PLEASE stop saying this

*Cliff notes at the bottom*

For some reason this always irks me.

The situation goes something like this.

Person A gets their money in with a significant edge. A significant edge could mean his opponentis drawing to 2 outs, to an 8 out straight draw, or it could be a virtual coinflip (but if his opponent has to improve, it's obviously a suckout if he hits. duh.)

Anyway, to make things simple, let's put this one there. Unknown open raises his button. Player A reraises from the BB with ACES. Button calls. Bet, push, call on a rag board. Turn blanks, River is a K. Button shows KK and scoops. Player A breaks another piece of expensive computer equipment.

Player A is obviously fed up with all the bad beats, and since he has to let everybody know how awesome he plays but how unlucky he always gets, he shows the hand to people on AIM or through other communication mediums, such forums, the telephone, etc. We'll just call this person (WHO, TRUST ME, DOES NOT CARE HOW BAD OF A BEAT YOU JUST TOOK OR HOW MANY 2 OUTERS FOR MULTI-BUYIN POTS THAT YOU'VE TAKEN TONIGHT, NOR HOW YOUR DRAWS ARE MISSING BUT EVERYBODY ELSES ARE HITTING - PLEASE READ THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND IT) 'friend'.

friend obviously tries to console player A saying that it's just variance (true) and that things will eventually even up in the end (bullshit, it never does, trust me.)

Ok, basically I've just been setting up this part. If you havn't read anything until now, you are cool.

They will say, "well, you lost this pot, but you still won the money. That $800 pot is really yours. Don't be fooled by the chips being pushed towards his stack." ARE YOU ON CRACK? No, you really did lose that entire pot and all the money in it. I promise you that you will never see one cent of it again ever in your life. If you can't deal with it, quit poker.

What should be said instead is, if you consistently get your money in 'with the best of it', you figure to make a profit. The end.



*Cliff notes*

1. Poker is rigged, deal with it. This includes live play.

2 Stop complaining about bad beats. If you lose with quads to a running royal, fine, but your typical 2, 3, 8, or 9 outer is not acceptable to show.

3. Variance sucks. I know it and I do not care.

4. Most people can't deal with the mental aspect of this brutal game. If you need proof, go read BBV on 2+2. Open up any of the busto/downswing threads and you will see what I am referring to.

5. I would be in a very good mood as my heater continues to roll if a couple asshats wouldn't have sent me bad beats every 5 minutes for the last 3 hours. I am going to bed irritated as the tone of this post no doubt shows.


extra reading:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-29808.htm

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but bad beats take my money.

You're whining about not liking whiners?

Why don't you just turn off your messaging program?

Originally Posted by Lukie

They will say, "well, you lost this pot, but you still won the money. That $800 pot is really yours. Don't be fooled by the chips being pushed towards his stack." ARE YOU ON CRACK? No, you really did lose that entire pot and all the money in it. I promise you that you will never see one cent of it again ever in your life. If you can't deal with it, quit poker.

What should be said instead is, if you consistently get your money in 'with the best of it', you figure to make a profit. The end.

Really well said. I just feel that, like everything else bad, you sometimes need to get it off your chest, e.g. "My gf just left me", "I've had diarrhea for 3 days", "I've just dropped 5 buyins"... Notice that they're all the same level of crapness? It's just that a lot of your friends/your psychologist don't understand poker, so it's necessary to come here for counselling.

Originally Posted by Ash256

Really well said. I just feel that, like everything else bad, you sometimes need to get it off your chest, e.g. "My gf just left me", "I've had diarrhea for 3 days", "I've just dropped 5 buyins"... Notice that they're all the same level of crapness? It's just that a lot of your friends/your psychologist don't understand poker, so it's necessary to come here for counselling.

I agree that sometimes you have to get it off your chest, but repeatedly copying and pasting bad beat HHs to someone on AIM is just stupid. Telling someone, "damn, 400bb pot and my flush just lost to a rivered boat" is fine every so often, but I know people who will copy and paste lost 60/40s from an MTT to me on AIM. That is just effing retarded. I just don't read them.

But Lukie, what about that hand where I showed you my AA getting cracked by KK? I mean WTF how likely is that gonna happen?? That was legit right?

What about losing a 400BB+ pot when getting 2outered? :P

Originally Posted by courtiebee

Originally Posted by Ash256

Really well said. I just feel that, like everything else bad, you sometimes need to get it off your chest, e.g. "My gf just left me", "I've had diarrhea for 3 days", "I've just dropped 5 buyins"... Notice that they're all the same level of crapness? It's just that a lot of your friends/your psychologist don't understand poker, so it's necessary to come here for counselling.

