x0,000 Hand Slumps for Winning Players [graph]

[Xiphoid]

Four months ago I suffered a slump that I thought I would never see the end of. Variance, cold cards, and probably sub-optimal play aligned for a 20,000 hand slide that was completely uncharacteristic for me, as you can see above. I was under the impression that slumps only lasted a few thousand hands or 5,000 at the worst, but I was quickly informed by the crowd here that things could get much worse.

For those of you who have logged 100k hands, I'm curious about the following:

1) What's the longest slump (steady downward trend in your graph) you've experienced in your career?
2) How many slumps lasting 10,000 hands or more have you experienced?
3) Do you think these slumps are normal once every 100,000 or 200,000 hands?

Thanks to the inspiration of people here, I played through it and am on my way up again.

[checkmate36]

I don't have any of the info your looking for but just wanted to say thanks for sharing your chart.

As a newer player it helps me understand variance.

[Simplistic]

how do you make that chart? through PT?

[DrGutshot]

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how do you make that chart? through PT?

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you need to download pokergrapher, a program that queries your pt database to make a chart. Google it to find it.

-DrG

[iceman5]

Excuse the hijack, but do you know if theses a way with pokergrapher to ONLY graph a single limit even though you have multiple limits in the PT database that youre graphing?

[DrGutshot]

[ QUOTE ]
Excuse the hijack, but do you know if theses a way with pokergrapher to ONLY graph a single limit even though you have multiple limits in the PT database that youre graphing?

[/ QUOTE ]

pokergrapher is a bit quirky - this is the way i do it:

you have to select a different database, then go back to your original database. Then, the limits will be displayed under the options tab, uncheck display all limits and go from there. For some reason if you don't uncheck/recheck which database you want they won't appear.

-DrG

[ChrisMonkeymaker]

Thanks for sharing your chart. Can you imagine how sick the slumps of a full-time brick and mortar major tournament pro's slumps would look like in a chart?

[Fabian]

I know this is not what you want to hear, but 20,000 hand stretches where you lose money will continue to happen and 200 big bets downswings will continue to happen. I'm assuming your a full ring player, if you played shorthanded I don't think your graph would look this nice.

Hopefully, every time this happens to you you'll handle it a little better. Good luck.

[Xiphoid]

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I know this is not what you want to hear, but 20,000 hand stretches where you lose money will continue to happen and 200 big bets downswings will continue to happen. I'm assuming your a full ring player, if you played shorthanded I don't think your graph would look this nice.

Hopefully, every time this happens to you you'll handle it a little better. Good luck.


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Thanks, that's not what I wanted to hear, but what I was expecting. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Thanks to the others who posted their slumps too.

The guy who first taught me the game had one of these prolonged droughts and quit the game for good. He had lost faith in the cards and himself. It was tempting to do the same during mine (60 straight days of nothing but losses), but I knew that if I kept playing, things had to turn around (unless Party cursed my account!). I also told myself I couldn't quit because of the huge investment in time and effort I've put into the game.

I play full-ring $2-4 on Party, btw.

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(unless Party cursed my account!).

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Very possible. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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I also told myself I couldn't quit because of the huge investment in time and effort I've put into the game

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I hope that you know that this a sunk cost mentality. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I bet you were aware of this rationalization.

If you could make more selling stocks and options, that would probably be a better course to follow than wasting your timo on this stupid poker game.