Running cold or playing bad? Variance

23.11.2010, 04:20 0

Hi, I started to play Sngs at July, so Im a newbie ;S.
Everything was going pretty well. I made the move up to 5,50 with 100 buy ins, and started very well on that limit too.

But all of the sudden I start to loose a lot every session, or just stay break even, had some ups in this period, but managed to loose that again.

Thats my lifetime graphs, you can see when it started at the 800 games played. I know I have a tiny volume(only play 4 tables), but this swing already takes almost 1/5 of my games played.

A downswing took so long? Or I just cant beat the 5,50 right now? I keep on trying to find majors erros on my game, and everything seems to be ok. I change it sometimes in the way and I keep on falling...

I play on Everest, 6-max Sng, the field there is SOFT, very soft. 5,50's has some more decent players but they arent many. So i dont know what is going wrong

It is by far my worst moment playing, this down came just when I started to study more and get more interested on the game. I dont know if I just running bad, or just playing bad, can someone give me some light?

Is it normal? What should i do?

Sry the crying topic and my poor english. But Im very confuse and need some help

4 replies

_Anonymous_

23.11.2010, 07:25 0

Originally posted by Bromelio
Is it normal?

Yes. its only a 20BI downswing. you will have many more downswings like this. and bigger ones as well.

Originally posted by Bromelio
What should i do?

Keep playing, keep studying, keep improving. you are obviously a winning player. you have to grind through the variance

_Anonymous_

23.11.2010, 12:49 0

Thanks! lessthanthree

It is my first big swing, and Its hard to keep on playing when you keep on losing! For how long can I expect for a swing like this to last? I mean how many games?

Akwed

Joined: 04.06.2009

Posts: 65

23.11.2010, 15:14 0

I have now 2.5k games on downswing and im BE after 4.5k games.

_Anonymous_

24.11.2010, 09:39 0

The size of your downswings, both vertically and horizontally, depends on your win rate. If your win rate is cut in half, you will see downswings which are twice as large and break-even stretches which last 4 times as long.

One useful idea is the long run, which I define to be the amount of play so that breaking even is 2 standard deviations away from the mean. This is 4 * (SD/WR)^2, where SD is your standard deviation for a tournament (about 1.5-1.55 buyins for 9 player SNGs) and WR is your win rate expressed in the same units.

For example, if your ROI is 10%, your long run is about 4 * (150%/10%)^2 = 900 tournaments. If your ROI is 5%, your long run is about 3600 tournaments.

The long run is about the amount of play needed so that breaking even is a big surprise. This assumes that you don't tilt, though. If you play worse after losing, then you may find that longer break-even stretches are more common.

Break-even stretches longer than the long run from luck alone are rare. Break-even stretches which are shorter than the long run happen more frequently (whether you tilt or not). This can be quantified, as I might do in a future video, but most of the time it is enough to approach this qualitatively.

[Closed] Running cold or playing bad? Variance