Regression to the mean

I'm not 100% sure on how the math works in a situation like this so your help would be appreciated .

I deposited $50 on full tilt approximately 6 months ago and stuck to a rigid schedule of only playing a few hours a week, over 7000 hands I have been winning at 25.99bb per 100.



I know that 7000 hands is too small a sample to know my true bb/100, the issue is that I have been considering moving from 2nl to 5nl but I'm worried what will happen when my bb/100 starts to represent its true value, or regresses to the mean.

Will I have multiple losing sessions which will drop my bb/100? In which case I want to stay at 2nl until this happens, or will I just start to win at a less dramatic pace? So moving to 5nl won't be such a bad idea, or is my sample size so small that my bb/100 may just naturally reduce over time and I wont see a drastic shift in my bankroll size?

Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks

Well, if youre playing calculating pot odds unless you get incredibly unlucky you wont see a downswing in the long run. The thing is if you move up and not have enough money to make a difference ( Let me put that into simple words, I hope you will follow the pattern - If you have $2 in your BR and you play at $0.1/2 the things might not turn too well even if you make all the right decisions, because you only got these money. But if you had $20 in your BR it would be enough to make a difference in the long run ). So, if you have any money in excess, say you have 120-30 buy-ins for 2nl, you can play a few games at higher stakes and see how it goes. If you get lucky you will bring your bankroll to another level, allowing you to play at these stakes regularly, and if you dont you still will have enough buy-ins to play the lower stakes and still make it profitable.
If you find yourself winning now at 2nl you might aswell just hold on there, until you got the proper bankroll to move up in limits when you will be less worried about bad beats and losing streaks.
I mean that if I was winning at $2nl I'd stay there unless I got the proper bankroll for a bigger stakes. Then I'd move and if I am losing mostly I'd move back to the old limits.
Hope I did not misunderstood your question.

Also, I dont know whether you dont have the time to play regularly or it was just a really good planned schedule, but congratz. on sticking to it. When you play less hours a day its less likely to experience a tilt and lose money on hands you wouldnt be playing otherwise. I'm glad this is working out for you.

It's unlikely to can sustain 26bb/100 over a large sample. But this doesn't mean you're fated to lose money. Say your true win rate is 10/100. You can end up there just by winning at less than 10/100 for a while.

Arjonius said:

It's unlikely to can sustain 26bb/100 over a large sample. But this doesn't mean you're fated to lose money. Say your true win rate is 10/100. You can end up there just by winning at less than 10/100 for a while.

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this exactly, poker hands both individually and collectively are perfectly independent events (excluding mental game/fatigue etc) you might run into some break even stretches or you could have a downswing, but if your win rate is the same at both stakes (it most likely will be) then it could happen at 2nl or 5nl regardless of whether you move up.

cliffs. don't worry about it, move up when you feel comfortable.

Yeah I had an inclining that the most likely event would be that I win at something like 2bb/100 for a while and it will even it out, I think I'll stick to 2nl until I get a bigger BR, I'm only playing recreationally so I'll probably move up after I get 40-50 buy-ins at 5nl.

I want to experience some lower bb/100 sessions at 2nl first as I'm worried I could begin to tilt and that's bad news for my BR at 5nl.

Hey Wardy.

First off, gratz on staying on track. I get bored after while at .01/.02 cash games and usually I'll leave or treat myself to a 180 X $2.50 Turbo S'nG if I've been doing well.

Now, I'm a bit of a Noob at serious poker and learning the finer arts of BRM and other strategies, so my comments may be wrong (and I stand to be corrected) and questions may be stupid, but here goes.

You had an amazing streak from ~ 3100 hands to ~ 3400, nice run. Was there anything special about that period, or just a great heater?

Starting at about 5900 to 7100, you went through a bad stretch, but seem to be coming out of it. Did you change anything, or just keep up with your obviously stringent way of playing? Also (and I look for comments from the experienced players here), is that pretty well the average length of a bad spell that all players experience?

Can someone explain "All-in adjusted bb"? I've Googled it and don't quite understand. I'm also curious as to why it follows the same basic shape, but higher or lower on the graph in places.

Again, well done.

Jamie

SeaRun said:

Hey Wardy.

First off, gratz on staying on track. I get bored after while at .01/.02 cash games and usually I'll leave or treat myself to a 180 X $2.50 Turbo S'nG if I've been doing well.

Now, I'm a bit of a Noob at serious poker and learning the finer arts of BRM and other strategies, so my comments may be wrong (and I stand to be corrected) and questions may be stupid, but here goes.

You had an amazing streak from ~ 3100 hands to ~ 3400, nice run. Was there anything special about that period, or just a great heater?

Starting at about 5900 to 7100, you went through a bad stretch, but seem to be coming out of it. Did you change anything, or just keep up with your obviously stringent way of playing? Also (and I look for comments from the experienced players here), is that pretty well the average length of a bad spell that all players experience?

Can someone explain "All-in adjusted bb"? I've Googled it and don't quite understand. I'm also curious as to why it follows the same basic shape, but higher or lower on the graph in places.

Again, well done.

Jamie

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I don't think I've changed anything over the 3100 hand to 3400 range, just super heater I guess, and yeah I haven't changed anything any other time, I had a couple of small 5nl sessions recently to see if the standard of play increases up a level, but I found it to be basically the same.

As for all in adjustment, I'm no expert either but my understanding of this is that it is representative of your actual equity of each of your all in decisions. For example; If we go all in with AA for $1.00 and get called by 45s our all in adjustment will show a gain of approx .80c on the graph (because AA is about an 80% favourite over 45s so our equity is 80% of $1.00) regardless of what the actual result of the hand is.

As you can see I'm running above expected value thus telling me I have been luckboxing to a degree . If this is incorrect can someone who knows this 100% explain it better?

Cheers Wardy.

May I ask how many hands you play at a session and how many tables at a time?

Jamie

I 4 table for approx 3 hours every saturday and sunday morning. equals roughly 500 hands a day. I'm as consistent to this as I can be as I work a lot of weekends or have family commitments sometimes.