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Thanks for sharing this.
I have experienced something similar.
Even though knowing these things, it is super hard to keep up a good mindset over a longer period of time. E.g. I can't put in so much volume because I just do not have enough time to play/study poker. Break-even/downswing streaks can stretch over a couple of 10k hands easily, which in my case last months. Months that I have to resist all self doubts and negativity.
There are a lot of factors involved that we can't control. Being result oriented, doubting ourselves or complaining will never help. The deck doesn't owe us anything. The deck doesn't care. There is only one thing we can do, and that is focus on the things we can control, continuously improve our game by studying and applying what we learn to the tables, review, re-iterate, increase volume, etc.
For me, reminding myself of this from time to time helps a lot.
Also acknowledging when we make good decisions, maybe even noting them down. This puts our bad decisions/blunders into perspective.
Do you have any other recommendations for keeping up a good mindset?
You are correct, variance is the ace, King and queen in the deck.
It doesn’t have any feeling on the cards that draw out. It doesn’t know what cards you hold or what cards villain holds. It is indifferent to it all.
I am about a 5bb/100 player at nl100 and have been on at least 2-100k breakeven streaks as well, have had my fair share of 15-20BI slides that felt like they would never end..
To me the hardest part was just putting in the hours or having the urge to play, as we all know it sucks to lose. I try to keep in mind that even the best players in the world even playing lower stakes would probably only win about 60_65% of the time. It is just the nature and mathematics of the game…
Just don’t take it personal, easier said the done..
Great post!!!
Variance
I've posted this link many times in these forums, but just in case you haven't seen it...
When you go to this page, enter your winrate, and play with the other factors.
It will surprise and amaze you [1]
http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/
[1] Well maybe not, but it is fascinating to see that a person with a positive winrate can still lose
in my opinion, it's nice to have a set of filters that you can trust to evaluate your luck in various spots. it makes it easier to keep your objectivity.
as an example, i know what my winrate normally is in very large pots, so if it's some 200+ BB lower than usual at the end of the month, i know that i've been coolered a lot.
Actually, the most ridiculous thing, that i can't understand is:
OK! It is normal to lose sometimes even if you did everything correct, and the god damn river busted you. It is normal that those things happen a few times in a row.
BUT! It is absolutely not ok to have DAYS when you get recked every damn hand. I am playing poker for years, and I noticed one interesting thing. When i play my so called A game, when i hit every flop, i get the golden river card when I want - it happens for the whole day. I can take a pause, and start my next session a few hours later and I still have this damn "luck". Until the fkn 00:00 next day. Same thing happen when I am very unlucky. My english is not that good so maybe I don't explain it in a right way, but I would understand if I lose 65 out of 100 coinflips. I still won 35. BUT IN MY CASE I LOSE 99/100 in such days which is absolutely not ok. Every mathematician would agree with me. It is impossible to have losing DAYS... or even weeks as some people do.
I have also talked with people that play live poker. They never had such situations. Yeah their days might end very very bad (losing a few buy-ins), but they do win coolers sometimes, in these days. In online poker, if it's a bad day, you lose EVERY HAND (bllind steals are not counted). WHY?!?!
I am not saying that online poker is rigged...
actually YES I think it is rigged... as a programmer I can say that you don't have to be the best in the world to write such algorythm, even a student understands what are the code lines to make such things (as described above) happen.
I also noticed another thing. When I play tournaments with low buy-in (according to my bankroll) everything is fine. Ofcourse I lose more than win, but that's ok. BUT when I register for a big tournament as 11$ Sunday Storm for example, I am not dealt any good hand at all ( and i am not a NIT)... Once, I lost all of my chips in about 1 and a half hour, and I saw flop only 2 times. And never saw the TURN, if you understand what I mean. I have folded the whole tournament, and it is a turbo tourn. It's like they say "you are not welcome here dude, go play your $2,20".
That's a thing I just don't understand... I agree to have a losing streak a few days or maybe weeks, but i disagree that it's ok to lose every freakin hand in such days. And that's exactly what happens most of the time.
Hi Shkureonak,
Have you ever played with
http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/
When you first land on that page you see a graph showing 20 runs by a player with a winrate of 2.5 BB/100 over 100,000 hands each.
the best run the player is up 15K BB, the worst, down more than 5K
If you follow individual lines, you can see some pretty impressive downswings.
Play with the numbers.
It is strangely soothing... 