is there truth leaving while on a bad streak?

like do people say you should leave while on a bad streak because your confidence is down.. or is there some truth to being a bad streak there is more chance of getting more bad cards? i feel like a mathematician or statistician would say this is complete nonsense. but i have had bad days at the tables and they usually just get worse.

thank you

They get worse cause either the cards get worse (can happen) but you almost definately play worse. Your confidence will go down if you feel like your having a bad day, If you don't feel like your playing well or you're on tilt then leave as soon as you realise. If you feel you're playing well and are not tilting and the games are good, keep playing and work through the bad cards.

1st thing should ask urself is, do you believe that online poker is different than live poker, like the percentage of cooler occurs, etc.

Definitely a confidence thing for me. I will find myself afraid to bet my premium hands pf due to the fact they miss, or even QQ because I know the friggen ace is comming and the ace rag player will hit.
I find a break will refresh my mind.

[quote=froghump;1389894]or is there some truth to being a bad streak there is more chance of getting more bad cards? i feel like a mathematician or statistician would say this is complete nonsense./quote]

I'm not a mathemetician or statistician - but this is complete nonsense. Your past hands have zero bearing on what your next hand will be. LuckyChippy is correct, during a bad run you will likely play worse than normal, and you should stop playing any time you feel like you're tilting.

^^What slycbnew says, he/she is consistently on target with any responses provided -- for some, tilting is a dependent variable/event on the independent variable/event of cards rec'd during a session.

If you are playing bad stop if you're still playing well, and BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF, then you can keep playing. But telling yourself you're playing fine when you're really spewing all over can be a huge mistake and a good way to part a fool and his bankroll.

It's obvious that you allready know that cards and luck swing up and down irregardless of what kind of streak you're on. You should also know that your emotions and attitudes have magical like properties when playing. The reason is; those feeling affect your decisions irregardless of your skill level. Since you allready have this knowledge, try to put the idea out of you're mind that it's the cards. It's more likely you.

cards dont have a memory as far as im aware...

You should stop if you are on a bad streak. You are going to be playing sub-par poker and lose in the long run.

I always feel that if i having bad luck playing holdem. I will switch to hi-lo and play a little and try to change my luck. Taking a break helps too

It does often seem like some nights you hit those flush draws and other nights you dont...with no inbetween lol.

But I agree with others that if your on a bad run the best policy is to quit for a while.

There's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy-type thing where some people perceive that what they expect to happen does. You expect bad cards, so even when what you're dealt is a normal variety, you notice the bad hands more, which makes it feel like you're getting worse hand than you really are.

I say yeah due to that it give you time to clear you head . and when you return ..you return with a better mood at the tables

[quote=slycbnew;1390281]Kind of true... Your past hands relatively affect your future hands.

In Statistics, a lot of our study is on dependent and independent variables.

So, consider two cases:

1) Take the probability that your next hand is AA, GIVEN your previous hand was AA, call it X.

2) The probability your next hand is AA, call it Y.

One can see that X<Y. So yes your previous hands DO affect future outcomes depending on the statistical analysis you are performing.

[quote=sactokid544;1390851]Incorrect. Flip a coin, say it comes up heads. What bearing does that have on the next coin flip? Is it more likely to come up tails?

If you answer "yes" to the last question, you are not understanding statistical probability and causality.

If you're seriously interested in the topic (and it's a very good topic), check out a book called The Poker Mindset - it's extremely good on this topic and (among other topics) discusses bad runs/downswings/tilt very much in line w OP's question.

Oh, and if you're interested (this part has absolutely nothing to do w poker), read a play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, there's a really fun "joke" in there related to causality and coinflipping...

Um, you may want to run this by your Stat Professor again?

[If I'm understanding your example correctly] -- Being dealt A.A is independent of subsequently being dealt another A.A in the very next hand. Back-to-back A.A is cool though .

[quote=slycbnew;1390985]
That's because you are looking at cases independently. When we look at the cases independently, you are correct. The previous flip has no bearing on the next.

But, what if I want to know the probability of a coin landing on tails consecutively 5 times?? Then each coinflip DOES have a bearing on the next. That is my point.

Probability of a coin landing on Tails = 1/2

Probability of a coin landing on Tails 5 times = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/32

This method is similar to the way you calculate the prob of getting AA consecutively.

Excuse me? I have a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Like I said above, each dealt hand is independent of one another. They become DEPENDENT on each other when we want to calculate the probability of getting AA consecutively.

My whole point concerning the probability is that the probablility that you get consecutive BAD hands in a bad streak decreases as each BAD hand is dealt. Which means, the longer the streak, the more probable a good hand is, to appear.

This is all GIVEN that the previous hands were bad. 'Given' is the key word. If we don't consider our previous hands, each hand is mutually exclusive.

I think mindset definitely has a lot to do with poker. When we're tilted we're prone to making more mistakes, the probabilities don't change, but if we've taken a few bad beats and we're on edge we're not going to be playing our best.

I'll frequently stop when I'm in the middle of a bad streak, but I've also turned it around a few times. It's really just a matter of whether you're feeling tilted.

