derSchwartz said:

Thanks for the reply Geralt.  I do certainly sometimes feel the positivity of playing well and getting in good.  Sometimes it's hard to feel positive though for various reasons.

One example is that sometimes the implications (or perceived implications) of a downswing make it seem that, sure, we will gain money in the long term if we continue to play well, but how sustainable or significant is whatever hourly rate we are producing at our skill level?  And if that hourly rate isn't significant enough, can we still put in the work necessary to eventually turn an impactful profit?

I believe one dynamic that occurs in the world of poker discussion is a split between people as follows:

There are those who have successfully done plenty of math and/or otherwise figured out how to see concrete evidence of their own good or bad play, and can therefore know if they have made a correct move or not. In this group of players are also players who have been able to decipher mistakes in their own math due to false factors (like misjudging ranges).

Then there are those who for whatever reason have not seen as much of this concrete evidence.  This could be because they (we) are oblivious, but on this site I think it's more commonly because they (we) don't understand one or more factors that go into the math or other means by which to generate evidence.

In my case, I'm in the latter category for probably a few reasons, but one of the most difficult to overcome is my uncertainly about the ranges I'm putting my villains on.  Even though I've put reasonable effort into learning what math needs to be done to calculate EV, I've found that without confidence in the ranges we're using, it's hard to find much meaning in the math.

So I think that for many people in the first group to understand why it's difficult to emerge from the second group, it's important for that first group member to keep in mind that someone who hasn't seen that evidence may not find it so simple to get that evidence, and may find it difficult to decipher if they are on the right track.

I definitely understand what you are saying.  I think a good thing to do in this case is make the fields smaller so that you can see your results over a smaller sample size, as you are going to experience less variance.  For example I started as a STT player, and it didn't take me long to see that I was a winning player in those games.  The moment I decided to change to MTT's I was playing in tournaments with a few thousand people and beating myself up because I was rarely even min cashing even when I knew I was getting it in good.  I decided to find a middle ground so right now I am mainly grinding 90-180 man SnG's, and once again I am starting to see growth.