I was told -- perhaps in one of the articles on PokerStrategy -- that 5CD is less subject to variance than other forms of poker. Perhaps so.
I started playing 5CD in August last year, before EvGalois posted his now famous articles on the game. The first downswing in this graph ended when I read those articles. Cool, I thought -- I have knowledges!
Not so fast.

I recently experienced a downswing of roughly the same magnitude.
This prompted to me to re-examine the first one.
I found that in each I had:
4 sets that lost to higher sets.
at least one pat straight or flush that got beat on the draw
Several two-pair hands that were beaten by people drawing 3 and hitting trips or better 2pr. The big difference in the first one is that I was betting too many -- in other words > 0 -- garbage hands.
So perhaps the initial "downswing" was not entirely due to abysmal play.
The thing that stands out in the graph is the number of v-shaped notches, and the similarity in their sizes. I'm wondering if they represent days when I should not have been playing at all -- tired, bored etc -- followed by normal days.
As far as my overall play goes, I don't think I'm ready to move up a limit.
I have only recently started attacking the blinds harder, and there is still work to do on flush and OESD play as well as 3Betting and how to play against a 3Bet.




