Last week I presented an overview of the concept of “regression to the mean” as presented in Gary Smith‘s new book, What the Luck: The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives. The basic idea is that outlier performances — whether good or bad, high or low — tend to be followed by performances that are more average or more representative of one’s actual ability. The reason is that…

Randomness in Your Poker Results? Don’t Forget “Regression to the Mean”

I just finished reading a brand-new book: What the Luck? The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives by Gary Smith. The title doesn’t disclose the actual subject of the book, which is a statistical phenomenon known as “regression to the mean.” I first learned of regression to the mean in a stats class in my formal education back in the Stone Age, but I confess I dismissed it as something…

The last final table of the last European Poker Tour happens today in Prague where just six players remain from the record-breaking field of 1,192 with a chance at the €774,600 first prize and the PokerStars European Poker Tour €5,300 Main Event trophy. Martin Czuczor carries the chip lead to today’s finale, although just behind him in chips isDavid Peters who won a big hand to conclude Day 5 to…

I guess this is partially and ego thing because I'd have to play at stakes alongside players far inferior to me, and play at a stake that seems almost laughably small considering how big I've played in the past, but I guess I don't play poker for the glory so it shouldn't bother me. A lot of poker friends or acquaintances hold me in esteem for how much I've won and how big I play, but I think true friends do not judge me based on how much money I have so I really don't lose anything by being reasonable and doing what's best for my mental well being. Besides, stakes is no direct correlation to skill.

Besides, I will still be making amounts of money that is well beyond most people my age earn, or at least will be quite respectable. I think I'm going to draft up a rough plan for how I will progress. Probably separate my life bankroll/savings from my poker bankroll, and budget my spending instead of throwing money at whatever I feel like.

Not that I think it's irresponsible how I spent money; if my performance is linked with my happiness, then spending money to make myself feel a bit better is actually going to make me perform better and make more money/lose less, so this is by no means some kind of admittance of irresponsibility. I think I've made good choices in general the past year with regards to poker and finances, just that I took a risk, knowing that it can go bad, and it didn't happen as I had hoped.

Anyway I'll do a month or two trial run and see how it goes. Perhaps I will just get bored and in a month I'll be swinging around with thousand pound wins and losses every other minute. It's not exactly in my nature to be consistent. As for now I think I'm going to make myself put in solid hours of grind every month and put in a bit of money in my savings account every month, thinking like 2-3k, and the rest I will put into my poker bankroll, and just decide on a system and stick with it, so, say, from now on I will only buyin for 1/30th of my bankroll at any one time unless I sell action, and not deviate, which should limit my swings fairly significantly.

Think I will try to play 5 days a week, and try to get in 10 hours every working day including commute. I should still have a pretty decent income that way.