I had this thought today. Your friends and family don't understand a downswing, or what goes through your mind during one. No other players care if you're in one, or it becomes a contest to see who can share the bigger bad beat story.

I think for me that's what makes a downswing tough. Things aren't going good, but it feels like there's really nobody that you truly sympathize with it.

You can sympathize with other players that are losing. And you guys can come play at my game anytime . A downswing shouldn't affect you, and if it does it means that your bankroll isn't large enough.

In my case, it's not a shortage of bankroll. My bankroll is 2000 buyins, and I have a healthy savings and spend beneath my means.

It can be easy to try simplifying things like that, but it's not going to be very accurate.

No one cares when you're winning either.

True, but the brain's reward system sure does!

Dunno my downswing I was just on might be the best poker thing to ever happen to me. Got me to start working on a mental game course and working on my game. Playing better than ever now.

A few days after my OP I dropped down to practically the micros and 1 tabled for a few days. Booked about 4 straight days of absolute crushing those levels and feel confident again.

I think that only your wife/husband is possible to understand you because you are living in the same house with the same problems. You can speak with her/his in order to hug you and calm you down. It is a nice warming feeling that it can help you pass this downswing much better. The downswing gives you a feeling of unsafety. Hug can give you this safety feeling back. Try it for 5-10 minutes and you will see results.

everybody has downswings
at the end of the day you're just as (un)lucky as everyone else playing long term

Only person who needs to understand it is YOU. If others get what you're going thru then great if not then whatever. Part of being a poker player is being alone af. Like stormy waters and only you to man the ship. Don't look for answers from others when only you can fix it rn

Hi jonutd:

This statement isn't true. All you can say is at the end of the day your expectation for the future is the same as everyone else (in terms of the cards you receive). You're implying that your past at the end of the day will be the same and that's false.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hey.

I've coached alot of players and used to play quite a bit before games got so tough. Very sick of the grind myself and haven't had the patience for it for years. One thing that really strikes me... it's anecdotal but I've definitely observed huge short term and even medium term differences in how my students run. Honestly, my most successful player objectively speaking is not even close to my most skilled. He just has an uncanny knack for hitting the right hands at the right times. It's not so much that he hits more than anyone else, it's more that he seems to do it at exactly the right times. Meanwhile I've got other guys who seem to perpetually struggle, yet will routinely get a table full of folds when they flop a set in a family pot on something like AsTs7d. I had one guy a couple years back who ultimately ended up quitting. Hell of it was I thought he was actually quite solid, yet he just always seemed to be struggling. End of the day the opportunities for him just seemed to always be few and far between for whatever reason. I watch him die a slow death for a couple years before he had enough. He never showed the results I thought he should've, yet after quitting he started his own business and has been showing growth. IMO that seems like it's far more likely to bring him lasting success than this game, so perhaps he's going to be my most successful student after all in the end.

After watching lots of different people play I do believe everyone's journey even over longer periods can be quite different. Most folks do all right assuming they play solid. A couple guys definitely get a little more than their fair share of profitable situations, and then there are a couple I've met who probably can't win if something doesn't change whether they listen to me or not.

Honestly, it's not a popular opinion, but I do think we are far more susceptible to luck, even over great volumes, than we care to believe. We can practice play that maximizes profitable situations and minimizes loss in bad situations. We can practice sensible BRM. However, there is nothing you can do to control what kind of situations you are dealt, and unfortunately some people I've met have a knack for being dealt an overwhelming amount of bad situations. Some are bad because they will lose a ton of money. Others are bad because even when they have an opportunity on the surface, it will routinely turn out there's no realistic way for them to cash in with what their opponents have.

The luck we get in terms of what we're dealt and short term variance does indeed tend to change quickly. What's less obvious is the idea that even though we will both hit close to the same amount of hands over the course of 100k, the actual situations will always be wildly different. Part of why I stopped playing myself was the realization that playing well doesn't exert anywhere near as much control over my destiny as I once believed. Throw in high rake % found on tables these days and it's like walking into a shooting gallery. Old timers at a bar game on the other side of town would always say "I'd rather be lucky than good." With how high rake is these days, I honestly believe you need both luck AND skill to consistently win. If I'm being 100% honest, I would not recommend trying to play this game anymore. It's golden age is long past and there are far more profitable ventures out there these days for your time and hard work which have far more forgiving elements of standard deviation as it relates to your likelihood of success. I think the current climate of the game breeds conditions ripe for self-torture and negativity. I don't think this game offers anywhere near a good enough ROI expectation anymore for that to be worth it.

tl;dr
spare yourself the grief and put that energy into something more likely to reward your labor, such as stocks, your career, starting your own business, or working to make your community better.