I agree that sometimes you have to get it off your chest, but repeatedly copying and pasting bad beat HHs to someone on AIM is just stupid. Telling someone, "damn, 400bb pot and my flush just lost to a rivered boat" is fine every so often, but I know people who will copy and paste lost 60/40s from an MTT to me on AIM. That is just effing retarded. I just don't read them.

Yeah, but how do you know it's a 60/40 unless you read it?



I got a badass version of Bug Eyes you should hear.

Originally Posted by sejje

You're whining about not liking whiners?

yup

Why don't you just turn off your messaging program?

wouldn't this approximate getting rid of your phone because too many salesmen called your house?

Originally Posted by Dislexsik

What about losing a 400BB+ pot when getting 2outered? :P

as long as you don't make a habit of it, there's nothing wrong with it.

by the way, I make awesome posts when I'm extremely tired, lol.

What about when Mansion got two outered FTW?!?!

I didn't see anybody complaining about that INT return for a TD!

Originally Posted by Lukie

Originally Posted by sejje

You're whining about not liking whiners?

yup

Why don't you just turn off your messaging program?

wouldn't this approximate getting rid of your phone because too many salesmen called your house?

No, it'd be approximating taking the call of said telemarketers and then bitching about how much you hate them.

lukie wouldnt counsel me after my bad beats today

I whined in the prop bet thread, MUHAHAHA (but I also said I eas PLAYING bad too, right?)

Originally Posted by Lukie

*Cliff notes*

1. Life is rigged, deal with it. This includes 'friends'.

2 Stop complaining about 'friends'. If you lose to me (Lukie), fine, but your typical "I'm not attractive", "girls don't find me interesting", etc is not acceptable to show.

3. Variance sucks. I know it and I do not care.

4. Most people can't deal with the mental aspect of this brutal game (life). If you need proof, goto the gym. Look at any fat, pale, balding, ugly dude trying to work out and you will see what I am referring to.

5. I would be in a very good mood if that chick hadn't walked away from me after obviously hitting on me. I am going to bed irritated as the tone of this post no doubt shows.

FYP

hahaha, swiggidy, that's awesome.

Originally Posted by Lukie

Why don't you just turn off your messaging program?

wouldn't this approximate getting rid of your phone because too many salesmen called your house?

I imagine, of course I did get rid of my house phone.

In any event, I think it would be fairly stupid not to use the block feature on people who you know are just going to send you their bad beats. If they're people that you actually enjoy conversation with, then I imagine you should confront them and let them know you don't want to hear their bad beat stories, and that should solve that.

HEhehe i see i still have you on my contact list Lukie....

Originally Posted by swiggidy

Originally Posted by Lukie

*Cliff notes*

1. Life is rigged, deal with it. This includes 'friends'.

2 Stop complaining about 'friends'. If you lose to me (Lukie), fine, but your typical "I'm not attractive", "girls don't find me interesting", etc is not acceptable to show.

3. Variance sucks. I know it and I do not care.

4. Most people can't deal with the mental aspect of this brutal game (life). If you need proof, goto the gym. Look at any fat, pale, balding, ugly dude trying to work out and you will see what I am referring to.

5. I would be in a very good mood if that chick hadn't walked away from me after obviously hitting on me. I am going to bed irritated as the tone of this post no doubt shows.

FYP

POTM

Originally Posted by sejje

Originally Posted by Lukie

Why don't you just turn off your messaging program?

wouldn't this approximate getting rid of your phone because too many salesmen called your house?

I imagine, of course I did get rid of my house phone.

In any event, I think it would be fairly stupid not to use the block feature on people who you know are just going to send you their bad beats. If they're people that you actually enjoy conversation with, then I imagine you should confront them and let them know you don't want to hear their bad beat stories, and that should solve that.

cool, so overall, do you agree with my post?

Lukie, I would have a lot more respect for this post if you weren't on the biggest upswing of your poker career whilst writing it.

Originally Posted by Renton

Lukie, I would have a lot more respect for this post if you weren't on the biggest upswing of your poker career whilst writing it.

In fairness, this upswing isn't my biggest ever, and actually came after my worst downswing ever, and I'm not even up THAT much in november.

This was my attitude (quoted from the shorthanded thread).

Ok, I'm going to make this quick.

October: Best month ever. I basically started playing again after a couple month layoff in the early-mid stages of this month.

November (ignoring the first couple days of the month to make this post sound more badass): worst month ever. I'm down about 12k. Over 100% of this has come from 2/4 and 5/10, split roughly equal. For simplicity's sake, lets say I'm at -7k each, and +2k at 3/6.

This is unacceptable. I refuse to pull the variance card. I need to play better.

[insert more tough talk....]

