I made my first million)
Inject Logic: there are certain key areas that begin to falter when you run bad - have a list of those things that you do when running bad and be aware of them before they happen, damage control and minimizing losses adds as much to your bottom line as when you are running good. (Tendler, J. Mental game of poker 2)
***
@jonna102 i was glad to read you took a break but 6 months seems excessive, i presume you are not a professional then? i have found taking a break helps tremendously.With good conditioning a break can sometimes be as short as 5 minutes, sometimes thats all you need to reset your mind and get things back on track.
When taking a break remember:
1) you may want to 'start fresh' but don't throw out all your old worksheets, strategies and methods that contained what mistakes you were making. (Tendler, J)
2) rest and recovery is an integral part of the learning process. you do well NOT to play/study/work for some portion of the day/week/month etc - i've made this mistake before and burned out, severely crippling the quality of my A-Game B Game C Game etc (Tendler, J)
***
Further notes regarding bankroll management in a professional capacity
1) keep 6-12 months living expenses saved AND 2) keep 100 buy ins for your bread and butter limit (Schmidt, D. Treat poker like a business). this isn't to be confused with keeping 100 buy ins for all limits you play, look at it this way if you comfortably multitable $2/$4 then have $40k total bankroll: the sum of all your sites, this means you also have 40 buy ins for $5/$10 where you could stop-loss 2-3 buy ins if you find a great seat against some weaker opponents. if all this sounds too much, just suck it up and play ur ass off for 2-3 months or 3-4 months. Sacrifice now and then reap the rewards when you handle variance better than anyone else and support yourself entirely off poker and enjoy a wonderful flexible life[style].
I was ~30 BI behind expectation for March over ~50k hands. That's not counting the times I folded when opponents hit their obvious 2-outers on the turn or river. In reality, I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually twice that number.
I take some comfort in the fact that I was still more or less break even for the month, so I guess in terms of sklansky bucks I have to be crushing the games I play. Too bad S-bucks don't build your bankroll...
For me, a 6 month break from all kinds of poker helped me get back the enthusiasm for the game. And I can take the swings a lot better. What I did after the break was to move down to the smallest of micros, and focus on improving my game and on making good decisions without the results getting in the way. It's still frustrating to lose those 6 flips in a row, but at least it doesn't hurt the bankroll.
Just focus on enjoying what you do, playing well, and the results will come when they come.
Are you planning on moving back up to your previous levels once you've ironed out the kinks (if any) in your game?
And not without moving right down to the micros. A lot of what I've been working on is just creating good habits at the tables. Y'know, all those things that are easy to see in a post session review -- they need to be just as easy in the heat of the action. And for me they weren't. I needed to reprogram my semi-automatic decisions, and I'm starting to see how it's working. So moving up may not be so far away.
I'm not saying whether or not this will be right for you and your game. What I do know though, is that anything you can do to get a bit of perspective on your own game will be good. Whether that means taking a longer break, moving down in stakes, playing a different game for a while, or just taking 3 days to focus on reviewing your game (and the swings). It can happen in many different ways, but either way it happens will be good.
I've decided to take a few days off anyway (my in-laws are here) and just let some ideas percolate at the back of my mind; and will be reading this and other forums etc..
Hey Daz, very interesting post. Pls share more about meta skills, very interesting topic.
I am indeed a professional, but not just for poker ;-) Or rather, I used to have another job, and I was partly using the break to explore some other options. Eventually came back to poker, and seem to be sticking with it for the time being.
What's interesting about the break is that I kinda ran into a barrier before the break where I found it hard to improve further. After the break I've been able to get past that, and really speed up my improvement again. Hopefully won't need to take such a long break again, but short breaks I've totally worked into my schedule now, a bit like you're suggesting. Both short, medium and longer breaks.
The other thing I've worked on a lot is tilt control. Playing reasonably even after a long string of coolers is one part of that. The skill of just quitting is another, and I think both are fairly important.
My month so far, 95 buyins below EV. All PLO. It's not *quite* as bad as it looks cos I run worst at the lowest stakes I play.
I'm an experienced player but I'd be lying if I said it isn't starting to affect me, but it's hard to stop playing completely due to Supernova Elite commitment. Don't particularly want to move down in stakes as I think it's almost pointless playing below PLO100 due to the rake...
Interested if any of the video makers here have had similar downswings and how they've dealt with them?
This looks familiar ;-)
Good news is that as long as you stick to a good game plan, it swings in the other direction too. I was ~100 BI behind EV too earlier this year over a similar hand sample. Now over the past 5k hands I've won something like 50 BI. Some of these swings I just wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen them myself.
