Wednesday, August 06, 2008

One more whine before I quit for the night


I apparently didn't get the email from the poker gods warning me to just stay off of PokerStars tonight.

After the unsuccessful tournament, I tried my usual $2-$4 razz cash game. Up and down for a while, nothing spectacular. But then I went unusually card-dead. I checked the hand histories, and actually went for 45 consecutive deals without getting three unpaired cards 7 or below.

On average, one should get such a good starting hand about 14.8% of the time. Using the handy binomial probability calculator here I found that the probability of not getting one in 45 hands is 0.00074. That is, if you start at any arbitrary time and ask, "What are the chances of the next 45 starting hands all being bad ones?" the answer would be 0.074%; it should happen only about 7 times out of 10,000 trials of 45 hands each. That's pretty impressively bad luck, I'd say.

I did actually win one hand in there, with a K-Q-Q, when I had the bring-in and nobody even called it.

Then did I get rewarded for my patience? I certainly did. The hand that broke the streak was a nice 2-4-6. I raised and won the antes and bring-in. About three hands later the same thing happened again. Woohoo!

I was down about $20 for the session at that point, and started mentally composing this little rant. But then I caught a bit of a rush against a guy who apparently thought I was bluffing and unwisely tried calling and raising me, in three almost-consecutive hands, when I actually had the goods, and I logged off up by $30. Yeah, I did a hit-and-run on him. I was tired of playing and feeling like that was probably the peak of my good luck for the night.

So it wasn't a complete loss.

But I'm still gonna whine about it. Why? Because I feel like it, that's why.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course you have to live up to the Poker Grump name even though you left up $30. You wouldn't want us to think you were going soft ;-)

Unknown said...

You're turning into a true stud (razz) player. I've played all the disciplines and I don't think I've heard anyone whine more than stud players. Congrats and welcome to the fold.