I'm not trying to say that variance isn't a powerful thing because it most certainly is. However, some people make far too big a deal about it and don't realize they are barely winning players and have massive swings not because of bad beats, but because they have glaringly big leaks in their game.

I posted this in NL strategies because, even though I did not say this, I feel that if people just ignored the bad beats and cold decks, and instead focused on always playing the best poker they could (and ACTIVELY TRIED TO IMPROVE THEIR PLAY instead of just bitching), they would become much better players. I firmly believe this to be true. That and constantly being bombarded with bad beats from other poker players genuinely does get annoying.

Based on the responses in this thread, it seems not too many people share my point of view, which of course has never bothered me.

got 2 outered on a nut straight earlier today but i didnt let it get to me. kinda made me feel good that i got my stack in with the best of it. Who cares that it was 130bb I played it right.

Lucky me the guy stayed at the table for the remainder of the nite and I was able to make enough money back to turn a profit for the session.

Lukie, my comment was basically in jest. I agree with everything you are saying. I'm obviously pretty guilty of complaining about variance, myself. You know this.

What I am saying is, its much much easier said than done, and when you are running well, its very easy to make posts like these, because of the general air of optimism that exists in your psyche during these times of greener pastures.

NO ONE here is good enough (by "good enough," i mean "emotionally neutered enough") to go on a two digit buyin downswing and not exhibit even the smallest amount of negative emotion to himself and those that surround him. Its a natural countermeasure that exists within us to validate our own legitimacy as players.

Originally Posted by thizzSantaCruz

got 2 outered on a nut straight earlier today but i didnt let it get to me. kinda made me feel good that i got my stack in with the best of it. Who cares that it was 130bb I played it right.

Lucky me the guy stayed at the table for the remainder of the nite and I was able to make enough money back to turn a profit for the session.

this is awesome, and certainly better then whining/tilting off some more $$$, then tilting more, chasing losses at higher stakes when you're tired, etc., thats for sure.

Originally Posted by Renton

Lukie, my comment was basically in jest. I agree with everything you are saying. I'm obviously pretty guilty of complaining about variance, myself. You know this.

yeah I know. FWIW, this post had pretty much nothing to do with you. It's probably hard to tell, but I'm trying to help and not bitch with this post, although there's probably a really, really fine line there.

What I am saying is, its much much easier said than done, and when you are running well, its very easy to make posts like these, because of the general air of optimism that exists in your psyche during these times of greener pastures.

NO ONE here is good enough (by "good enough," i mean "emotionally neutered enough") to go on a two digit buyin downswing and not exhibit even the smallest amount of negative emotion to himself and those that surround him. Its a natural countermeasure that exists within us to validate our own legitimacy as players.

meh, I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with this, but it does sound very cool and I'm sure for that reason it will stick with some people in their minds. I think the ideas are good and they probably apply to most people, but to say NO ONE is emotionally tough enough to avoid this is something that I disagree with.

Keep in mind, that from a $$$ standpoint, I had my worst downswing EVER this month. I've had worse in terms of % and worse in terms of buyins though.

I'm not going to lie and say I was playing perfect poker. I was spewing everywhere, but that was true even before the downswing started. Was I frustrated, possibly tilting at times? Yup. Did I complain to the whole world about my problems, making the situation 100x worse? Nope. Did I just run away from my problems, letting my game deteriorate? Nope, although I'm not trying to suggest that it's never a good idea, because it's a good last resort I think. I'll tell you what I did do, I sat down and told myself that I need to play better, stop telling myself that I'm the unluckiest SOB alive, and just be an untiltable, unstoppable machine basically. Despite dropping 4 or so buyins tonight, I'm still up over 40 buyins in the last two weeks. I don't even want to think about how badly I could have manged that situation up. I don't want to come off as an arrogant douchebag, but I'd like to believe that some people out there could learn from how I handed this one. I was tempted to chase losses at 10/20, believe me, and even had a decent bankroll for it.

Originally Posted by Renton

NO ONE here is good enough (by "good enough," i mean "emotionally neutered enough") to go on a two digit buyin downswing and not exhibit even the smallest amount of negative emotion to himself and those that surround him. Its a natural countermeasure that exists within us to validate our own legitimacy as players.

I partially disagree. When you lose that many buy-ins, it's natural to start doubting your ability and the bad beats definitely hurt more, but I don't think it's that hard to avoid complaining about bad beats to other people. Just don't do it, because it doesn't help anything.

I'll admit I'm a micro stakes player, but I've never understood the allure of talking about bad beats unless the odds were 1/1000 or for life changing amounts of cash. Then again, I play recreationally.

