Lost my mojo and confidence? $1/2 NL live tales

Hey guys,

I haven't posted here in years. Back in 2005-2007 I was a 4-tabling 6-max break even player online. At the time I was 18-20 and probably thought I was a much better player than I really was. Anyway, fast forward to now, online is dead in USA (to my knowledge) and I've only played friendly games the last couple years but have always beat my friends handily.

I'm 26 now, just finished grad school and started a new job where I could afford to set aside some of my paycheck each week towards my bankroll and start building up my bankroll playing $1/2 NL live. I only play recreationally a few hours every weekend. I mostly play fairly TAG style, I don't bluff much, I usually let other people make mistakes and try to value bet them or get them to commit their stack. Here were my stats up until tonight:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4497/wmn1.png

Then I played tonight and ran into some trouble.

UTG I raised $15 with QQ. Folded to button who reraised to $30. I reraised to $60. He pushed AI and I called for $200 more. He flipped over KK. Is this standard at live-tables? Should I have been less of an idiot and realized I was behind after putting my $60 in? I'm thinking I should have thought "at best I am a coin flip."

Later in the night, I am UTG again with KK. I raise $15 PF and get two callers. Flop comes 4-4-J. I bet $30, next to act calls $30, villain raises to $60, I push AI for $200 more. 2nd to act folds, villain calls AI for $200 more. Villain flips over Q4 and the trips hold up.

Now my stats look like this:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8743/mbmw.png

I know my sample size is incredibly small but I just went from thinking I was a solid player to questioning myself and whether I can hack it. I think the QQ, maybe I should have laid that down, but would anyone in their right mind put the villain on a 4 in the 2nd hand? I don't really tilt. I just told myself him calling $15 PF with Q4 is a losing play and I'll get it back in the longrun.

Sorry for the rant I just had an inflated ego after having 6 winning sessions and now I see how 1 big losing session can really fuck with my $ win rate, etc. Ahhhhhhh!

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Originally Posted by johnnyBuz

I just had an inflated ego after having 6 winning sessions

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Originally Posted by ImSavy

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Yah I know that is part of it but also I think at $1/2 NL you can play a pretty low variance style. I don't seek out 52/48 % +EV plays. I usually play pretty solid and TAG and wait for other people to make mistakes. The garbage I see people call with PF at $1/2 makes me sick I feel like a competent player should win every session if they are willing to play with 3 BI's per session.

Funny... I lost my johnny.

Confidence is easy. Just accept that it's the variance that keeps losers coming back, and even winners face variance. No one can reasonably expect to have all sessions be winning sessions.


A typical varinace in NLHE is ~80 - 90 bb/100. A typical winrate of a player crushing their stakes is ~15 - 25 bb/100.
So even if you had a high winrate, and a low variance, you'd still be facing this:

25 +/- 80 bb/100
OR
-55 to +105 bb/100

So, somewhere between a loss of 55 bb and a win of 105 bb each 100 hands.
That's at 1 sigma, or 68% confidence. So 32% of the time, you'll run outside those limits.

Why don't u use some tracking software? We need stats to tell u what you're doing right or wrong.

Tracking software for live games?

Yeah haven't you heard? PT released a live HUD that you can wear in games as long as the casino lets you play with a motorcycle helmet on.

And OP, you've played 24 hours of live. Assuming somewhere around 25-30 hands an hour, we're talking about 600-700 hands. Basically, you might be a losing player and you don't know it. Sorry to say it, but if you need tens of thousands of hands online to get a decent sample, it's actually no different live. Look up confidence intervals, I think there are calculators out there for use in the context of poker winrates. Mojo already touched on it. It will tell you the upper and lower bounds of your likely winrate at a certain level of confidence, i.e. you're a marginal loser or an ok winner with 95% confidence, that sort of thing. You will see how many hands you need to put in to be "sure" you're winning....

Oh and remember that live rake is killer and will severely affect your win rate.

I just realized that you made a thread after losing 2 buyins in ~100 hands. You should realize this fact too, and that you deserve to be slapped out of your narcissism. :D

(By the way, hoping to sustain a $30/hour winrate at 1-2 is a fool's hope. To put that into perspective, that's about 60BB/100 hands.)

I've been posting about some of my live escapades at 2/5, 5/5 and 5/10 on my blog, if you wanted to check it out.

I'm in a similar situation to you. had a hot run the last 5-6 visits and just got smoked my last visit. I agree with the posters here saying that the true volume of hands you've put in is very low and it's hard to read much into it. Variance is a cruel cruel thing.

As for your hands, you're probably somewhat over-optimistic with QQ hoping to open UTG, 4b and call off QQ in full ring and expect to be good very often. That is unless your games are very aggro, which I doubt 1/2 is.

J44 hand - was the board two tone? If it was two tone then I can't blame you for just getting it in there. If it's rainbow I think calling the flop raise and keeping any bluffs in is probably best. Shoving in this spot on a rainbow board is just going to get called by AJ or better hands. Also, would you have just shoved it flop was J99? I think live players are bad enough that you should expect 4x to be much more likely than what you would expect playing online or something.

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The garbage I see people call with PF at $1/2 makes me sick

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would anyone in their right mind put the villain on a 4 in the 2nd hand?

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You see people playing garbage constantly and then you find it hard to believe someone could have 4x?

If you can't embrace variance then I'm going to say that live poker isn't for you. The long run is a loooooooong time in live poker.