What Qualifies As A Cold Streak For You?

[Hambone]

I've had three 150BB down swings in three months, with one of those approaching 200BB. I've had nights where I've been up after winning 5% of my hands, and down after winning 9% of my hands.

It all depends on how well you limit your losses with bad hands, capitalize on your gains with great hands, hand how seldom you flop a great second best hand.

Personally, I wouldn't classify anything as a genuine cold streak until about 100BB. But just remember, if you're a winning player, that's all you can do: classify a streak in retrospect. After a 100BB, you've been running bad, but it has no bearing on how well you'll run in the future, unless you tilt. The past two weeks I grinded out a +50BB, pretty poor for how much I played. The past 4 days , I'm up almost 400BB, playing the same poker.

There are generally three ways you could have been running bad:
1. Not getting any playable hands.
2. Getting great hands and getting sucked out on.
3. Misplaying your great hands and getting sucked out on, and playing unplayable hands.

It's easy to classify number 1 when you've been seeing less than 18% of the flops at low limit, and winning less than 5% of your hands.

It's pretty easy to classify number 2 when you've been seeing a normal ammount of flops, and winning a decent percentage, but are still down. Or say you're winning less than 30% of your showdowns.

It gets easier and easier to classify number three as you play more hands and your streak continues.

After 150BB-200BB down swing, you should definitely step back and look at your game. AFter my last 150BB downswing I looked through poker tracker, and tossed KJ, JT, QJ, AT, and almost AJo out of my preflop arsenal (unless under special conditions like against week opp, on the button, first in). Now when I play 2-4, I see 20-24% of the flops, and when I play 3-6 I see 17-21% of the flops, and my type A down swings haven't been as severe.

Just stream of conciousness. Good luck, keep playing and it will turn around. Keep studying and it will turn around harder and for longer.