I think the biggest problem with some posts in the bad beats is the fact that they don't have BR management. Therefore it gets to them imo

In my experience variance doesn't exist, at least not for the quality player. Everytime I read on these boards that losing streaks are just negative variance is starting to drive me nuts. For variance to exist there must be both positive and negative variance. This may happen for average Joe, but not for the winning player that most of us that frequent this forum are. It does not happen for the winning player becasue we do not make the same mistakes that Joe makes. We do not chase the 2,3,4 outers to the river calling PSBs the whole way. If we did then maybe we could have some positive variance. Each hand is a seperate event for us, our decisions are based on our poker abilities. We make decisions that effect that hand and sometimes future hands. When our decisions are wrong we lose, when we are right we win. We are right more times than Joe that is why we win. This does not mean that we don't spike that 2 outer every now and again or hit that back door straight it is that we are not hoping for it as Joe does. As far as the Bad Beats go Joe is going to give them and we are going to take them.

Now why some of us have these dwonswings? I haven't figured that out yet. Is it tilting, bad play, card dead, being out played, bad breath, etc.? I currently think it is a failure to adjust. This may be adjusting to bad players, bad tables, bad position. When people say that they are not on their A game is this because they are not playing their best? Maybe, but it could also be that they aren't adjusting. Maybe their normal game is not good for the table that they are on. There are a lot of players on here whose game only works on certain tables, which is fine. I believe I am currently one of these players which is why I have regular downswings.

You're kidding, right? I know what you're trying to say but you really need ti understand the terminology.

Variance is the effect of probability on short term results. The nature of probability means that from time to time, you're going to get bunches of negative variance and bunches of positive variance, and it's this sense that is most used on FTR.

But you also have to understand that EVERY player is equally affected by variance, no matter how bad or good they are. Let's assume we have the perfect player, as you rather generously seem to think exists, above. This player - I'll call him Lukie - makes +EV moves on every hand. Now, this being poker, there'll be a good number - a majority, maybe - of hands where he is 55% or 60% favourite. What this means is that he's going to lose a large minority of these hands. Every now and again - I'm not mathematically inclined enough to work out exactly HOW often - he will lose five, seven, even ten 55/45s in a row DESPITE PLAYING PERFECT POKER. This is variance.

If playing well vs playing badly was nothing more than playing the near nuts versus a dude with 2 outs, then yes, negative variance would be very, very rare indeed. Similarly, if there were fish out there who did nothing BUT chase 2-outers, well, they'd last a split second in poker terms. In reality, poker is much, much more about decisions - made with incomplete information - where if you're 70% favourite you should be ecstatic.

Your second paragraph, btw, is fine and right and all but that's not variance, that's simple sub-optimal play, the kind of thing we are all trying to avoid and improve. The more your play sucks, the less you will be able to counter natural variance - this is why bad players suffer more from downswings than good players, and it's why what people need to concentrate on is getting better at poker, not shaking their fists at the poker gods for letting QTo hit their flush on the river (damn you, poker gods!!).

biondino, nice posts, I agree with everything, including:

1) your explanations of variance

2) your description of Lukie as the perfect player

3) not letting #1 affect your play, the gist of my original post (I think?)

Is there such a thing as "running bad" or a downswing?

The odds of you winning/losing a 60/40 are the same as they were the last time, therefore how can "running bad" exist?

How many people here have layed down AA after a relatively friendly flop without putting another cent in, and been correct in doing so? I'm sure a lot of you have, but the point is...

I think Lukie makes a great point about leaks as it relates to swings. A lot of swings with a lot of players directly relates to them being break even or only slightly winning players as a result of their marginal decision making.

Originally Posted by Ash256

Is there such a thing as "running bad" or a downswing?

The odds of you winning/losing a 60/40 are the same as they were the last time, therefore how can "running bad" exist?

If you flip a coin N times I believe the average consecutive streak of loosing (or winning) is ln(N). So you take 128 coinflips in a row you will likely loose 7 in a row and win 7 in a row somewhere in that 128.

The point you're trying to make is, "because hero looses 5 in a row" does not mean he is about to loose the next 2 (making his 7 in a row). The fact that you are running bad now, does not affect the chances of you winning your next flip.

To some degree I was kidding. My point is that because we are good players we will suffer many more bad beats than we will ever give out. I am playing 15,000 hands a week right now and I could propably give you about 30 hands where I was sucked out on by a less than 4 outer just this week. However I don't think I have 5 hands where I gave out a beat of this nature. People in these forums continue to use the variance card whenever they are "running bad" i.e. losing 6 coin flips in a row. This may be true but if we remove variance from our equation it may gve us a more solution based system for solving these downsings that occur.

Hey Rondavu where you playing $100nl 6 max on Stars yesterday? I think you were at one of my tables?

Originally Posted by Jager

Hey Rondavu were you playing $100nl 6 max on Stars yesterday? I think you were at one of my tables?

Yes