[phish]

Ray,

While everything you say is true, there is still an uncontrollable aspect of poker that you're downplaying.

Yes, there may be times when the game is so good that your expectation is 5 bets per hour. With that win rate, it's hard to ever lose 50 bets. But those times are rare. So let's say that you see a game where your expectation will only be 1.5 bets per hour and you decide that's good enough. And throughout that game, your expectation remains 1.5 bets per hour but the game is wild enough that your standard deviation is 15 bets an hour. Now you are happy with your winrate and comfortable with the SD. But in this game, it is statistically possible for you to drop more than 200 bets (or maybe even 300 or more, I'm too lazy right now to do the math). And there's nothing you can really do about it.

Sure you should quit if your estimated win rate drops below 1.5, but I'm saying that even with a winrate you're happy with, normal "luck" can result in significant losses.

And I'd like to ask again, no so much to be nosy as to get some sense of standard to measure by, what is the most number of big bets that you have ever swung down?

From what you're written, and from everything I've heard about you, you seemed to have been one of the greatest poker players ever, without the wild gambling compulsion so common to many of the highest stakes players. And I believe you likely did have the discipline to quit bad games even when stuck and play well under all circumstances. So I would like to use your experience as a standard by which to measure reasonable maximum downswings. (Adjustment should be made for online, of course).