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Message: [QUOTE="ph_il, post: 5667646, member: 508"] 1nsomn1a covered most of it. i've always found it silly when players suggest taking a break from poker because of bad luck/variance as if that's going to change anything. and the truth is, it doesn't. that's not saying taking a break isn't helpful because it is, especially if your mental game and decision making is affected by a downswing. bad decisions + bad variance = a bad time, but the break doesn't change variance. lets take rolling a dice (die?) for example and say you're in a game you put up $1 to roll a 1-3. if you do, you get $2 back ($1 profit) and if you roll a 4-6, you lose a dollar. that's a pretty good deal as your ev is +.50 each roll. but lets say, in 100 rolls, you only roll a 1-3 10 time. that's pretty bad variance in a small sample size. so, what do you do? i guess you should take a break, right? because that's what is suggested when your luck is running badly. well, when you return, does the odds of you not rolling a 4-6 decrease? do you now have better odds to roll a 1-3 because you took, say, a week off from playing? no, of course not. mentally, you might be thinking clearly and be more prepared to play for a longer stretch because you know it's going to be profitable once you get over the variance hump, but the break did nothing to change your equity to win in a 50/50 situation. the same goes for poker. if you lose in an 80/20 situation 10x in a row, taking a break doesn't change the numbers. you still lose 1/5 times in the long run. if anything, if you find yourself in this spot many times, then you want to play more because the odds are so much in your favor. as for your second suggestion. you should play as optimally as you can in a given situation. saying to just play tight or not bluff or whatever isn't the approach to take because now you're playing too passively or too scared as a result of bad variance. that's not saying playing tight is wrong or you should play really loose, but play each situation as best as you can and don't let bad variance affect how you play. at the same time, if you're making a lot of bad preflop decisions on top of having bad variance, then you should change your preflop game for the better. [/QUOTE]

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