How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I 4-table $3/$6 6-max for 2.5BB/100 with a 500BB bankroll, but the swings are just killing me. When I'm on as little as a 50BB downswing (if you can even call it that), my stomach knots and I get physically nauseaus and just generally out of it mentally, all depressed and worked up.

I have been playing poker since march. Before that I hardly knew what it was and couldn't tell the difference between a straight and a flush. I'm studying the game intensely, reading and rereading HPFAP and other great books. My game has a lot of flaws of course (I often feel like I'm the worst player on earth), but one of the biggest is how I handle the natural swings--that is, how I don't handle them.

So I guess what this rant boils down to is this: I am not whining or looking for sympathy of any kind, I'm just looking for more experienced players' advice on this issue. How do you handle the swings? Will I ever get used to them? And so on. I wish I was a machine sometimes.

I can hardly wait for my first 300BB swing. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

It is extremely difficult. Everybody has struggled with this. Everybody. I don't know what to advice to offer other than it gets better with experience.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Booze.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I 4-table $3/$6 6-max for 2.5BB/100 with a 500BB bankroll, but the swings are just killing me.

if that win rate is over any decent amount of hands, and you have these issues, I suggest you dont move up any time soon.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I think it just takes time. When you stop considering money as money and instead consider each $6 dollar increment as just a betting unit, you'll probably stop caring. Also, you might want to consider playing on a larger bankroll if a couple hundred dollars really affect you that much.

I like to think of online poker as a video game where the money is points...that helps me from tilting.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

You are fairly new to poker. At first, losing a bunch of money is upsetting to everybody. I don't think almost anybody is inured to it after a couple months. After you have played for a few years, it is likely that swings won't bother you except maybe if you are playing in very big games. Then again, they may. It depends on whether you are the kind of person who is bothered by these sorts of things and how confident you are that you are really beating the game.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

i am handling the swings just fine, but i fear i may soon need to find a new cat. he is taking it pretty hard.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Hours. Gotta log hours, that's the only way to get used to the swings. I'm used to the swings of 15/30 (and by extension 5/10 short) because I've logged around 80k hands there this year

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Booze.

[/ QUOTE ]
I used to just do booze, but its no longer enough. So I bought a dog, and now I get boozed up, then kick the dog.

Seriously, the biggest thing holding me back from 5/10 is that I don't think I'd deal well with the difference in terms of money.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

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i am handling the swings just fine, but i fear i may soon need to find a new cat. he is taking it pretty hard.

[/ QUOTE ]

I usually take it out on my stress balls (I know some of you will remove stress and quote this). Yes, I have several and they were purchased after I started playing poker.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

i beat off

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Take a shot at 10/20.

If you win, you'll have a ton of money. If you lose, the swings at 3/6 will seem like nothing. Even if you win, 3/6 swings will seem like nothing.

Either way +EV. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Good advice and I´m serious, though 5/10 may have the same effect.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Take a shot at 10/20.

If you win, you'll have a ton of money. If you lose, the swings at 3/6 will seem like nothing. Even if you win, 3/6 swings will seem like nothing.

Either way +EV. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny, that's exactly what I did. After 10/20 beat me down like a little bitch 5/10 seems like such small stakes. After losing a couple of grand in 2 days, 3/6 won't bother you much at all.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Booze.

[/ QUOTE ]
I used to just do booze, but its no longer enough. So I bought a dog, and now I get boozed up, then kick the dog.

Seriously, the biggest thing holding me back from 5/10 is that I don't think I'd deal well with the difference in terms of money.

[/ QUOTE ]

Man, I've been feeling this exact thing for about 4 months...3/6 is helping though, the jump probably won't seem AS big next time I take a shot, BR willing...

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

100 - 150 BB swings become common. The 250-300 swings and to a lesser extent, prolonged break even stretches, are still frustrating.

