I think The Big Plummet™ is an important part of any beginner's poker journey. It takes you from the unconscious-incompetence phase to the conscious-incompetence phase, which is very important.

As a recent beginner, I certainly had mine: first real-money poker I ever played was a $5+1 buy-in tourney on UB, which to my utter shock, I won to the tune of $300. At that moment I pledged to use that as a bankroll, and never to play poker with my own money. Started playing $.50-$1 limit, and quickly won another $100 before plunging down to...$32.

Suddenly reading a couple of books seemed much more important. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Got SSHE and WLLHE, and read each twice, then started playing $.05-$.10. Doubled my BR by winning $35 in a freeroll PP tourney, cashed in a bunch of $5 SNGs, and within a month got back up to $350.

As of today I'm sitting at almost $500 ($600 soon after I clear my Empire bonus) and have dabbled in $1-2, ready to move up completely in a month or so. I'm also re-reading SSHE for the third time. The coolest part is that the downswing took ego almost completely out of the equation for me - when I'm doing poorly I never blame it on LAG suckouts or evil sharks anymore. I still make mistakes, and will continue to learn from them.

So in answer to the question, I handle a downswing by using it as an opportunity to fix my leaks. If you just sit back and wait for a turnaround, your ego may be getting in the way of a valuable learning experience. Find your errors and fix them.

I also think a lot of people aren't nearly as good as they think (or say) they are, and quite frankly, I hope it stays that way, because when I finally get good, their hubris will be my profit. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]