Momentum is a big part of poker not just because momentum is important in everything but also because it can play a large part in your table image.

[quote=sactokid544;1391440]Each flip, though, is always an independent event, and prior flips always have no impact on the current flip. If you look at a large sample of flips, you will find "streaks" of heads or tails, including streaks that are statistically relatively improbable.

If you bet 100% of the time that the current flip is always heads, and if the betsize is identical for each flip, over a large sample you will always break even.

If you bet that the current flip is going to be heads or tails based on the history of flips, even if it came up tails the last ten flips in a row, you're guessing.

[quote=slycbnew;1391601]
Each flip is independent IF that is the calculation you are trying to compute.

If you are trying to find the conditional probability that a coin lands on tails GIVEN that it's previous flip was tails, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to NOT consider the previous flip, to make that calculation. Thus the previous flips have a bearing when calculating conditional probability.

To understand my point, answer this question:

-If each flip is indeed independent, no matter which kind of calculation you make, then calculate the conditional probability of 3 consecutive flips resulting in tails...

Answer: It's impossible.

You just go on tilt. I just take a break if I feel like I am not makeing good choices . Try to learn to forget your hands before cant play poker with whats already past. Live in your current hand forget it as soon as its mucked.

^^Post #17 response was made to post #15 not to any subsequent posts (since they did not exist @ the time).

No offense was intended...I took Elementary Statistics for Business (lower division) & Statisical Analysis for Business (upper division) for the discipline I rec'd a degree in; both my professors had PhDs with one working as a Statician for the State of CA & the other authoring the book used in multiple colleges throughout the US (Statistics for Business and Economics -- Jim Lackritz) ...so I was pretty confident they knew what they were lecturing & testing on.

Anyhow, here's a paper by someone who has already calculated the occurrence of receiving A.A consecutive to having previously rec'd A.A (see pg 3 of 4). His creds are way better than mine (Dr. Brian Alspach, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics; PhD UC Santa Barbara) + he's a poker player whose creds are also way better than mine (he's @ least won a live tourney...I have yet to play in one ).

But I don't think froghump is interested in calculations...just asking if one should leave when on a bad streak since confidence is down (or leave because there's 'more chance of getting more bad cards').

Attached Images

How Do Mathematics & Poker Mix.pdf (96.1 KB, 1 views)

[quote=sactokid544;1392348]I understand your point. The point I'm making is that using conditional probability to guide your actions in poker is a mistake.

Let's say the coin flipped 9 times in a row as tails (and let's make it a "fair" coin, no desire to get into rigged discussions). You'd be awfully tempted to think that this time it ought to come up heads, since 10 tails in a row would be statistically improbable. Let's say instead of taking even money for the flip, you're willing to bet w aggressive odds (i.e., worse than even money) that it'll come up heads because it came up tails 9 times in a row. This is a mistake - it is still exactly 50/50 whether it comes up heads or tails, you're making a bad bet.

When somebody thinks that a bad run of cards means they should stop playing cuz they're more likely to continue w bad cards, OR that since they've had a bad run they're "due" for a good run, and change their playing behavior as a result of either line of reasoning, they are making a mistake - potentially a costly one.

You'll see players get gunshy all the time when they lose flips several times in a row thinking that they're cursed by a bad luck run, or overly aggressive when they lose flips (or other situations where it was appropriate to put money in the pot, like drawing with the correct pot odds but missing) several times in a row thinking that they're due for the flips to come their way - both of these are responses that will cost them money relative to the correct plays.

bazerk, didn't get around to reading that paper, but thanks for posting!

I'm confused.. Were you just confirming what I said above with the paper? Or did you have another point.

He is just confirming my point:
Probability of getting dealt AA: 1/221.
Probability of getting dealt AA on next hand: 1/221.
Probability of getting dealt AA on next hand, GIVEN your previous hand was AA: 1/221 * 1/221 = (1/221) ^2.

Which was my whole point that the previous hands have a bearing on your probabilities, depending on which probability you are calculating.

You didn't mention anything about events being independent until post #18 AFTER my post #17.

As indicated in Dr Alspach's paper...there can be 3 different interpretations of the ??? 'What are the chances I'll be dealt back-to-back pocket Aces.'

From my perspective I see being dealt A.A consecutively as an:
Independent Event: The occurrence of one event has no effect on the probability of the occurrence of any other event.

Based on your posts (if I'm reading them correctly?), your perspective of being dealt A.A consecutively is based on:
Conditional probability: The probability of some event A, given the occurrence of some other event B.

The CC community has peeps with varied knowledge & expertise with a commonality interest in poker; for someone who may not have taken a Stat class, the direction of this thread might be confusing -- since the same data can be used for mulitple analyses with different outcomes.

Anyway, here's a more detailed version of this topic (I preferred the prior paper since it also addressed some other poker-related situations).

I really don't want to hijack froghump's thread any further as this is outside the scope of the OP.

Attached Images

Probabilities for Successive Memorable Hands.pdf (90.9 KB, 1 views)

i like ot take a brreak during a bad streak try other games or even play limit to cool off.

Ohhhhh... Ok. We were basically debating about the same thing with different view points.

/thread hijack