The last week was rough. My EV struggled to gain momentum, going slightly up but mainly sideways. While my Actual Winnings went down brutally. Over the past 15k hands I was around 20bi below EV. I have had my share of downswings and rough patches but can't seem to remember ever running so far under EV while running into so many coolers which have continued to hold my EV down.

But there is something that keeps my head up during the tougher times in the game..

It came up when my fiance noticed I had my head held not-so-high and learned that I was having a rough patch. She said to me, "Well, doesn't that just mean that you will run good soon?". And while it is not necessarily true that your luck will turn around at any point in time, it does hold true that as the sample grows, the relative distance between actual results to your estimated value decreases.

"The square root relationship of trials to standard deviation makes this particularly useful, because as the number of trials increases, the probability that our results will be far away from our expected value in relative terms decreases." -MoP p.30

Any time I am having a rough patch this keeps my head off the ground - knowing that if I keep making +EV decisions the likelihood that my downswing turns around only grows with sample size.

Hope this can keep your head off the ground during rough patches as well.

Seven