Dealing with Swings

[winky51]

losing 5k a day, wow. Id just like to win 5k a month. But good point big bankroll makes the hit softer. Seems like a less portion to lose.

Losing $200 with a $5000 BR is nothing
Losing $200 with a $800 BR is a lot.

[Bluffoon]

Hey we are not poker machines we are human beings and we get frustrated, sad, upset etc....

You can't deny your feelings and reactions. It sucks to take the worst of it over and over and over for days or even weeks. Accept that you are going to have negative feelings when you are in such a swing. It's normal.

I do a couple of things when an extended downswing hits. I look carefully at my state of mind. When I am playing and feeling bad (frustrated, discouraged etc..) I take a short break and do something I enjoy. I find it takes me about twenty minutes to come in off the ledge and I can go back to playing and I feel better.

The other thing I do is pull up a database from when I was running well and I review some successful hands and stats. This helps restore my confidence and I find it also helpful to compare my current play with my play during a successful run to see if any negative changes have crept into my game.

I am amazed at the length and magnitude of swings that are possible and that you will see over 100's of thousands of hands. You can talk about it and read about it but you really have to experience it for yourself. When I first started playing it took me a while to adjust to the normal swings of poker. Now that I have experienced a little bit of the larger and longer, outlier type of swings I hope that I will be better prepared when they hit again.

[winky51]

Doesn't take but losing 1-2 extra hands an hour on the river to turn +2BB per 100 to -2BB per 100.

Or missing an extra 10% of the flops while your opponent with his J5s hits his pair while you bet AK no pair.

Once I hit over 100,000 hands I started seeing how large the swings can be. But keep records and not just PT.

I have a record of every day I play, what I played, and how much won/lost.

That way I can look back and see which were winning months and losing months. Seeing 3-4 winning months in a row makes me feel good. This year I think I had 2-3 losing months, December being one. Made far more than lost though.

[DeadManJay]

Just want to start by asking: What do you guys consider a big downswing? 100BB? Less? More? I'm going through ~100BB swing thats happened within the last 4 days of playing live. I'd say I've played about 24hrs at ~25-30 hands/hr. I keep going back each day thinking, "It's a new day... lets win some poker" then the cards just don't come, AGAIN. The bad part for me is I've been on almost a 6 month break from the game and come back to this...