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though everyone here seems to think this means it is somehow likely to happen to a given winning player in his lifetime. It isn't.

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Have to disagree. It's not only likely, it's inevitable.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find too many players who have made it to limits above 15/30, logged at least 500k hands, and who haven't had at least 1 300BB tanker.

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I'm honestly not trying to be disagreeable, so please don't take it that way, but I know many players like this. Probably 20 at least. Maybe they didn't tell me about their major downsings, but I believe they would have.

And for what it's worth, I have not experienced it, and I am a 15/30-30/60 player who has about 5 years and a million hands under my belt. Perhaps I have been very lucky, but I find that when I go on a 100BB downswing I am usually not playing well. The few times I have gone on 200+ streaks, poor play has been a *major* factor in the losses. I have no evidence or data to back my claims up, but I really do feel that a "pure" 300BB downswing where the player plays close to his A game and still loses 300BB through sheer bad luck is an exceedingly rare phenomenon. I hope it never happens to me, and at the risk of invoking the wrath of the poker gods, I don't expect it to.