Signs of Downswings or bad play?

[Guthrie]

[ QUOTE ]
There is no way to "beat" it except to keep playing as many hands as you can. The more suckouts there are, the more profitable the game is... with the cost of increased variance.

I've played 17,000 hands of .5/1 and am showing almost 4 BB/100. But after 8,000 hands of 1/2 I am showing 0.4 BB/100. All this means is that I need to keep playing more [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
And herein lies the problem. My question, much like the OP's, is how do you know if it's a downswing or a leak? I won consistently at .25/.50 and .50/1, about 3.5BB/100 after 30K hands, but after 40K hands of 1/2 I'm at -.75BB/100. If it's simply a matter of playing more hands, no problem. I can do that. But if it's an undetected leak, then more hands just means more losses.

I suspect it's a downswing, since I whittle the losses down for two or three days, everything working like it should, then I hit one catastrophic session where I lose all the big pots and win all the small ones. My stats for the session are great, except I've lost 75BB.