Bitching at the screen and getting laid during a bad run seems to be my favorite ways to release the stress.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

i would suggest moving down to 2/4 and not moving up till you have a 1000 BB roll. Losing 50 BB should not be emotionally difficult if you have 1000.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Take a shot at 10/20.

If you win, you'll have a ton of money. If you lose, the swings at 3/6 will seem like nothing. Even if you win, 3/6 swings will seem like nothing.

Either way +EV. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

I concur. I've shied away form the 5/10 6 max after a horrible run a few months ago. Last night marked the end of me running bad at 10/20 full. It ended b/c I had to stop playing. It was bad.) In any case, now I'm back to the 5/10 short and its a whole new world....The players are much worse than I remember, and the money I won today is like half of what I should have won. [censored].

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Play with a 1000BB bankroll, not really worried about swings then.

If I was 4 tabling 2.5 bb/100 I wouldnt be worried about swings anyway.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i beat off

[/ QUOTE ]I actually find that this helps, seriously!

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I don't handle it, I tilt.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I used to hate the short-term downswings, then I got used to them. The worst are like the 10k+ hand 200BB downswings. These swings make me question my game, and doubt good plays that I make.

After awhile of running 10k or so at 8BB/100, I started getting pissed at the short-term downswings again(because I forgot about them), but I don't anymore [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]


After awhile of running 10k or so at 8BB/100[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

STFU

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


After awhile of running 10k or so at 8BB/100[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

STFU

[/ QUOTE ]It followed a 5k hand 220 BB downswing. Maybe it was 7.5 bb/100
EDIT:
...and it was followed by the longest losing stretch of my life.

http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/5906/36graph2iw.jpg

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I went through a horrific 350 BB downswing at 10/20 recently...it's painful but it does turn eventually if you are a decent player. Some things that helped me...

1) Walking away from the computer, even for a couple minutes, can refresh your perspective.

2) A stress ball is not such a bad thing. If you live alone yelling can release stress.

3) Intellectualize: Bad beats will make you money in the long run as the fish chase...

3)There are more important things in the world then poker. You have friends, family, health, etc. Read Grisga's post from a while back about his son. That'll put things in perspective...

That's my 2 cents

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

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I usually take it out on my balls. Yes, I have several and they were purchased after I started playing poker.

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[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

It\'s not too hard, with a little
 

perspective.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Play less tables and dial in on the game for awhile. That emotion you feel when you are on a downswing is very likely to affect your play, and you'll be compounding your errors further by playing lots of tables.

Of course, if your game "has a lot of flaws", then multi-tabling is just inviting higher variance, even a negative winrate. Single table for ~$9/hr until you fix all your biggest leaks.

Analyse your own play ruthlessly.

Lastly, do lots and lots of math. Do poker related math until your brain hurts. Once you do enough of this, you'll understand, trust, and believe that variance is how you are able to make money at poker. I already know that you know that mentally, but you don't believe it yet.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I agree with that bro. If you get a better understanding of what poker really is, and how you make your money from makeing the plays with the greatest longterm expectation and from opponents mistakes....you will become more comfortable with temporary downturns. Understanding the temporary and the insificance of a snapshot of a temporary low point on a graph is key. Once you digest this and understand it truly, you become increasingly comfortable with being temporarly separated from some of your cheese.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i beat off

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LMFAO, that was funny..sigh...needed that..
I wonder if that can be classified as a form of tilt, or maybe a metric - i.e. is frequency proportional to -BB/100?

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

The swings can be brutal - especially so when you are new to the limit and not playing optimally.

If you cannot hack the roller-coaster switch back to playing full ring games. You may learn to love the fold-fold-fold-fold-fold-fold-fold-fold-fold-fold.

There is no shame in finding a limit and a game that suits your temperament, nor indeed just using poker as a part-time income. Honestly self-review yourself and your game and ask yourself what is good for you. Suffering a psychotic embolism at age 25 and permanently distorting your world view are just some nastier by-products of the game.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Suffering a psychotic embolism at age 25 and permanently distorting your world view are just some nastier by-products of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice turn of phrase...Listen to Nap, he says good things (unless we start talking about VP$IP...)

