What are some examples of when you are running bad?
Many people lose money and use the excuse "im just running bad"
So what are some good examples of running bad and how can people tell the difference between running bad and playing poorly?

there is no easy way to rate the skill of a poker player, especially not at any given point in a players career. you have to have the discipline to set up your own constraints and stick to them. you can for example say: if i do not show profit after X hands at stake Y it is likely that i am not playing well enough. read up "bankroll management" and you will find that your initial question does not matter much in practice because most players just fail in navigating their bankrolls savely through the seas of stakes and variance.

Running bad means anything under EV. This will happen very often, obviously; so most people have there own criteria based on win rate and volume. For me, a bad run at FL is something like 200-300 BB (big bets) over 10-15k hands. Running at -15 bb/100 for 2k hands is also clearly a bad run.

2 stats I notice whenever I'm running bad are my wtsd and especially w$@sd are a few ticks lower than normal. My turn c bet is down 4-5%.

If you're a proven winner, it's usually safe to chalk up losing stretches as "run bad". But if you're fairly new, I'd be sensitive to a decent sized losing stretch, and also conservative with my bank roll. Consistently reviewing hands and getting feedback will help insure its a bad run and not merely bad play.

Whenever I drop below cashing in 15% of all tournaments I play for a period of time I consider that a bad run or just making the min cash alot. I am currently on about a 25 game no cash loosing streak and I'm pretty confident it's a bad run and variance is rippin me apart. But it is still hard to tell if bad play has anything to do with it. I always find myself critiquing my play and wondering what I'm doing wrong. I never know if I should just keep playing the same or change because I don't know if variance is the problem. What do you all think?

It's funny, because this gets to the psychological aspect that is exactly why every poker player thinks they're a winning poker player.

pg_780 is right that running bad is running under EV, and how much under EV you are is how bad you're running. Because of selective memory issues, people tend to remember that giant hand they got outdrawn and stacked on for $300 (but actually only had +$100 of EV or so with the draws) instead of the 240 small hands they slightly misplayed and lost $1 of EV each time.

As long as you track your EV for the full game or at least keep an eye out for any potential leaks and have successfully grown your bankroll (not in short bursts, but over long periods of time) you can be pretty sure that smaller downswings are just running bad and not something worse.

If you can do that successfully, the next time you're at a table when an obvious underdog blames their loss on running bad though... just nod and smile.

Just remember - The average person thinks they're better, smarter, and more attractive than the average person.

A 25 game losing streak in tourneys where the top ~10% payout is below the norm, but it isn't out-of-the question at all. I believe that's something like 1 standard deviation below normal or just over.

That's why tourney players are supposed to have ridiculously huge bankrolls for the buyin on the order of 100x + the buyin.

I'm not saying that it's bad luck for sure and I'm not saying it's poor play for sure because you'd need a full hand history to even begin to dig into that question, but it is well within the plausible realm still for bad luck.

P.S. - sorry if double posts are frowned upon. Not yet familiar with the forum etiquette on this particular forum but I thought they were more readable separately.