poker ev calculations

Why are Bad Beats so Costly

Generally I'll just stop playing after the first bad beat if it's tilted me that much. Then look back over the hand and check that it's a genuine bad beat and I got my money in good...

I think winning slow and sometimes losing fast is why it's called grinding.

If I still have the urge to play (typically after I walk away for ten mintues) I change tables. I find myself seeking "revenge" on the person who gave me the bad beat and then I start leaking like crazy and making bad decisions out of spike.

Most situations are clear cut, but I Think a lot of times there's a level of mis-play where you may have paid off a bad call making it "not" a bad beat.

The biggest reason that Bad Beats are so expensive? Because they effect you long after then had has passed.

Also. When you only have 100bb in front of you, getting stacked with top pair top kicker is a lot more acceptable than when you have 350bb in front of you. Getting stacked like that is a HUGE no no.

Rarely when we get our monies in, are we a 100% (or even a 90%) favorite to win. This provides our opponents with many opportunities to suck out on us.

It also accounts for 95% of poker-related mental-illnesses.

The more you grind, the more bad beats you see, and the less they sting when you get them. They are simply an inevitable part of this game that you've just got to accept. Some days you'll see more than your fair share, and some days you'll see less. Try not to go crazy on the former, and try not to get cocky on the latter.

The bad beats cost you money, but not the hand itself. Over the long run you should get closer and closer to what your expected value was over all hands that you played. For example you really want your opponent to make -EV calls with draws, or call you preflop with weaker hands (same concept)... that's whats making you money.

Maybe visualizing your equity helps. If you get it in as a 70/30 favourite - only 70% of the pot is yours. 30% belongs to your opponent.

I agree however that it's still hard to deal with over the short term. I thought I was pretty bad beat resistent, and I can go on 5 buy-in downswings and more or less shrugg it off, but this month I'm running 50% under my expectation over 30k hands for €1000, and that's still hard to stomach. I won't get that money back, but at least I know that over the course of the next 100k hands it won't matter.

A big part of the psychology of it is that you got emotionally attached to the pot, but the pot is not yours if you don't have the winning hand on the river. I made it a ritual to click reload at almost every all-in situation, just to prepare for loosing the pot. The beats that tilt the most are when you fully expected that the pot was yours.

LOSING IS A PART OF THE GAME! Sorry to be so blunt but Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. Pro's also lose hands so obviously, anybody can and do! WIthout the actual hand though, we have to take your word that it was actually a BAD BEAT and not a hand you got married to...til death (BB) do you part!

The question isn't why are bad beats so costly to one's bankroll because if they were costly to one's bankroll, then one wouldn't be rolled properly for the stakes.

The question is, why does one or two bad beats destroy 2/3 of the income that took two hours to grind up? It's so frustrating when you spend two hours in tedium grinding away at 6 tables, taking down small pots, getting closer and closer to the nearest benchmark, only to have almost all of that work done for nothing because some lucky idiot hit a full house with 69o when you hit your flush.

Stop looking at poker in terms of sessions and whether good luck or bad beats define them. Start looking at the big picture and be more results oriented in the long-term. And if you got your money in good and some fish made a horrible call and sucked out on the river, so be it because you'll want him to make that same horrible call over and over again.

If I feel prone to tilting and getting emotionally attached in a given situation I make a point to think over my decision once more, put all the money in, reload and look at a different table as the hand plays out and then try to forget about it.

In this, I am giving up the edge that the additional information (what he actually played this way) can give me in future hands (though I can of course always check the hand history), but I am preventing tilt, which allows me to play better for longer.

The situations that are most likely to cause tilt are mostly self created. Basically what you do is you envision one result as the one you are going for (you winning, typically), you get emotionally attached to that outcome and even if you might intellectually accept that other outcomes are possible, you do not prepare yourself emotionally for those other possible outcomes. So when they occur they still manage to shock you and that starts the whole rollercoaster of tilt.

I believe the trick is to learn to be intellectually and emotionally prepared for any of the remaining 47 or 46 cards to come with everything that entails, and to understand how that effects your equity before it suddenly comes around and slaps you in the face with the loss of a stack. I think a great way to build this resiliency is to analyse hands and situations to a point where you more intuitively understand how equity changes depending on what cards come. This should remove some of the surprise element and allow you to assess dispassionately whether your action was +EV in the first place and not get bogged down in whether or not the outcome in this particular hand gained or cost you money.

As some of the more experienced people in this thread also said - if you understand your equity against your opponents range on a given street calculate with winning your 70% and losing the opponents 30% in your head and in your emotions, ignoring the actual outcome of the hand - this should help tiltproof you. You do need to play mind-games with yourself and practice this particular perspective and technique for it to be effective, but it's a pretty important thing to do as playing on tilt will cost you lots more money than you can earn by playing well.

