I am a recreational, weekend LSNL player. I have been on my longest downswing in all the years that I've been playing poker (going on 7 months now).

I am naturally a tight player so now that the game is getting to me mentally, I am not sure how I can adjust (playing looser is even harder to do).

I would like some advice on how to get over this hump.

Some examples of a few memorable hands that made me take extended breaks (I am on Extended Break #2 now):

1. 1/3. Super loose table. Hero ($600) and is stuck $300 for the evening. Limp-raise UTG to $80 with QQ against aggro fish Villain in LP (who doesn't fold). Flop AQ5, c-bet $200, V calls. K on turn, Hero ships $320, V calls. River T, V shows AJ for runner runner broadway.

2. 1/3. Maniac with $2k chips straddles to $60. Hero ($400) raises UTG to $180 with AK. Maniac goes all-in, Hero calls. Loses to Q4.

3. 1/2. Card dead, crazy table with too many overbet bluffs. Any pair is basically good. Flop top pair and call down, to find Turned two pair. Flop bottom pair and call down, to run into rivered two pair.

4. 1/2. Hero is card/flop dead for 5 hours, nothing going my way. Has raised AK and AQ about 5-6 times and has not connected at all. 3! with QQ and Villain folds JJ face up. 3! with QQ in another hand and lost to Villain's AQ. Hero reloads to $200. New player sits down, raises UTG to $20 (huge raise). MP and LP call. Hero has KK in SB. Seriously concerned about the $20 raise, but "cannot" do anything else but raise to $100. UTG ships, Hero calls off remaining $80, expects Villain to have AA...which is exactly what he had.

These are just some of the hands I remember off the top of my head. Had a 3 month downswing, took a break for 2 months, and now going on another 3 months.

In general, I am making the folds when I'm behind and calling when I am ahead.

Planning on taking a break again, but how does one adjust?

Keep grinding hands...you are running into a bad string of coolers. Taking breaks is only necessary if you find yourself tilt donking off stacks, which doesn’t sound like your problem. How many hours are you on this downswing? 60+ hour downswings are fairly common in live poker.


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More details:
- Year #1 was breakeven
- Year #2 and #3 combined 9BB/hr
- Downswing started in middle of Year #4 (still up for the year)
- Currently on Year #5, down for the year
- Currently 225 hours over past 7 months, 1 winning month in between (after Break #1)

Downswing details:
- Started with 2 losing months
- Took a break for 2 months
- Came back for 1 winning month
- Been losing past 4 months - 126 hours

Currently on Break #2 to recompose.

I'm not a superstitious person, but sometimes it's difficult to shake off "that feeling" when playing (i.e. oh it's coming baby, or oh crap, he has Aces and I know I'm gonna wake up with a big hand).

Ive just recently grinded my way out of a pretty soulcrushing downswing, one of the biggest ive had over the 8+ years ive been playing livepoker on a weekly/regular basis. Down $4000 over around 100 hours of play. Lost a huge amount of flips for stacks for a while, like 12 in a row in significant pots+ alot of 2 and 3 outers. So i hear you, and know where youre coming from.

So how do you get through this? One of the hardest most difficult challenges when going through downswings is to keep your head straight, keep your composure, dont tilt in any way and just manage to believe it will eventually turn around (if you are confident you are a longterm winning player with an edge in the game). Its just a matter of time if you keep putting yourself in clear +EV spots, and keeps putting in the hours at the table.

Its also very easy to feel sorry for yourself (especially when you see how other players sunrun game after game after game when you are losing),wich i certainly was guilty doing myself several times during my last downswing. The faster you can get out of this mental state, the better of course. Feeling like a victim isnt doing you any good,you need all your energy in order to play your best and making solid +EV decisions. Even knowing this beforehand, i still coudnt help myself feeling sorry for myself some portion of the time- because of all the negative stress your body/mental state is dealing with when going through a horrific downswing.

Taking breaks when the runbad is getting to you is a wise choice. Try to show up well rested when you do decide to play.Make sure you eat well and sleep well before youre playing, in order to maximize your chances of playing your A- game despite the downswing.

Also i would add that tight solid abc poker with strong fundamentals is the way to go when dealing with a big downswing (make it as easy as possible for yourself),this is not the time to change your game in any significant way: even though its very common to feel like doing changes because you are not getting the desired results in the games. Its also very common to get "lessons" from your fellow grinders or opponents, that you need to change your game in order to start winning again. Dont listen to then, keep your head straight and believe in yourself- wich is probably the single most difficult thing to do during these long losing stretches. Going through a downswing is a battle against yourself the way i see it, first and foremost. A huge mental challenge.

So you're BE over maybe ~400 hours? That is rough, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility for a winning player. For a weekend grinder who treats the game as recreation, this is certainly expected as your winrate might be somewhere ~5bb/hr or below. There's a whole thread for this topic, so before this gets moved over, I'd recommend paying for good poker advice and reading The Mental Game of Poker. Unless you have a solid and honest sample size to back up your intuition that you're a winning player, there's really nothing guaranteeing that this BE or losing stretch is something unexpected.

tl;dr use you offtime to study.

edit: just read your update with your actual hours. 225 hrs is a fairly small sample. Read that mental game book, apply it, and study up a bit. What you're going through is completely normal. All winning players face this.

What is BE?

edit: Based on my stats:
- "Lifetime" playing of about 1725 hrs
- About 1,500 hrs of winning over 2.5 years
- Past 225 hrs over 7 months I consider the downswing

Yeah, i agree. 400 hour breakeven stretch is rough, but still fairly common if you log enough hours you are gonna enter one of these periods sooner or later.

Personally ive gone through 300 hour breakeven stretches on two different occasions, when the doomswitch is on it is truly on. Its not much you can do if all you do is looking down at 10-2 off or J-3 off hour after hour, and not binking a single flop+ getting sucked out on/lose in every big pot you play.

Breakeven stretch.

LOL. I am so sick of seeing 9-3 offsuit.

edit: Just looked up BE. I am currently on 377hrs.

The upside to all this is that I'm not the only one, so at least I can put it in the "it happens" bucket...but I really need to figure out if it's my gameplay or just the "doomswitch" being on.

Hey man, great volume. Seems like you're beating the game, so kudos. As long as you've tracked your profit over that time, you can figure out your hourly. Divide the hourly by the big blind and multiply that result (the bb/hr) by 3.333 to get your bb/100hand rate. 30 hands/hr seems to be the average in live poker. One dealer told me it's the rate the casino uses in their projections. Anyways, with that figure, and a rough standard deviation of 150bb/100 (Got that figure from Ryan Fee) you can plot out some likely outcomes for a player with your win rate using this. The poker variance calculator isn't a perfect tool, but you'll see some examples of possible downswings you could encounter.

You need to remember that live poker is slow. It took you 7 months to grind out those hours, which seems like forever, but it's quite an insignificant sample when it comes to your results converging with what's expected given your win rate.

Great replies, really appreciate the advice.

This bit from Petrucci in particular stands out to me: "Also i would add that tight solid abc poker with strong fundamentals is the way to go when dealing with a big downswing (make it as easy as possible for yourself),this is not the time to change your game in any significant way: even though its very common to feel like doing changes because you are not getting the desired results in the games."