By Al Sousa
Posted
4/14/2007
I recently had one of the ugliest swings of variance I have seen an a long while. It dropped the amount of money made this year by me down by 28% in a span of two weeks. To get an idea of how much that is we will take an example. Lets say in the the 1st 3 months of the year you made $10,000 playing 2/4 2 hours a day. Now in a span of 2 weeks you drop from $10,000 to $7,500 losing $2,500. Thats quite a bit.
Why am I bringing this up? Everyone is affected by variance but how you handle it makes the difference. Handling variance in a poor way can escalate the losses and affect future sessions. You have to realize when you are having a down swing day and adjust. I have some simple rules that usually help me.
#1 If I take 3 consecutive bad beats at a table for large pots I move tables.
#2 If I lose at 3 consecutive tables a buy in I quit for the day.
Perhaps many of you look at the above and think its foolish but here is why this works for me.
Bad variance infulences two factors in poker, one to you and one to your opponents.
1. They see you as unlucky and call down more or play at you more thinking you can't hit. All it takes is them to steal one pot from you an hour per table, because "they're feeling frisky", to reduce your profits. This reduces your ability to bluff. You want these opponents fearing you.
2. You are now affected. You start seeing monsters under the bed, in other words huge hands at every raise. You don't thinks thing through. It affects your decision making skills. Perhaps even your confidence goes down. This affects your ability to make correct decisions.
I have heard a lot of stories from players that had huge downswings. They have lost their bankroll and more having months of loss, even a year. While mathematically this is possible it is unbelievably improbable. I think these players are falling victim to one of the above. So many other factors affect how much you win at a table. Are the 2 fish to the left or right of you? Are the lags on the opposite side? What did you eat? How do you feel? Every little thing affects how your play becomes and variance takes hold.
Also realize when luck is just not on your side. In 1 of my losing sessions where I took serious losses my opponents seemed, notice I said seemed, clueless to the fact I was losing. To me their play was the same. I was not affected, seemingly once again, by my bad luck. There could have been other factors determining my results there that players just can't identify. After analyzing the sessions I saw something new I did not notice before. A simple situation I could not avoid other than getting up from the table.
I had two opponents in the EP to MP2 position that raised a lot. Not too much but just enough that I knew they were speculating with a few extra hands. Well between the two I was unable to steal blinds often enough that it affected my over all profit. Now add in not being able to hit a big hand and you have a losing session. I could not hit a big hand vs someone and I couldn't steal. I was slowly blinding down. I also never had any decent hands to reraise the raiser. Add all these little factors together and I had a losing session.
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