Bad beats are costly- suckouts are profitable.

Become better at suckouts and avoid bad beats. You need to really push hands like backdoor flushes, gutshots and underpairs/ undercards hard in order to become the Suckout King. Following the same line of reasoning you should fold whenever you know you are in front.

On a more serious note, maybe you are not pushing your edges hard enough? If you only push 70/30 situations and folding 55/45 situations your good hands need to hold up often to sustain a profitable winrate.

Couple of thoughts:

- You grind and grind until you lose a big pot- then quit.

- Losing feels worse than winning feels good.

- Suckouts are common for fish and sharks, not for TAG fish

- Everything is possible in poker. Sometimes you can not lose even how hard you try.
About the Author

Thanks to http://www.blackjake.net
http://www.casinoebooks.com> i am a player that love the game and help gamblers.

Wonging Out

If you read Playing BJ as a Business by Revere, he suggest 30 units up or down to be your quitting point. Keep in mind that times have changed since his time and there are different opinions on this. If you use RPC (level 2) the advantage changes approx 0.50% per 1 TC. Depending upon the rules of the game you play, if TC=0 giving you a -0.40 disadvantage, then a TC=-2 would be approx -1.40% disadvantage.

Check out Blackjack Attack or other high quality publications, they usually have charts with adv/disadv broken down by rules.

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If you get CVCX by Qfit you can run the sims for wonging and play all. There is a big difference in each neg count you play. Take a look at these. The min bet dropped to keep the same 0.5 kelly factor
then far as "wondering at what point do i call it a day if i cant win", sort of thing i guess you probably know that might be considered a voodoo subject amongst the orthodox crowd. i think most would tell you to keep playing until your trip bankroll can no longer support doubling down and splitting. they will say as long as your playing with an advantage, not to worry you'll eventually come out on top of the game. but they might also advise you on ways of lowering your ROR. probably advise you on wonging as you've already alluded to above.

well, i've got a not so big bankroll as well. i'll just tell you what my philosphy is, what i aim to do and often enough don't succeed in doing. i have a set trip bankroll, $300 and a $6000 lifetime bankroll. i just play $5 min tables or lower. tawkin six and eight deck shoes here.
me, i figure i can lose the trip bankroll for 'now' and still survive a while. so most trips i might be willing to play until i lose the trip bankroll. that's not always my frame of mind but usually (sometimes i'm just not even willing to lose that much). my spread is pretty much 1-8 but i'm not very disciplined on that. i might chicken out and just go 1-5. my counting is well not really counting. i just mentally 'gauge' the richness of the aces and faces left to be dealt with this nebulous fuzzy count process i do. then i might make a 'calculated' gamble when i think the time is right. but i can count and bet orthodox and sometimes do. just depends. lol.
anyway, so but one thing i do know with good accuracy is what a perfect counter with a 1-8 spread according to number of hands played would expect for the games i play. if i achieve the expectation or better of said perfect counter with my voodoo approach by hook or crook then i'm out of Dodge unless the pack remaining to be dealt is obviously rich in aces & faces. it always surprises me how often just playing basic strategy and flat betting that i find myself exceeding in a very short period of time the expectation of a perfect counter for a much longer time period. by getting out of Dodge i don't mean necessarily that i go home, maybe just exit that table (with those winnings in my pocket). maybe i'll fool around a while and then start out a fresh table ready to be dealt, maybe (rarely) i'll wong in on a table. my hopes and dreams far as doing it that way is based on a knowledge that for six and eight deck games it's pretty much the case that 70% or so of the time your gonna be dealing with a disadvantageous count. so i figure most times that i exit a table with a profit comparable to a perfect counter that i'm probably leaving a disavantageous situation. alternatively, when i start out a shoe and the 'count' is going negative, i might stay if i'm just lucky and winning, but if i' start losing in that situation i'll bail on such a table as well.
so most of my trips i only plan to stay about 3 hours. i know how much a perfect counter spreading 1-8 can expect to make in that much time. if i make that much i'll usually go home early.
well anyway at the bottom of the post in the link below is a spread sheet that along with a good simulator such as cvcx can help one figure out things such as expectations and standard deviation for a given number of rounds. it maybe could help you figure out when a good time to get out of Dodge might be.
Wonging out of negative counts won't drop your EV.

It WILL drop your variance, and therefore your risk of ruin a lot. Certainty correlation goes up a lot with wonging. That's why back-counting 6 deckers can be better for a small bankroll than a good single or double deck game.

About the Author

Thanks to http://www.blackjake.net
http://www.casinoebooks.com> i am a player that love the game and help gamblers.