[Adam22]

the nice thing about my relationship with downswings over my poker career is that as i get better as a player, the down swings seem to get less horrific. i think i've been running good for 200,000 hands or so ( nothing over a 200 bb drop ).

possibly my most heart-wrenching downswing was when i moved to 10/20 after having played 5/10 for like 4-5 months ( i got most of my most important advanced poker lessons at 5/10 i believe ). i ran good for like 20k hands at 1.85bb/100 ( which blew my mind because i couldn't believe how much money i was making and had to remind myself that 1.85/100 was a pretty normal win rate that i could certaintly maintain ). so anyways i hit an insane -500bb downswing and i think at one point i resolved to become some sort of poker monk and eat only turkey sandwiches and play 5/10 8 hours a day.

so i spent like 2-3 months grinding hard at 5/10 after that and really learned a ton about blind defense and stealing as well as playing marginal hands profitably. i'm like 1000 times more confident in my play now ( and my last 60k hands are way better statistically than my last 60k before that ) so now i'm playing 10/20 again and i'm pretty confident about my ability to do well.

the only thing i'd like to remind the bobs about is that making a living at online hold em isn't really that hard. the things we argue about and sweat on here are very small in the grand scheme of things and although the overall ability to analyze our play correctly will definetly be +EV, the small decisions that you might think are affecting your play right now are not the reason for your downswing. like, i always remind myself when i'm running bad that i make like 15 bucks an hour just from rakeback so all i really have to do is break even and i'm doing better than i would be lifting boxes in a factory. there are a lot of players who just grind it out and probably earn around 1bb/100 hands including rakeback, and i wouldn't cry myself to sleep if i was sentenced to doing that for the next few years.

this post is long, rambling and lacks the charm of a micro bob essay.