win rate: gradual upswings versus sharp downswings
 

I was looking at a graph of my winnings over time, using this cool tool, when I noticed something I thought was interesting. Over my 55k hands, there's no question that the slopes of my upswings are much lower than the (absolute value of the) slopes of my downswings. That is, generally speaking I'll have a relatively long period of increasing winnings, followed by a short, sharp downswing, followed by another gradual upswing, etc., and the cycle repeats itself over and over.

I'm curious what the reason is behind this, as well as whether this pattern matches that of others.

The explanation that came to mind first was that I'm not good at handling a bad run of cards, and that the tilt makes my downswings sharper than they would be otherwise. If this is the right explanation, then it really gives me something to work on, and perhaps suggests I should stop playing sooner than I otherwise would when I begin to run bad, if I can't learn to turn the tilt off.

Curious what others think...

Rhone.

Re: win rate: gradual upswings versus sharp downswings
 

In the 30k odd hands or so I've played over the last year I've seen this same type of graph.

Only thing I can come up with for me at least in some of the cases is not knowing when to step away. I'll take a bad beat or not catch any cards and keep playing telling myself "it can't keep happening" and it does.

This is probably what the graphs look like for the pros who play in primarily cash live games rather then tournaments. They'll build a roll with the cash games and then hit a couple 5-10k buyins and boom, they don't cash. Very sharp down swing in comparison to the upswing but in the big picture, its always going up in terms of where they stand in purely in profit-made.