Variance Is A BIATCH!!

Yea i've been playing mediocre to bad poker since the end of March and i know most players like to blame variance rather than face the fact that they are sucking big time. But i think i know the difference.

I played several $3 45 man sngs lastnight and took some of the most outrageous beats i've ever had. I'm talking about getting it in with flopped sets on the flop and being the loser by the river. It was sick, i think i lost at least 4 games with flopped sets lastnight. The good thing though is that i did not tilt at all.

I'm taking beats on both Stars and Fulltilt, but its worst on Stars at the moment. I played again this morning and i have to say i almost tilted. It was more of the same... I cant win a race to save my life, I cant win when i have them dominated or when i flop sets it seems. its brutal. And i'm talking about getting these hands in either preflop or on the flop, no cuteness.

Typical situation:
I get it in 3 times vs. 1 opponent in a $4 180 man sng this morning. Twice i have him dominated AJ vs. AT and AQ vs QJ and lose. Third time was a race, i flopped two pair in sb and he had TP+NFD.nh gg.


I can't even suck out properly. bb=800 My M=8 i shove in LP with A8, bb calls with JJ. I flop an ace...

ME:yay! finally my luck as changed!!
Poker Gods: not so fast my friend... Turn = club, river = club
Poker Gods: LOL BB wins with flush
ME:s;gkgryetteggds@#$@%***@#$##$@

/end whine

I think i've held up good so far, but will try to stay away from tables for rest of weekend.

Variance & Tilt in micro stakes sngs

On average how many tournaments would you expect to win in a given amount of tournaments? I'm not sure exactly but we all have a rough idea in our heads, even if we have never articulated it to ourselves, that we are comfortable with. Beyond which we start to feel the pressure of not winning. This number is different depending on your skill level and the type of tournaments you play.

Beginning last friday, I've gone 72 tournaments without winning a single one. The buy-ins range from the $3 & $6 45 man turbo sngs to the $4 180s and a few low buy-in MTTs. Over this time i've had 2 2nd, 1 7th place finish in the $3 45 sngs, a 5th in a $4 180 sngs and a 214th in a $3 mtt... thats it. Over this time it seemed that i could not catch a break, that no hand was safe. It was just impossible to win a race. Villians called with complete crap and still won against me. It was brutal.

However, Variance in sngs and poker in general is inevitable. You just have to be prepared for it, be able accept it and continue to play your A game. How do you prepare for variance? Its one thing to know what variance is. But when your AA gets crushed by A2o or Q4o as happened to me just lastnight, its hard to sit there and go 'well thats just variance'.

For me, after playing 6 max cash games and having huge swings of hundreds of dollars @ 50nl i'm better able accept losing 20+ tournies in a row, after all its just not that much money. So first step in dealing with variance i'd say is knowing your tolerance level and having proper bankroll management. By bankroll managment i'm not talking about what is considered standard on the forums, but what you're comfortable with. Being comfortable for me means that losing 20 x avg. buy-in doesn't make me go "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST LOST $X DOLLARSSS!!!!"

The 2nd step is to realize that you don't 'deserve' to win, because there is no deserve in poker. An excellent article that illustrates this point is called The Grossness (or beauty) of poker. An excerpt taken directly from that article really illustrates this;

Three poker playing friends are each offered 100 separate bets in which they’re a 2 to 1 favorite. They can place a $400 wager on each individual bet. In other words, 65% of the time, they win $400; 35% of the time, they lose $400. Now at the end of the 100 bets, they compare results to see how they’ve done and to their surprise, each has a different bankroll, in some cases, thousands of dollars apart. Three different guys, all making the same wager. Three very different results and likely, three very different opinions of their game.

That said, I was still unable to completely accept variance and therefore experienced variance's closest relative;Tilt.

Even pros tilt, it is almost just as inevitable as variance. I personally think that its impossible to not tilt ever, but we can manage tilt. The key to managing tilt imo is recognizing what triggers your tilt response, recognizing that you are tilted and having a pre-planned response to being tilted.

I don't tilt as easily as i use to but there are several things that tilt me.

1. Consecutive beats over a short period of time
2. extremely poor play by opponents... e.g. L/c preflop with Q4o, Callings 2/3rd psb on flop with gutshot drw, calling another 2/3rd psb on turn with gutshot and a pair, then making two pair on river to take down my AA

These are the two that come to mind right away. I very rarely tilt because my AA loses to something like 77 AI pf or when it flops a set on the flop, but bad play as in #2 above gets me.

Of course there are different levels of tilt so recognizing that you are tilted is also very important. There is full blown monkey tilt, where you completely lose control. There is the slow creeping tilt, where you slowly get looser and looser limping hands you normally fold etc etc. There is tilt where you decide to play hands differently than you would normally; slow playing big PPs, larger than normal open raises with AK, etc etc.

To manage tilt effectively you should have a plan on how to deal with tilt... is it to stop playing and take a walk, sit out for a short while... take a few days off. i have one of those squeeze balls that i throw sometimes, other times i just stop playing for the night... in extreme cases i may take a few days off.

SOUND OFF: what works for you? how do you handle variance and tilt?

Add your ideas on the subject.

gl at the tables and don't tilt!

April sucks!

The losing continues. I played awful at 100NL i know, but my play at 50NL was pretty good. I just had to fold a lot of big hands, got coollers and bad beats. I just feel sick about it. April's not supposed to be like this.

Tilted for the first time today when a guy called my 4xbb+1 raise with 85s in sb, then calls 3/4 psb on flop to make his gutshot str8 on turn which cracked my QQs. Fuck It. this came right after my 77 fell to AK on the river for a stack. I sat out all tables immediately.Also there was this one table where it seems every pot i was in the flop came mono. ok maybe not 'every pot' but something like 1/5 every pot played for 30minutes came mono or 2flushed. I noticed because i always had to fold a hand and i never had the flush card.

funny thing is during this whole thing i think i maybe lost about 2 or 3 buy-ins to tilt total. I would just play my sessions, and when i ended i would be supprise to see how much i'm down because i felt i played pretty good. But things have just not been going my way.

I read an old post by Brian Townsend on 2p2 the other day, in which he says if you're losing its your own fault don't point the finger else where. I will take a few days, let my head clear then re-examine my hh. I know that i'm making mistakes i just have to correct them. maybe play some donkaments on stars to pass time.



btw... thanks for the kind words Mark.