A fairly common taunt at micro-stakes table is, “Ha! If you can’t win at these stakes, you must really suck!” And that could be true. If you lose consistently at micro-stakes tables, it is possible that you are just truly awful at playing poker. However, going on a downswing where you lose for days or even weeks at a time does not mean that you should give up. You might be a good player who is just the victim of a bad run of variance.
While playing at sa casino, there is a need to avoid the myths. The playing of the games requires the intelligence and expertise of the players. You can pick a game as per the requirement to have the desired results. There is meeting of the winning needs and requirements of the gamblers.
People understand that variance exists, but many players don’t really realize how large it can actually be. They think that it might mean 2 or 3 buy-ins up or down. However, there is a reason why you should have more than 25 buy-ins in order to play a certain level and that is because it is entirely possible to go on a losing streak and lose 10, 15, or 20 buy-ins in just a few short hours.
Let’s take the example of a good micro-stakes player who wins about 7 big blinds for every 100 hands he is dealt in to, which is a very nice winrate for a player at any level. Now, we can say that the variance is around 75 big blinds for every 100 hands, which is a pretty standard level for micro-stakes tables. That means that for every 100 hands, this player will finish anywhere between 75bb down to 75bb up, and on average will have 7bb more than he started with.
The key to the above figures is that it is the average. That is what will happen over the long term. For every 10,000 hands, this player should expect to see a profit of around 700bb, or 7 buy-ins at 100bb. However, 10,000 is still a pretty short amount of time, and with the variance of 75bb/100hands, the same player (who is a long-term winner) could finish 10,000 hands with a profit of 100 buy-ins, or a loss of 25 buy-ins! You might see a player lose 50 buy-ins over the course of a week and judge them to be horrible, when they are actually turning a nice profit over the long term.
This is very important to remember for two reasons. Firstly, it reinforces how important it is to practice rigid bankroll management, no matter the stakes or how well you are doing. Variance exists, and is important to be taken into account.
More importantly, in order to play a strong mental game, you have to understand that you are going to lose, and sometimes lose badly. It’s part of the game. Don’t be discouraged; just keep playing solid poker and make the right decisions without focusing too much on the outcome. Eventually the battering you are taking now will turn around, and you will find that all of a sudden, you just can’t lose.
