Learn Texas Holdem

Question: I have learnt to play texas-holdem from your site about 2 month ago. I deposited 25$ on paradise poker and built from there to 600$ playing mainly NL (2$, 10$ and now 25$). What is worrying me is my daily swings. I started yesterday with 450 go to 650 and today dropped to 550... I play about 400 hands a day two tables NL 25$. Are these normal swings ? or I play too wild ?

Ok another question.. do you have any plans writing about other forms of poker ? omaha maybe ?

Best regards !

Piotr

Answer: No matter how good of a player you are, you are going to have swings in your bankroll. There are a couple different types of swings. There are swings where you are "in" for a lot whenever you play, but you can still pull of a win -- like you are describing here. Then there is the swing when you "running bad." When you are running bad it seems like the whole world is against you and no matter what you do you can't win a pot. How long you can be in a slump is hard to say.

I read an article once about running badly and it said that standard deviation could be such that a 6 month to a 1 year slump is possible. I find that hard to believe, especially if you are playing more than a few times a week. I think if you are getting slaughtered that long, other factors are responsible (which I'll get to below).

To get an idea of what is normal, let's first go over what a swing actually is. There is the unluckiness inherent in poker that can't be avoided. Your Aces will get cracked all the time. Holdem is a game of small edges, which is a good thing actually because it keeps losing players coming back. It can also be very frustrating when you are losing all your good hands to unluckiness, but that is par for the course.

You can't win every hand. If you are a 3:1 favorite, you still lose quite a bit. And a 3:1 favorite in holdem is huge. Think about it for a second, if your opponet has a 1 in 4 chance of beating you and you play 100 hands, he beats you 25% of the time. And remember too that his 25 winning hands don't have to be evenly distributed throughout those 100 hands; he could beat you 15 times in a row, then none for a while. In addition to the luck factor, there is also the fact that sometimes people have you legitimately beat and you can't get away from your hand (taking KK against AA, for example).

And those factors are just the what compromise your win rate if you are playing ideal poker. No one can play perfect poker all the time though and often times losing brings on a whole host of other problems. When you get run down, you can start paying off more hands than you normally would out of frustration. You can also reevaluate your style and rationalize all kinds of plays you would never consider if you weren't having a bad day/week/month. It is very important -- if you plan on playing poker for years -- to develop a strategy that you are confident will win; it will be your own saving grace when everything seems as though it isn't going your way. See great players aren't made on good days, they are made on bad days.

Any jackass can win if the cards are going his way. It takes a pro though to have the foresight to not lose half his bankroll when the unluckiness rears its ugly head. Keeping that in mind really helps to even your temper out and keep you out of tilt. I'll even repeat it here: Your true colors as a player are shown, not when you are getting cards, but when you are getting your ass kicked.

Now that we have talked a bit about swings in general, let's get to your specific question. It would be hard for me to say exactly what is typical or optimal for you. I don't think there is any one rule. What I would be concerned with is how you are winning. The ultimate measurement of whether you are playing well or not is your consistency. If you can win over a long period of time, most likely you are playing decently. It wouldn't be correct for me to look at one day and tell you whether or not you are playing too loosely.

Some games are very wild which adds volatility to your bankroll. In those games, it is very easy to be in for even 4 or more racks/buy-ins. Another measurement for if you are playing well, in addition to the consistency, is how you are winning. Often times in poker we give ourselves too much credit and assume our losing is unluckiness. Everyday I play I see huge hypocrites. In one hand they lose with their big pairs to someone catching a lucky card and they bitch and moan. Then within 5 minutes they do they same exact bad beat to someone else and think it's good play -- stacking their chips up in a smug way or saying something ignorant like "I've had my Aces cracked all day, so it's my turn." Steer clear of all that nonsense and make a concerted effort to understand why it is you win and why you lost.

Looking only at the money at the end of one day doesn't tell the whole story. You may have played like a complete donkey yet gotten lucky. On another day you may have played perfectly, but you got reamed. Take pride in playing well and you will win. On the days when you are in for a few buy-ins playing online, stop, take a break and assess what you are doing and how you have lost so far.

If you've been the favorite in the hands you've played, or you couldn't lay something down and it was legitimate, be ok with it. Don't let the swings bug you. Just make sure you always are critical of how you play and try to improve it. Most excellent players don't even do this. They have a hard time with ego and it gets in the way of their skills.

So to finish up with swings, be more interested in your consistency in winning and how it is you actually win, than the amount you are in for at a single day.