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Can't seem to get my mind around tournament variance

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  1. spectrefax spectrefax is offline

    Henderson, NV
    United States

    Posts: 1,184
    Joined: Jan 07

    Feb 6th, 2011 (2/6/2011 7:34pm)

    Used to play a lot of tournaments. Had success.
    Switched to cash. Haven't played many tournaments in quite some time except occasional dabbling.
    With better hand reading now, I feel I'll have a significant edge in the stakes of tournaments I'm able to play.

    However, I can't seem to get my mind around the variance aspect of the game. Knowing that if I want to include tournament play in my play schedule, that I'll need to set aside not only at least 200-300 buy-ins for a given limit, but that the hard truth is that I may not show a profit for months on end, even with daily grinding. It really makes me wonder how I used to grind these so often and how lucky I was to do as well as I did.

    Because that one key flip that takes you from final 18 to top 3, its mathematically possible that you can lose 50 of those spots in a row, so to me, it just feels like i'm playing blackjack when I think of running tournaments for any length of time.

    Ugh help fix my mental point of view =/.
    Thanks
     
  2. cracker9ball cracker9ball is offline

    Tulsa, OK
    United States

    Posts: 660
    Joined: Mar 10

    Feb 6th, 2011 (2/6/2011 7:39pm) in reply to spectrefax

    Sounds to me like you do not want to deal with variance, it is not for everyone.
     
  3. mini bomberr mini bomberr is offline calls for hoodie equity

    Daqing
    China

    Posts: 248
    Joined: Jan 10

    Feb 6th, 2011 (2/6/2011 7:46pm) in reply to cracker9ball

    I don't really care about all the variance and volume talk, I just play the game to the best of my ability and try to bink every single tournament I play.
  4. boneralert boneralert is offline

    Fort Worth, TX
    United States

    Posts: 671
    Joined: Jan 11

    Feb 6th, 2011 (2/6/2011 8:27pm) in reply to mini bomberr

    I think it's helpful to look at it like this: If you have a large enough sample size as a profitable player, then all of the bad beats, going card dead, losing flips, etc. are just a natural and necessary part of what is a successful enterprise. If you have an ROI you have exceptional confidence in, then you can just look at each tournament as an equal component to that. Instead of an $80 cash, then a $25 cash, then three -$10 losses, each tournament is another $1.74 in the bank (or whatever your profit per tourney is). So when you have a huge dry spell and don't cash for a bunch of tournaments, you can still look at it as a successful day, because you put in volume at an activity that makes you money.

    On the other hand, if your sample size isn't big enough to feel totally confident in your ROI, there will always be that nagging voice wondering if youre just on a brief detour through a rough patch or if you're in the middle of a cruel regression to the mean.

    Let your history buoy you.
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