Card Dead - Variance ? how long can it last ?

My God i've gone card dead ! and its really annoying

I play the smallest micros and have put in about 10k hands in the last 2 weeks and done ok - building my BR up from £20 to £110.

thing is i've gone completely card dead and am having to fold nearly every hand, even when i enter a hand i miss the flop - the few bluffs i've tried haven't worked and when i hit the flop someone hits it higher. to make it even worse i flopped a monster full house, got all the money in, only for foe to hit K on turn and K on river to give him higher full house than my Q FH.

how long can this last? its been going on for days now and its definately affecting how i'm playing. The banroll is going downhill.

i'm not going down the route of chasing losses just yet, but i can feel a dark side of me trying to get out !

i generally play tight and try to play against people who enter every pot but i can feel myself loosening up hour by hour !

does eveyone experience this ? and how do you keep your mind on a good game? is it time to take a break ?

Truffle.

10K hands is a very small sample, and in fairness you've increased your bankroll by 450%, sorry for asking but how on earth do you think that is card dead ?

I've played breakeven poker over 100K hands, several times.

yeah i know its a small sample (i just checked its actually just under 14k which is still small but a lot for me) i'm probably just venting.

i built up the bankroll v.quickly playing one or 2 tables and identifying weaker players who spew money. i'm now playing 2-3 tables but i can't seem to get playable hands for days now. i tried 5 tables which is a lot for me hoping to see more cards therefore more chance of better hands, but no luck so far. I may just be having a bad week.

i just wondered if its something everyone comes accross at some point in their game and thought if i knew what to expect, i may handle it better in the future, as i'm trying to put in a lot of time and thousands of hands instead of being a recreational, losing player.

thats a lot of tables to increase to from 1 or 2.

Being card dead happens. Yeah its normal and I guess it can last a long time. The more important thing is that when you get cards not to get overly excited because you can lose more money overplaying a "good" hand that looks better to you because of circumstance. This is often (for me) what ends up resulting in a downswing.
Card dead (ish) for a couple hundred hands I pick up AA or KK and end losing my stack some place because I didn't want to believe that my good hand could be beat. After all I was patient, right? I mean I played good and tight waiting for those cards so I deserve to win the hand more than the other guy, right?
Wrong.
Play a tight game, be aggressive, but don't get confused and think that you have earned the right to a pot because you are playing tight.

Play 1 or 2 tables until you can beat the game very consistently and then add 1 more for several thousand hands. When you STILL beat it consistently add another table. Why are we in such a hurry to add more and more tables? I don't do this professionally (thank god or I'd be broke a couple times I'm sure) so I try to play a game I can win, which is not very often more than four tables.
If I get REAL good at four (I wont because by then I'll have moved up and I'm not about to increase tables and change stakes, if anything I'll go back to two tables) then I'll add one more.

thanks for the reply Uber,

yes, i've experienced that very same thing - you get AA & think 'he's betting into me wot an idiot and i Must win b'cos i haven't had a good hand in ages and now i have AA !'
it becomes impossible to put down, even when you know he's just hit 2 pair on the turn.

and then playing against people who play almost every hand and thinking - i must win this time, he's hit the flop big every time, but surely not this time as well - and donk a load of money off to him!

i was playing more tables to ease the boredom and to stop myself from playing weak hands, i found myself slipping into playing cards that look pretty, hoping to flop flushes etc etc. so i thought more tables tighter starting hands - it is too many for me though i'm back to 1 or 2. now playing 2p/4p and i'm hoping to build my BR up to about £250 then have a go at 5p/10p (25 buyins).

my god i've just done it again while typing this - got AKs raised a player 10xbb who's playing everything and he called, flop A85, I bet pot he calls, turn is 6 i bet 3/4 pot he goes all in, i call and he shows 74. how can he even be in this pot with 74? doubled him up.

now normally i'd think 'oh well it'll come back to me eventually he's a donk', but theres this doubt building in me. i think i'm gonna play mega tight for a few hundred hands and see what happens.

it's standard variance, just like the fact that you multiplied your bankroll by over 5x in 10k hands was largely variance, regardless of how good you are. either you played appropriate stakes and ran very, very hot, or you played above your bankroll and were quite fortunate to not have even a very small bad run that broke your roll

it's no wonder so many people convince themselves poker is rigged. apparently everyone is wired to think all their wins are only because of how amazing they play and all losses are variance. it's pretty comical

When i am having a bad run playing hands in my range I normally look around and see that everyone is winning with really bad hands. I get to thinking hey I could play everything and win too.

