My first big loss....the stagnation and eventual recovery

[Sixth_Rule]

I always mesure my poker success on wether or not i am at the ceiling profit. i started with $30 at penny poker and so evry time i gained a dollar or 5 or 10 or 100 i then had in my BR added to what i took out was my new mesure of success. any time i lost money i hated not improving my old mark. I hated bulding my money Back up instead of up. once i went from 1100 to 600 and that scared me to death. its that moment any decent poker player hits.They think that they have no buisness playing, that there luck has run out and that there bank roll will eventually shrink to 0. i got out of that and moved to somwhere around 5000 i took alot out in withdrawls so when i was at 1800BR +3300 withdrawls i took my latest and longest downswing. i vowed the day i took out the $30 that i would never put money into poker again and i never will. The money i take out is included in the money i will never put back into poker.
so when i moved up to 3/6 and dropped 1000 in 4 days i again thought that i had no right playing. that was about a month ago and after a week off and one week getting a hundred bonus money and playing it off i have since rebuilt my bank roll + money withdrew to +20 of its higher level back at the 2/4 games.
maybe next time that big down swing won't affect me so much.
maybe next time i will be more prepared

[semipro]

Nice recovery. It's just poker, the swings.

[Justin A]

If it makes you feel better I lost $1000 playing 3/6 on Monday. I've finally gotten to that point where I shrugged it off, and had a perfectly good nights sleep. It's taken me a very long time to get like that though, so stick with it.

Justin A

[Cerril]

Really? My recent 160BB+ swing seemed indicative of bad luck and bad variance (and check my post on this same page for my 'proof,' such as it is), but it should also be some suboptimal play as well - I have a hard time just shrugging it off. I can't afford to exacerbate bad swings too seriously.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
Really? My recent 160BB+ swing seemed indicative of bad luck and bad variance (and check my post on this same page for my 'proof,' such as it is), but it should also be some suboptimal play as well - I have a hard time just shrugging it off. I can't afford to exacerbate bad swings too seriously.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm new to limit, so I'm still spending a lot of time studying and trying to improve my game. In NL I learned to take my downswings in stride. When I have a downswing like I did on Monday, I really look hard at my game, just as I would if I had an upswing. I just don't let it get me down and I don't let it affect other parts of my life.

FWIW, I haven't even played enough limit hands to be sure I'm a winning player. So swings like that are good motivation to get better.

Justin A

[Cerril]

I'm pretty much in the same place. I was between 1.5-2BB/100 over a couple tens of thousands at 2/4, moving up to 3/6 might have been a good idea or a mistake, I'm not sure yet. So a big losing streak here makes me really look deep at the causes, both under and out of my control