[phish]

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reread my post as i think i explained it well. but sometimes what i say goes astray to what i mean.
but i do think you can have wild swings but you dont have to have them. i guess some people must or have to play in a particular game and cannot move or find greener pastures for what ever reason. they may have to weather out big swings if they cant play at primo times of the game. this i cant relate to as i wouldnt do it. just as those that live most of their lives out where they dont want to be because a sick relative wouldnt be happy moving.
there are so many easy games and places to play that winning an average of 4 or more times out of five should be easy. with loses smaller than wins.
i think the answer may be that people dont play properly when the game changes.
years ago on this forum i said i dont think i ever had a losing month. i dont remember ever losing more than about 50 bets in a game. i do admit i would tend to quit when getting stuck that much as it points toward being in a losing situation for the future as well.
when i have ever seen players lose that much or more it always is because they are playing poorly for that game. sometimes you get stuck before realizing this but if you dont have the ability to discover you are playing a losing game that may lead to the big downswings.
why would online lead you to have bigger downswings than live. it will have smaller ones as you are much more able to pick your spots.

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Never having a losing month is impressive. Never losing more than 50 bets per game is also impressive. But I was asking not the max per session but rather, the max contigous downward deviation. In other words, if you have sessions of -40 -25 +15 -50 +60 +100, then your max downward deviation in this example is 100 from the -40 to the -50 before you bounced back and won it all back again plus.

I think that measuring individual session losses is misleading since, as you say, someone may choose to quit after losing 30 bets and hence can brag that he's never had a bigger losing session. Really doesn't say much at all.

The reason that online downswings can be greater is that people tend to have smaller winrate because 1. they are usually multi-tabling and hence not playing their best game at any one table and 2. the absence of visual cues reduces the expert's edge. Also, for a comparable level, online games are much tougher because they tend to attract a younger (hence more adaptable) and poorer crowd. (Poorer is significant cause it means if they're playing 100/200, then they're more likely pretty good cause they couldn't afford it otherwise. whereas casinos are full of older rich guys sometimes just giving it away.)