Guy with 2 posts who happens to be a poker coach. I'll bet

The obvious reason for me continuing to play poker is the high hourly that I have each year.

You mention getting into stocks non-ironically like it didn't just completely tank 8 months ago. At least with poker, my action actually got better because more people were home and bored.

Hi WhatThaDuck:

I think there are some problems in this paragraph. First off, there are formulas that you can use to measure the amont of luck that someone is playing with. So, if you work with these formulas you should have a good idea what the luck factor is, for both the short run and the long run, that you're dealing with,

This is actually accurate. When looking at history, there's no question that some people have been more unlucky than others. But the implication that you're making is that this will continue, and that happens to be statistically inaccurate.

And I think this is way off base since you're implying that some people who have been on the wrong side of the standard deviation will always stay there.

Best wishes,
Mason

Poker is lonely
You're playing a card game trying to take people's money
People act like it's their religion or something
Imo it's a shitty thing to do for a living for 95% of people. Even if you win tons of money
Do it, make your money and then get out and do something worthwhile instead that involves your heart
You got upset because you lost money? Shame on you... poker teaches you to be an emotionless uncaring robot that becomes good at poker but unhappy in the rest of life
Most of the "pros" I know just keep playing poker , regardless if it makes them happy or not because they are institutionalised and emotionally bereft lol

Obviously, there are exceptions and some people find a rewarding, happy life through it. Most of those are people that transition to coaching or staking or something else though from what I've seen.

Just wait until your next downswing. :P

There's some stigmas with poker. My parents didn't want to tell people what I did for a living for a long time because someone is "losing" that money. I've had girls who were interested in me until I said what I do for a living.

I don't agree with the emotionless robot part, but I do agree with using that money for something better. I'm currently in the midst of finishing a degree and starting a company. Poker gave me the financial freedom to not have to work a "real" job while I studied, so I'll always be grateful to the game for that.

It's an interesting subject for sure having seen something I would have thought impossible. My two cents cliff notes style: yes it's lonely, more lonely and invisible than most types of downswings ... but try a health downswing if you want to trump it by light years. And the long run is about 100 centuries or beyond. It might start getting ironed out by then, so no, everybody is getting the same deal from the so-called randomness.

Yup. I just had my first 30 buy in downswing in a long time and it happened over 6000 hands! Took a few days off to regroup mentally and now it seems like im getting AA every few hands, hitting all my tptk otf, sets for days etc...
Poker is an emotional carnival

^^^^^^ like it but the 6000 hand thing seems totally unrealistic. I just experienced an 80,000 hand streak, with one brief 4000 hand let up, that was beyond the reasonable, and, in my opinion, outside of randomness. My pattern in the past had always been much more like you mention ... after 30 days of card dead/coolers, a big heater. Almost every time. This time, no even mild heater for 400 sessions, 80,000 hands. Rather amazing. The cards breaking even is way, way longer than often presumed. Sklansky had an article on it decades ago.

** Whoops I mean Caro did the article I referenced, pretty sure.

I think everyone thinks their downswings are outside of randomness, but it simply isn't true.

The idea that cards will break even is not true. All you can say is that at any point in time, your expectation (relative to the cards) will be the same as everyone else from that point on. However, if you had a bad run in the past, you're not due for a good run in the future. If this was the case, the idea of randomness would not exist.

I suspect that you know this and that what you wrote in your post was just poorly worded. However, if that's not the case, take the time to understand what I just wrote. It's an important idea.

Best wishes,
Mason

I believe it to be probabilistic but not random. Just like the universe in general. It's a discovery.

The only way for that to happen is if poker were rigged. It sounds more like your ego using that as a way to exaggerate how unlucky you think you are.

I disagree, and I expected this type of conventional line. In this quantum universe, we do not understand fully the causations that are producing the results. So we can effectively cluster events and predict the likelihoods over many trials, this a probabilistic practice of handicapping the results. This does not mean the results of each or any trial was random, just that our lack of knowledge of the causations is best expressed as a probability.