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When is it variance, when is it a leak? (1 Viewer)

MrCatPants

MrCatPants

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I've been playing with the same Mavens crew for the whole pandemic at this point and the game has been pretty good to me - my win rate over the last year (playing mainly PLO8 and 5 card PLO8) is in the double digits of BBs an hour (and a little more than that per 100 hands). That said, over the last ~60 hours/1500 hands or so I've been in the negative - not huge, but relatively consistently. Been chalking it up to variance, but it got me thinking - what's the line between 'variance' and a leak (or the game/players changing)? I don't want to be crying variance if I should be doing some self-reflection.
 
Your players may not be static, some of them may be studying and improving. Them closing their leaks may be affecting your win rate. You might want to look at the hands you are losing and see if your equity was good or not. Also, it might be a simple as they are not paying off your winners as much. Once you see what is driving the change you can make adjustments.
 
1500 hands is nowhere close to enough to establish a leak or variance imho.
 
How do you know your winning wasnt the variance? And now, reality has crashed the party.

J/K...but what if?

For me, I suffer from positive tilt...i.e. I get ballsy. Sometimes, I need to recalibrate and remind myself that bluffing with 97s is not a great idea long term just because it worked once.
 
PLO8 and BigO are the most solved versions of poker. Winning players will win consistently time after time. That isn’t to say a cooler in the biggest pot of the night can’t change that. Are you losing a few key hands that are causing the losses? Or are you widening your range a little to much now? Are the other players folding more often preflop? After a year of playing the same game with the same people I would expect that they should be improving to some degree. It is hard to play for that long and not get better if they haven’t gone bust yet. Most likely the skill gap has closed some.
 
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I've been getting my teeth kicked in live for over a month now

Analyze the hands you won and lost. Did you miss spots for value, did you chase or pay off when you shouldn't? Did you stay in games where the only way to make $$$ is to cooler someone?

If you made mistakes, acknowledge them and make adjustments. If you're just running bad, it happens.

I've lost some massive pots where my opponents had 7% and 4% equity. But I've also played in games where my post-flop edge is lessened because the amount of preflop straddling made stacks super shallow, resulting in closer equities when you commit preflop for stacks
 
Rhodeman77 said:
PLO8 and BigO are the most solved versions of poker. Winning players will win consistently time after time. That isn’t to say a cooler in the biggest pot of the night can’t change that. Are you losing a few key hands that are causing the losses? Or are you widening your range a little to much now? Are the other players folding more often preflop? After a year of playing the same game with the same people I would expect that they should be improving to some degree. It is hard to play for that long and not get better if they haven’t gone bust yet. Most likely the skill gap has closed some.
Click to expand...
It's been a lot of situations with me building pots that end up being for other people :)

e.g. hands like :as: :2h::4s::8h:

flop comes :3s::8s::th:
turn :kc:
river :jd:

wrap comes in, no low or flush.

Preflop ranges seem to be in the same range - mavens doesn't do VPIP, but flops seen, and I'm in the same range I usually am.
 
grebe said:
How do you know your winning wasnt the variance? And now, reality has crashed the party.

J/K...but what if?

For me, I suffer from positive tilt...i.e. I get ballsy. Sometimes, I need to recalibrate and remind myself that bluffing with 97s is not a great idea long term just because it worked once.
Click to expand...
Original sample is about 20k hands/700 hours over a year - so don't think that was variance.
 
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MrCatPants said:
It's been a lot of situations with me building pots that end up being for other people :)

e.g. hands like :as: :2h::4s::8h:

flop comes :3s::8s::th:
turn :kc:
river :jd:

wrap comes in, no low or flush.

Preflop ranges seem to be in the same range - mavens doesn't do VPIP, but flops seen, and I'm in the same range I usually am.
Click to expand...

that is a hand/flop you definitely want to be piling the money in with. Those are the cooler hands that can ruin a session when you miss.
 
MrCatPants said:
Original sample is about 20k hands/700 hours over a yeah - so don't think that was variance.
Click to expand...
I was kidding. I don't know you, so no way I would ever give you advice like that for reals. Hell, IF I did know you, I probably couldnt give you that advice.
 
trigs said:
Oh, so you were just referring to preflop starting hands? That I can understand.
Click to expand...

much like Limit poker, preflop hand selection is the biggest leak most people have and is the easiest to fix. If you are folding most of the mediocre hands preflop you are avoiding a lot of the really tough post flop spots.

Many people that don’t understand Hi/Lo games go broke in spots like this:

they have :kc::ks::qs::jd: on a:kh::3h::5d: and want to get it all and will be vs.:ah::2h::7d::4d:


Flopping the nuts and the hand is a huge dog. I see these types of hands happen a lot!

B1DE2E4B-F5E6-46B9-83F4-0330E05752E7.png

Now I will play the above high only hand for cheap preflop, but I am not trying to get my stack in on that flop. I would check call or if there is a lot of betting check fold even. They only way I would be very aggressive is if there were 2 high cards on the flop.
 
Rhodeman77 said:
much like Limit poker, preflop hand selection is the biggest leak most people have and is the easiest to fix. If you are folding most of the mediocre hands preflop you are avoiding a lot of the really tough post flop spots.

Many people that don’t understand Hi/Lo games go broke in spots like this:

they have :kc::ks::qs::jd: on a:kh::3h::5d: and want to get it all and will be vs.:ah::2h::7d::4d:


Flopping the nuts and the hand is a huge dog. I see these types of hands happen a lot!

View attachment 684179
Now I will play the above high only hand for cheap preflop, but I am not trying to get my stack in on that flop. I would check call or if there is a lot of betting check fold even. They only way I would be very aggressive is if there were 2 high cards on the flop.
Click to expand...
As we say in my game: "top set sucks".
 
Lately, I always first suffer a big suck-out, which is variance, and then I tilt and do something stupid to get rid of the rest of my money and relax. The latter is a leak :)
 
Coyote said:
Lately, I always first suffer a big suck-out, which is variance, and then I tilt and do something stupid to get rid of the rest of my money and relax. The latter is a leak :)
Click to expand...
That is a common occurrence in my game.
 

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