I was ruined by a downswing and advice.

hello.

i have been a reader of these forums for quite awhile now, and have been an avid poker player (Limit, .50/1, 1/2, 2/4 Party) for close to two years, playing about 500 hands a day or more. about 8 months ago i went through a pretty lengthy downswing, and decided to make some changes to my game; i started folding when i knew i was beat. i immediately began having greater success at poker than i had before... i had never really paid too much heed to the stats that i was compiling in Pokertracker, just number of hands played, my winrate, and my opponents' stats of course for observation purposes while playing.

over this course of time, i played around 90,000 hands and averaged a winrate of 1.9 BB/100 for the various limits that i was playing, and had a WtSD rate of 26, W$SD of 63. i recently made a stat post where i was roasted mercilessly about these two little numbers, saying i was folding too many winning hands, that i must have just been running hot, etc.

so, obviously i set out to make a few changes, started trying to see more hands down to showdown to get these stupid little numbers back to where it was the general consensus that they should be (around 32/52) and started getting hammered... i went back and did a little research and during the time before i made the initial adjustments to my game, my WtSD/W$SD was 32/54, winrate was .4bb/100; so to me, it seems when i started folding when i knew i was beat i improved... after the stat post i made, i went on a downswing that i can't seem to shake, which is about to cross the 400BB mark, and it seems i have completely forgotten how to play poker. i know i am tilting now, i am no longer having fun playing poker, and am getting bled dry because i don't know when to fold, when to stay anymore... my preflop game is still good, my postflop game is, though falling into the accepted 3/2.5/2 range. it has been about 40000 hands since i have won anything significant and am about to hang it up (well, i will be forced to due to the state of my bankroll). i took a long break and thought i was coming back fresh, i guess it was not long enough. any suggestions? should i just go back to folding when i knew i was beat and say screw the damn numbers and stats, against the advice that i received? i honestly don't know what i can do at this point to become a winning player again, and am nervous that i am ruined as a poker player because of all of this.

thanks for letting me complain

Doug