One thing I'm kind of surprised hasn't come up in this whole
discussion is
the possibility that a lot of us...in particular when we find
ourselves in a
downward slump...may NOT actually be playing as accurately as we
think we are.
(I am truly impressed by the number of folks here who can claim
100% accuracy
on FVP or WinPoker....I know I can't, even after poking around
with it for
years.)
True...but if we weren't, in fact, playing optimally, how would we
know? Live casino play lacking the feedback of the VP software, we
wouldn't know if we'd blown it (although sometimes I "catch" a
mistake after it's too late, for instance in DB when I draw to a
lone Ace and belatedly realize that there were two small cards
suited with the Ace and I should have drawn two to the flush).
I can testify that FPDW and JOB can be played at high speed with
virtual 100% accuracy; FPJW is almost as easy; and 10/7 DB is a
stone cold bitch to play accurately; in fact, I consider FPDB to be
a breakeven game, the EV of +.015 notwithstanding, because it is SO
hard to avoid minor errors.
You also need to consider that the vast majority of errors you or I
would make are minor ones that cost very small amounts of EV.
Playing quarters, for example, the failure to draw to the threeflush
costs something like .02 bets (I'm not going to bother to go look it
up.) Even a dozen or so of these errors in an hour shouldn't result
in a significant decline in results. Even booboos like throwing away
the 5 from 55678 in JOB aren't THAT costly. So in order for a bad
session to have been "caused" by errors, those errors would have had
to be both plentiful and egregious. After a certain amount of
practice, a lot of plays become "automatic", so the chance of an
error brought on by fatigue or inattention lessens with experience.
I'd say that having a crappy day, being tired, in a bad mood, the
cocktail waitresses have particularly nice boobs, my back is
hurting, whatever is making me play inaccurately, isn't costing me
more than 0.2 percent of my EV. Not really enough to "cause" a bad
result (although by no means insignificant in and of itself).