Best advice I can give from my own experience is to continue reviewing and improving your game. Learn to play well even when it's uphill. And if you're not playing well you probably need to cut down on playing a bit, or accept a lower win rate.
I'm still something like 75 BI behind EV, but the situation is certainly improving.
i had to stop playing PLO, was losing my bankroll fast.
@Simon Ansell did you read an article titled "Pokerstars PLO is broken" whereby the rake is too high on the lower limits. Have you found 100PL to be the threshold?
Ha yep I may have posted elsewhere, but it's got worse since then :) Was hoping for some more useful responses here at RIO!
Pretty sure I'm playing reasonably well, apart from my flopping and winning all in skills. I've never been a huge winner at PLO, probably due to too many tables and the EV winrate in the above graph is 'normal' for me.
I played a hand earlier where I 3 bet an UTG open from UTG+1 with AKQTds and was coldcalled by MP, a well respected reg who plays midstakes and sometimes higher. 100bb eff. stacks. Flop TT5r. I bet flop, was called. I checked the 5 turn, he shoved and rivered the 7 with his T976 one suit. Honestly I think the only difference between a lot of the midstakes regs and the rest of us struggling to break through is rungood. Maybe I'm deluded, but I think it's impossible to underestimate how much luck there is in this game.
@Daz, for some reason I can't reply to your post so have to reply to my own post.
The good new is I've finished SNE on Stars for the year and ran a bit better for the last couple of months, so can now concentrate on more important things! The downswing peaked at 140BI below EV and I finished about 90BI below. I still made a profit pre-rakeback for the year, so pretty pleased. I'll be concentrating on my other interests for the rest of the year and studying poker, including the vids here, when I have some free time.
Re. the rake, I've read most of the 2+2 threads on the subject and contributed to a few of them but I'm not an expert (I do have a solid maths background though so understand all the data...). I'm sure every level of PLO is beatable, with the caveat that at 100PLO and below so long as you are disciplined and table-select, avoiding tables with 4-5 competent regs and/or >1 short stack. Leave tables when conditions get bad. My own problem was that with requiring SNE volume at small stakes it is impossible to do any meaningful table selection, but that's obviously not a problem for most. I do think Stars are missing a trick by not reducing the rake, and some of the arguments they give are absurd ("the rake is higher at PLO because there's more action" - what? if anything it should be the opposite). The data doesn't make good reading, most of the high-volume regs at PLO100 and below are losing so what chance is there for less skilled new players just getting into poker or PLO?
I'd love to see Phil G or other high-profile players give their thoughts on the subject but sadly, nothing yet.
Just wanted to chime in and say that I'm right there with you guys. No advice to impart, but having run 46 BI below EV over 27k hands I'm definitely in the same boat. Let's hope the upswing is on the horizon.
I hit quads against straight flush for the second time in my PLO career today. Fortunately this time I wasn't taking a shot at higher stakes, the first time got a bit 'spensive.
After that it started swinging back though. Maybe every downswing needs to hit the darkest dark before it gets brighter. So just know this: when you hit that quads vs strt.flush hand, the upswing isn't far away! ;-)
I wonder if I'll ever be on the other end of that particularly interesting cooler...
I lost with quads vs straight flush this morning, hope you're right!
Can't get much worse, now ~120 BI below ffs.
yes, it can. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=39531724&postcount=16117
Hey Guys,
This is purely meant to be constructive advice, not criticism.
I know runbad can be crippling, mentally and financially. But I think one thing all players should be weary of is letting some runbad affect their play, which then will exaggerate their loses further while still running bad.
With the initial posted graph, your showdown is still positive, with a lot of loss with your redline... are you bluffing far too much, calling too lightly preflop, floating too many flops and not performing correct steals often enough?
Back when I mass tabling small stake FR NLHE I had a similar graph and was well below EV. For a while I was blaming purely luck, then I took a short break and came back to analyse my game to work out I had a lot leaks causing my redline to go down too harshly.
Sure big pots are nice and add up for some good $$. But a lot of it (in my current opinion) is how well you play all the hands you don't get it in, the correct folds pre and post flop, better timing on steals and bluffs. This is help counter and lessen a downswing.
Use every opportunity as a lesson on how you can improve your game... and I am sure there is a lot of genuine continuous badluck for players out there, but be honest and open minded when doing your hand reviews and always get a trusted friend/player to review sessions for you as well.
Goodluck grinding guys.
Be the first to add a comment