Some explaining to do

I can't for the life of me tell you
What all this is really about
So I'm leaving you with a burden of proof
And a strong case of reasonable doubt

Honey, it looks like you got some explaining to do
Honey, it looks like you got some explaining to do
...

Evan Dando, "It Looks Like You"

I can't swear to it, but I like to think that the chorus of this song was inspired by the classic sitcom "I Love Lucy". A recurring line of Ricky's in the show was: "Lucy! You've got some 'splainin' to do!"

Why did I pick this for a blog post title? For the simple reason that PokerStars has some 'splainin' to do :-) Actually, I don't know that for a fact; the quant in me just strongly suspects it. I've mentioned before that I don't make a long term profit on the cash game no limit hold'em hands where I don't go all in. In fact, I've made a hefty long term loss on those hands. Thankfully, I've made an even heftier long term profit on the hands where I do go all in, so everything's fine. I never bothered to look at the bar chart of the running total of my non all in hands until this morning. What I saw shocked me; it certainly wasn't what I expected. Instead of a nice steady decline, I saw an up and down early history followed by a dramatic, and apparently irreversible, decline. The bar chart of the running total of my all in hands didn't show anything unusual, just a nice steady increase. What could explain the dramatic decline in the running total of my non all in hands? I came up with a theory this morning, and want to state it here before I test it out. My theory is that the dramatic decline started when PokerStars instituted a rake in its play money games. And now to test it out ...

The results are inconclusive. The first cash game no limit hold'em session I played where PokerStars instituted a non-zero rake was on July 1st, 2012. My non all in running total didn't dip into the red for good until November 26th, 2013. Although it's true that the decline comes after the institution of the non-zero rake, it doesn't come soon enough after it for my liking. I need to come up with another theory. It looks like I'm the one with some explaining to do :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 153 hands and saw flop:
 - 15 out of 21 times while in big blind (71%)
 - 10 out of 22 times while in small blind (45%)
 - 43 out of 110 times in other positions (39%)
 - a total of 68 out of 153 (44%)
 Pots won at showdown - 11 of 23 (47%)
 Pots won without showdown - 6

delta: $-85,726
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $6,413,476
balance: $8,991,465