I am just wondering what everyone's longest downswing was. Currently, I am on a two week down swing. Now I play part time, so I average probably 2 hours a day. But I have been losing the last two weeks. Also, I play on Global Poker, so I cannot move down. I am already at the lowest stakes at .05/.10. Luckily, I do not do this for a living, but I do not like losing.
I have been studying my hands, and I think I have been playing well, but I have a lot of bad beats. But that is PLO, so I will not bemoan my bad beats.
I guess I will just keep chugging along.

But in the end how long of down swing is normal. Or should I be worried that I am just bad at PLO. LOL

Anyway, thanks in advance to the responses.

Matt -

I play about the same as you - 2 hours a day, sometimes more. How much have you lost at those stakes in two weeks? My worst swing has been 3 down days at GP. Tried PLO 20 this morning and quickly lost $60. I may have to move back to comfort zone at PLO 10...

Everyone is going to be a bit different when it comes to down swings. Most of my long downswings are a result of tilt, so I don't really count them as downswing.

Hard to stay positive when the losses keep piling up but I would say post some hands so that others can comment on your play. This will let you know if you are missing some value, spewing chips or just not playing optimally most of the time.

Hopefully the critique will provide some changes which result in a few winning session.

I have lost a lot probably $75. I have been buying in at $5 each time. Perhaps that is the issue. Maybe I should buy in at $10. I just would like to improve so I can go up higher in stakes but until I have a more consistent results that is not happening anytime soon.

I have posted hands. But I guess I should post more often. I do not play enough or at a high enough stake to purchase from Runitonce or PLO Mastermind. I probably should just buy Jnandez book. I do watch a lot of videos on Youtube but I am sure I have some hole in my game.

I bought the Jnandez book its pretty good and is very much in line with his style of play from his youtube vids. Loves double suited hands and 3betting which are building blocks to PLO but not always ideal for the lower limits where people either play too wide or too tight. The stakes he plays at have more players 3 betting a lot wider which makes his strategy profitable.

Not saying his strategy isn't profitable I've just found some of his decisions are going to lead to more swingy results at the lower limits. I still recommend his book as good content for this day and age of PLO.

$75 is not bad at all for two weeks. What I will say is I think your $5 buy-in is a mistake. I used to buy in at low levels and now buy-in at max.

Funny, last 2-3 weeks I have been bad beat left and right on Global at PLO 10. It seems like in the small pots my hands hold up in but on the big pots the flush always comes when I have trips with redraws or my 13+ outers miss on the turn and river. Also, I started playing like crap because of frustration. Prior to the last 2-3 weeks I would guess I was running about at EV. (2 months or so)

I would say the longest has been 1.5 months.

DingusEgg - I messed around with trying his 3 bet strategy, but it doesn’t seem to work for me because in his GTO sims he gains EV by making opponents fold. The tables I play at it is normal for 2-5 players to call a 3 bet. So those low suited cards you are trying to isolate with have a hard time with playability if a flush does hit.

This is what I have been running into as well. Hopefully, it changes for both of us.

Same for me. Lost $140 since Saturday.

Yuck! Hope it turns around.

That is exactly what I was trying to convey. His book is good but unfortunately the strategy he uses is not profitable for the average low limit player. He has hours upon hours upon hours of work done to refine not only his strategy but his PLO game in general.

If you want fewer swings at the lower limits you're going to want to stop 3betting so wide, take more flops, tighten up and play better hands, don't play out of position unless you are strong, stop stacking off light just because you caught a piece and even implement a stop loss.

There are a lot of people who are profitable playing the exact opposite of the style I just stated above but I wouldn't say I hear tons of stories about how every person playing loose agreesive in PLO is killing it.

I've literally never had a 10+ buyin downswing unless it was because I decided to jump up limits and tilted buyins at a higher limit that equated to 10+ at my given limit. Frankly I don't think you need to play loose or wide to consistently win and thats what I'm after consistent wins. I don't have +10 buyin sessions but I don't need to.

My style would probably be met with heavy criticism from the forum but thats ok. Its taken a long time to figure out how to play optimally for myself ( and I'm currently working to see if it has long term success. If it doesn't oh well, I gave it a shot and I did it my way lol.

@dinguseggs. I think just as long as you are winning over a large sample size no one should look down at how you play. I tried maniac playing at the lower limits and it never seems to work for me. I have tried GTOish strategies and I seem to lose more by 3 betting the recommended hands or checking back medium strength hands.