THINK IT, DON'T DO IT!

dont even think it

Going up as fast as you did was just crazy. Your win rate had to be ridiculously high. With the hands you are getting now it is just going to even out. You can't expect to be a long term winner at rates like that. After a ton more hands, your win rate will slowly start to level out at what you are actually playing. Just keep your records up to date and if you start dipping down way to far take a good look at your game and adjust accordingly

Thanks EricG,

i think i'll play a load more hands tightly and see what happens. i think i might also start another thread asking for advice on how profitable 3betting is b'cos i don't do it enough.

anyway, back to the tables. i'm playing at work today, all my work is done so unless i get any customers in i'll be on for a good few hours.

thanks again,

Truffle

Try playing more tables to go through downswings quicker. 10k is a small
sample

It is much easier to play a lot of tables when you play very tight. I still go on tilt sometimes during a downswing, but I'm working on my tilt issues! Good luck to you. I hope you catch all the cards in your next session!

I have had samples sizes of 400k hands that had up to a 300% difference in terms of results. You can run very good and very bad for enormously long stretches of time in poker. Poker can be very brutal in that way.

I wish I was that card dead. I learned a long time ago, you can't win every hand. I still think I can, too funny.

I don't play cash but I went on a 20 buy in downswing last 2 days. Variance happens to everyone. I'm wondering if my winnings were because of a hot streak and I'm losing now because I'm shit. Hmmmmmmm????

im currently in a downswing rite now and ya it suks...im playing twice as much as i normally did to try to end it. Thats wat i advise u doing

I really wouldn't advise playing twice as much as you used to to try and end a bad run. Try playing less but focusing on each decision more, then after each session take some time to review how you have played and mark down any hands that you think you played wrong. Also make sure you are leaving time to study and read books, articles, forums as these will all give you new ideas and give you things to think about while you play.

If you can do all this and still play more than usual then go for it, but if you are just trying to get more and more hands under your belt without learning new things or finding out what you're doing wrong then be prepared to stay in downswing mode for a long time...

almost 200k hands, almost 1/3 being card dead, so 10k hands is nothing!

Two types of variance IMO - long stretches and short stretches.

Today's graph looks very strange; I went up 3 BIs in about 5 hands , played about 100 hands, went back down 3BIs in about 5 hands, and this repeated 3 times in the space of 500 hands until I won a big one and now I'm up and away

Variance is not cool, but it is a fact of life.. I truly believe that you can run bad, but most times when a player thinks he is running bad, he's usually playing bad and is probably on tilt. Tilt and downswings are a match made in the deepest depths of poker hell. You can be on a downswing because you are on tilt, or you can be on tilt because of a downswing. They always go hand in hand. I find that when I am in a downswing, I need to stop playing for a few hours or sometimes even a day or two. Then I can come back to the table with a clear head and play like I have some sense. I have been playing mostly tournaments because they seem to cost less when I go on tilt. I would rather lose a tourney buyin than several cash game buyins before having the sense to stop!

The probelm with statements about these large samples of positive or negative variance is that winrates aren't constant. They're always changing, the data from the start and end is gained in different conditions (you get better, table select better, start playing at different times of the day, have tilt issues, whatever).

you are not card dead, think about the stats of making any hand, starting or otherwise and tell us if you are running below expected.

I am now at a table. Through 35 hands I have had one good starting hand. JJ on button. BB called raise with A10 and hits his A on the flop. (I;ve been losing every hand vs. Ax lately). Only cost me a c-bet but it still sucks considering I've lost 4 straight with QQ vs. Ax lately.

Had K10 on BB. Flop's 9 10 10. But turn and river give the other two guys the ace high flush (he hit it on the turn) and a straight flush (on the river). I played it carefully or would have a lot.

Only big pot I've won lately? Shoving with 77 and sucking out on 10 10. I guess that's the key, get it in bad.

here's my typical card dead whole-card dealings on bodog s&g: 6 10, then 2 10, then 4 10, then 6 10, again. then 6 10, again, then 2 9, then 2 9, again, then 3 9, then 4 9, then 2 7, then 3 7, and so on and on....thanks RANDOM # generator....lol. forget about shoving coz youre about to be blinded out. better off auto folding to try to slip into the $ that way....lol. just glad it dosent happen often.

well I always feel varaince is true
HOWEVER people just mostly seem to chalk it up TOTALLY to variance I dont care what hand sampleyou show me, if your loosing over 70k hands, you've been playign badly, not adjusting to oppenents correctly.
Bad luck and bad play is the most dangerous combination in poker.
make sure your play is at a high level at all times.

today for instance I played my best poker in 1.5k hands had the mojo right feeling good, then 2 hands near the end my brain spazzes and I'm down $80 for the day, its all about keeping controll of your inner idiot for me it seems to be.

I think like this too lol. When I have king high I still think I am ahead of those dnks who are 3bet bluffing me on the river

I have broken even for 50,000+ hands before.

Can that really be variance? How can people be unlucky for 50,000 hands?

50,000 is still a pretty small sample. Play with this, and you'll get some sort of idea how big a part of poker variance is. You can easily run good/bad for a 100k hand stretch.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tool...nce_simulator/

When can a sample size actually tell give you an accurate picture of how good you are?

Depends how big your edge is. These two pics show a 2bb/100 winner and a 20bb/100 winner over 100k hands