Hi,

I'm having the biggest downswing in my pokercarreer ever. It's just getting sicker and sicker. I play MTT's only, about 16 a day. Average buy-in should be about 15$. I keep losing important flips and I keep losing 2 outers.

I've made a nice profit at these stakes over the past 2 years, without having a major downswing. I'm down $4,000 since my peak. This is about 266 avg. buy-ins.

Take a look at my MTT graph:
http://www.sharkscope.com/SharkScope...earchType=SCHO

Is this 266 buy-in downswing even possible, or am I doing something wrong here? Do you guys have any tips about overcoming downswings? The amount of money isn't that big, but the amount of time this downswing lasts, is. Already moved down a limit. Had a week long break and tried to out-volume it. Nothing seems to work.

Maybe an irrelevent fact: This downswing has started since I moved to a new house and started paying rent. (I was living with my mom before). Can't stop thinking it has anything to do with the big change in my life.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hmm.. link's broken. Sharkscope > GuusdeR90 > Pokerstars > Scheduled

inconceivable

That downswing is very very possible, and a bigger one is even more possible.

I stake winning 180 players who have 11$ average stakes who go on bigger downswings than 4K, so you can go on a much much bigger downswing if playing MTT's.

Thanks.. that's good to know. Any tips on overcoming downswings in general?

Play way way way way way more than 15 mtt's a day.

I do not think that means what you think it means

Lol I know what he means alright... Just ignoring it cause I hate those ignorant fast replies.

don't let it mind **** you young grasshopper

I won't.. but thanks for the advice !

I play 33fo (55 on sundays) and below and 11r and below and am approaching -5k.

It's the biggest DS i've ever had and it hurts but you just gotta grind through it. Play more 180s, play more 360 and 500 cap tourneys. Play the games you feel you are most +EV in.

Now that's what I call good advice. Our downswings are somewhat similar, I play 27,50 FO and below and 22 1R1A and below. Good luck with it sir.

With an ABI of 15 and playing so few tournaments you're going to go through some rough patches, probably some likely worse than this one. It looks like you're a pretty decent low stakes, low volume grinder though so I'd just review some hand histories, play around with PokerStove and a calculator to make sure you're making good plays, and keep grinding. Moving out on your own may create psychological issues; you may feel pressure to perform better now that you have responsibilities but that's probably not the case here.

Do a search in the MTT community forum for "downswing" and read those threads. Some of the figures posted are quite terrifying.

Wow.. nice advice. Statistically and mathematically seen, downswings can be infinite. It's just that I've never experienced anything like this.

This thread actually made me feel better. Replies on 2+2 are just better and more professional then replies on any other forum ! Thanks !

It can always be worse. Just do what you can on your end.



about $25 ABI, roughly.

I'm also guessing you play a ton of big field MTTs? That will add a ton to variance as I probably cut down on big fields way too late in my swong which hasn't helped matters. It's possible to run bad and lose money for an epic amount of time if your AFS is massive.

BTW.. What's your opinion on taking a 1 or 2 week break while on a downswing, when you know you're still playing winning poker?

your doing it for rebalancing while knowingly giving up EV, part of the reason businesses force vacations on their employees. You need to do it!

Sanity>missing EV

1) stop playing on the rigged site
2) ???
3) profit

You have to be mentally stable like hell to handle those kind of swings (in # buy-ins), wtf.

BTW.. what's your guys opinion on taking a 1 or 2 week break while on a downswing, even though you still know you're playing winning poker?

Hmm.. makes sense. That's a nice comparison sir.

My ABI is ~30-35. Lots of swings will come, you have to adjust your game selection as well as habits of playing : ie--unregistering, not playing mtt sngs mixed in to fill up screen space.

I'm cutting down on high variance MTT's. I'll try to cut down on MTT's with big fields. These replies have meant a lot to me, seriously !

I personally believe most full-time online grinders don't take enough breaks. And by break I don't mean playing live tournaments or whatever, I mean getting away from the game as much as possible. It's really really hard to take consecutive days off, especially now that we have a ton of tournaments to choose from and prize pools are larger than ever before. When you work a 9-5 for someone else its easy to get away because it likely doesn't consume you. Poker consumes most grinders. Think about a time in real life where you calculated the EV of a situation, calculated the probability of an event and then made a decision. You basically create a PokerStove for many situations in real life, in your head. And when you're not using things you learned from poker in real life, you might be reading poker literature, watching a training video, browsing poker forums, talking about poker with friends online, viewing some sort of poker media, or you're thinking about field sizes for that days tournaments and calculating your expectation for the day if you were playing. You spend the rest of your time, which isn't much, thinking about pussy. So much for getting away. The 9-5 doesn't make you think 100% of the time, and you can do a crappy job and not only stay employed but move up in the company if you do it right. There's not much motivation to be consumed with that job, for me anyway.

I think that when we get into deep or prolonged downswings we try to make things happen. We play more hours, increase our number of sessions and we're a little frustrated and angsty. A little more gamble, a few more plays made out of spite that are breakeven at best. Losing money even for a few days is a bad thing, especially if poker is our job, to everyone in the world who does not play poker. If your non-poker friends ask you how you're doing this week, it stings a little when you tell them you're down $4k and they look at you with the "what a degen" eyes. You know what I'm talking about, that look. Even though we know that it's standard, those little bits of social pressure make you want to win more. If we just get away for a short while, we cool off. Instead of feeling that "have to" feeling, it becomes more of a "want to". You feel a desire to improve your game so after getting away from it completely for a bit you read/post in strat forums more, work with Stove or Wiz and do a bunch of math, watch videos, basically become a better player who is also refreshed and focused on playing well - a great thing to become.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...Tournament poker is a mindfk.

I wrote this while sitting in traffic on my phone so hopefully it makes sense.

WOW.. that's just the most 'making sense reply' I've ever seen. Everything you said is completely true, especially the part about the social pressure.

The 'degen-eyes' hahahaha, that is SOOOOO true.

The gamble part. I noticed myself, I was just hoping that hard on luckboxing some turbo tourney to just break even, eventhough there were like 500 ppl left.

What you're saying about your mind being on poker 24/7, in one way or another is completely true. You just don't realize that every day..

I'm definitely taking a break for a week. After that I'll select my games better and put some time into FTP.

Dude (or sir).. this is some valuable stuff. Best reply EVER.. You made my day/week lol. THANKS !