Sunday, December 19, 2010

Amazing Positive Variance and why I'd Wouldnt Make it Playing Live

The last two days have been pretty remarkable, the best two day stretch I can remember having:





My friend George plays live poker, 80-160 I believe and is likely the best player in the game. I was talking to him recently and he was telling me how bad he's been running and that he hadn't won a single session in a long time. Imagine the flip side of this, having the same variance but negative variance. I'm probably somewhere around a 1.25 big bets per hundred hands winner in the games I play. I've run at 12 BB/100 over 4000 hands so I'm running about 10.75 big bets above expectation. The flip side of this run would be run at about -9.5 BB/100 over 4000 hands. Now imagine you're playing live poker where I believe they average about 30 hands an hour. That means I could play for 133 hours, probably 3 or more weeks and be down 380 big bets or $76,000 if I was playing 100-200. And this all assumes I maintain my composure and play the same game that earns me 1.25 BB/100. I don't think I'd make it through the second week. Kudos to you George, I don't know how you do it.

A quick VPP update: I'm up to 986,500 VPPs, way ahead of pace. I'm leaving for Boston Wednesday morning and I'd guess I'll reach SNE by the end of the week. What a relief.

Happy Holidays to everyone and may you run as good as I've been running.

6 comments:

  1. Niccce. Send some my way? Congrats on SNE!

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  2. Glad to see a positive variance post. I hope it continues (except when I'm in the hand)!

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  3. more than i make pre rb all year. i sort of love/hate you at the same time.

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  4. In two days I made about what I had made in the previous two months playing the same stakes. We play a crazy, crazy game.

    Your games are a lot sparser and probably equally tough so I wouldn't feel too bad.

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