So I cashed out off of global. I guess their RNG was just re-certified this month. I am sure it was just a coincidence that we all started losing at the same time to the same type of bad beats. They even made a webpage stating they are legit.

I did donk off 2-5 buy in at the end out of pure frustration. It was fitting the last hand I got sucked out by a 3 outer. I know, it’s just variance and he had a 7-8 percent chance to hit. Blah blah...

Anyways, I am looking for a new home. Are there any Sites that take US players that don’t allow a HUD? If not, I guess I will be shackle to a computer instead of an IPad. I also need to relearn how to play PLO where people actually fold to a pre-flop raise.

BTW Matt, I had you coded red which meant if you bet and I didn’t have the nuts I would fold. I did see you getting rivered a few times.

2 years.



I guess technically 3 years, depending if you count online results or selling/buying action.

Anytime i see stuff like this it hurts me. I get on a bad run for 2-3 weeks and feel like its God personally testing me or something.

Being able to handle bad beats for months and months at a time is like breaking the 4 minute mile.

It’s normal to be bothered by it, but ultimately you have to suck it up. Variance is inevitable, playing bad is inevitable. You just have to accept it and see if you can make it manageable. It’s ok for it to be hard, but you can’t bury your head in the sand. If you play poker with the intent of never having to deal with downswings much, you’re setting yourself up got failure.

And I want to point out: I had my first ever 6 figure year coming off of a 2 year downswing, so it’s not the end of the world.

All of that. I did this from late Nov - late Dec:



I have a good double digit winrate in my games as well. This isn't a long downswing as it's only ~20k hands but it's incredibly violent even as a decent winner. Variance is gonna happen.

@Inky did you change your style of play at all or do you think it was variance in the down years?

I think I will give it another shot and try to concentrate more on the decision process..

Yeah of course. If you're not changing your game every few months I think you're doing it wrong, or at least not future proofing yourself. I was playing worse when I lost, but I would say a good chunk of it was variance.

For what it's worth my bb results were positive in the losing year, I took big shots that lost, but even then there were long stretches of losing.

This is one of the reasons I've been trying to ignore this thread, 20k hands for me would be ~6 months.

I also remember eskimo sickness posting some sick 9 month+ downswing graphs years ago and he was playing 50-150k hands a month then IIRC.

As someone said on one of the many other variance threads: All you need to do to overcome variance in poker is to keep studying and play a million hands.

I have lost more than 50 buyins several times on Global. When it rains, it pours.

Some days I lose 10 buyins in the first 30 minutes of play. Just the nature of the beast.

In the micros, it can be tough when every pot is 4 way and everyone constantly draws to who knows what. They lose in the long term, but can hit everything in the short term.

I play live at the 2/2 with $5 rock and 5/5 with $10 rock level primarily.

The past couple of months have been extremely swingy for me and I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. Win $600 one night, $800 the next, then lose $1700 the third night.

The players are god awful. I've had spots where I get these droolers putting stacks in with less than 10% equity.

Examples:

HAND #1: I have top two pair and nfd, stacks go in on turn: My opponent has K944 with the 2nd nfd and ONE out, the 4 of spades, he's 2.5% and he only runs it once. He binks it


HAND #2: Flop is AKQ and I have TJxx with the T-high flush draw as well. My opponent bets pot on the flop with A994 and the 9-high flush draw. I repot, he repots all-in. Turn 9, river K. He was 4% I believe

HAND #3: I flop the nut flush, drooler bets $20 on flop, I just call, three others call. Turn changes nothing, I still have the nuts. He bets pot, I repot. He says "if you have the Ace-high you're good" and calls it off. He doesn't realize he turned bottom two pair (I have one of those cards in my hand as well). River he fills up and another player slams the table because he would've made a bigger boat.

And on and on. Plus a number of standard spots where I have top set vs a draw, they get there on river. Or if I have the nuts they pair the river, etc.

It can be ridiculously demoralizing to watch the fish leaving with thousands in profit when you're getting them in traps people DREAM of being in, and watching them wriggle out time and time again.

Fortunately this month seems to be turning around, had two of my best sessions in a long time back-to-back this weekend so hopefully the worst is behind me.

But at the end of the day, poker is certainly not dead and I'm glad that at least if I have to lose it's to the fish who are playing bad and will return that money in the long run with interest.