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I don't handle them at all well and nothing helps.

I have a 3000BB bankroll for the game I'm currently playing. I have been playing fairly frequently for five years. I have a very thorough understanding of the mathematics of the game.

If I sit down and start out losing 15BB, I get very upset. That happens about twice a day so I am a bit of a miserable so and so.

Hope this helps,

Guy.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

I mean, 50 bet swings both ways are multi-daily occourances.

Poker is a game of attempting to create a mean that's about 1/6th (at best) as big as your standard deviation. Of course there's lots of variance guys.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Yea, that graph was pleading for a normalization!

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

i spend about half my playing time at limits which mean i have a 1500BB bankroll - that makes a 200BB downswing feel boring and whilst it may seem excessive to have that big of a bankroll it is still a tiny amount given the money that i will make with it over a short time

every average/bad poker player i talk to and some of the good ones whine about thier recent poor run of fortune - drives me crazy - it insults the game that i play/teach/write about for a living to equate it with luck - poker isnt about luck at all yet that is how even the guys who play it a lot perceive it - its as if they too have been sucked into the big lie which is the way poker is marketed

the swings are just a part of the challenge the game presents - from my perspective they are the best part of the game because the rest of the skills required arent hard to aquire - this doesnt mean i am immune to emotional upset when i run filthy but given i rarely tell anyone how much i have won/lost or what my latest bad beat was probably means i deal with it better than most

you need to be tough and tough doesnt have to be a natural born instinct - its just knowing what to do when the game is tough - like many things i think suck it up and move on sums up the best approach to poor fortune

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

glad i play nl

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Very nice post (yet again) stripsqueez.


[ QUOTE ]

i spend about half my playing time at limits which mean i have a 1500BB bankroll - that makes a 200BB downswing feel boring

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You know...even THIS isn't true for me.

If I have a $15k roll and drop $2k at 5/10 you better believe I'm not going to be say "meh...that felt boring."

Speaking of which..I'm back at 5/10 for now.
A couple of fairly 'normal' downswings at 10/20 combined with the fact that I already know I'm not really that great a player anyway.


I am a bit desensitized to the smaller swings at 5/10 (not the 200BB types though). So when I win or lose a hand it doesn't really blow me away because I feel like I'm crawling along compared with the topsy-turvy 10/20 swings.



Maybe a way of looking at the swings would go something like KNOWING ahead of time that you are going to have a series of 25BB and 50BB swings throughout the day and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them (which we know is already true of course).

In the course of 2k hands or so you will have a handful of +/-50BB swings.

On an average 2k hand stretch perhaps you will typically have 2 +50BB swings and 1 -50BB swings (a total guess).

At the end of the 2k hands you're +50BB of course.


Sometimes you won't get 2 out of 3 though.
You might have 2 out of 3 -50BB swings in one stretch....and then 2 out of 3 +50BB swings in the next stretch.


This isn't precise of course. Might not be too far off though.
Just looking at your poker KNOWING that it will be a series of 50BB swings...and that every once inawhile you will string together 4 consecutive +50BB swings or 4 consecutive -50BB swings.

If the idea of having these kind of $500 swings bothers you then get out of 5/10 (similarly...I have decided that the idea of too many $1000 swings bothers me enough that I'm stepping back from 10/20 for now until I have a bigger roll).



Screw the stuff about having a 300BB roll or a 1000BB roll or a 2000BB roll.


When you sit down at a game ask yourself "Am i going to be cool if I drop 50-70BB RIGHT FREAKING NOW because my cards sucked?"
That's the 'emotional-readyness' test.

You have to be ready for the possibility of a 50-70BB drop that comes practically in the blink of an eye. And if not I think you should probably step back a level.

Re: How do you guys handle the swings emotionally?
 

Jeff W. has a very good idea, but to fully appreciate and feel those effects I suggest you just shoot to 30/60. If you still got a BR left you will be a new man.