I heard an interesting thing about losing streaks recently. I am a subscriber to grinderschool.com, where a collection of small-stakes poker training videos are available from which to watch and learn. The topics range from formal lectures on things like 3-betting, to very informal seat time just watching semi-pros play hundreds of hands of quality poker. Some of the instructors are better than others, but all in all I've learned enough tips and tricks from every one of them to justify the relatively small expense the site charges for access to the videos.
Anyway, in one of the lessons I watched this week, the instructor made an offhand comment about the variance of the game vs. extended losing streaks. In the video, the instructor took a couple of bad beats and lost two full buy-ins in a single $25NL cash game. Of course he didn't get upset about the losses, but merely shrugged them off as part of the game. He then went on to say that you should expect losing sessions frequently playing NL cash games, but if you lose in 4 or more consecutive sessions (each session = 200-300 hands of poker), it's most likely not variance, but instead it's probably due to the fact that you're doing something wrong. He further went on to say that he personally has never lost more than three days in a row playing poker over the past three years of regular play. Seriously.
This was an intriguing statement to me, so I went back and examined my own last 10.7K+ hands recorded on Poker Tracker. For the first 2,500 hands, I lost roughly $250. Some of these losses were bad beats, but mostly they were me a) playing at limits too high for my bankroll; b) chasing too many marginal hands, especially out of position; or c) tilting/bezerko'ing after a big beat. In other words, I was NOT playing good poker during this period of time and the results amplified that fact.
In contrast, hands 2,501-8,000 were much better, with a steady net gain that resulted in an uptick in my 'roll of ~$230 from its nadir. Along the way up, I had 8 or 9 significant dips downward, but in each case the temporary downswing was followed by either a quick rebound or a horizontal no-win/no-lose period that eventually started trending back upward. During this entire period, I believe I played solid, fundamental poker and behaved as the protypical rounder, grinding away a steady profit, oblivious to the swings. In other words, I played solid poker regardless of the results... and it paid off over the long run.
Hand 8,001-9,500, however, were another huge drop of nearly $130. Most of these losses can be attributed directly to variance, but the magnitude of the swings were directly a result of "bug-tilt," where I started playing (yes, once again) at bigger and bigger limits, trying to right a perceived sinking ship and recoup my losses. In other words, "panicking" led to bigger losses than I should have incurred.
Recently, from hand 9,501 to 10,700, I've been playing mostly fundamentally good poker again. There have been some big upswings, but also some big downswings. There were a few hands in this period I could have played much better than I did, but generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with my play. Overall, too, the direction of the graph is upward, with a net gain of ~$90. Once again, solid poker is paying off over the long run.
The bottom line is I think the instructor is on to something. Besides being academically interesting, it actually has some important practical ramifications, vis-a-vis my tendancy to bug-tilt. If I can somehow mentally accept the short term variance of the game better than I have been, and focus on playing solid, fundamental poker at limits my bankroll can support, I think I can continue creating a positively sloped graph of $ won vs. hands played.
Okay, you're saying, big deal. What's so profound about the concept of TAG, non-tilty play winning money over the long run? Nothing, of course, and everything, too. One of the Guru's fundamental mantras (which he breaks frequently himself, btw), is Discipline. Staying the course and playing solid poker is paramount to success at the tables. Often when a student of his is backsliding or "running badly," the Guru tells them to take a day off and then come back and play just 25 hands of "perfect poker" and then quit. He then goes over the PT3 replay of the 25 hands to ensure the student is indeed playing perfectly. The next assignment, assuming all is OK with the first 25 hands, is to play 50 hands perfectly, and so on until the student is back to playing solid poker over a normal 200-hand session.
Of course I can't be certain if a similar re-training exercise would have worked for me in the two downswing portions of the graph, above, but I doubt seriously if I could have done worse than I had. If anything, I would likely have limited the losses to maybe half of what I actually experienced. And if that were the case, I would be in the black right now instead of facing an $84.60 deficit.
Lesson: next time I've posted losses for three consecutive days, I am going to try to quit and then retrain with the 25-hand approach. The result from a single session of poker is largely a question of which cards you get dealt in which game and against which opponents. The results of a full month of poker, on the other hand, are much more a question of how well you played.
All-in for now...
-Bug
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