- A downswing is a period when a player earns significantly less than their expected win rate over a number of sessions.
- The high variance in poker makes it inevitable that you will suffer sustained losses from time to time. These will not be rare, freak occurrences, but something that most players have to put up with regularly.
The Reality of Downswings
- Downswings are not an entity in themselves, but an observed pattern in results.
- A common error is trying to assign downswings properties, such as giving them a fixed size, shape, or frequency.
- Many players try to define downswings in the present or future tense. They are trying to predict future events based on past results, which is impossible.
- Unfortunately, the psychological pressure of running badly for a sustained period of time makes ignoring downswings difficult.
- Managing a large downswing is one of the most difficult things you will have to do as a poker player, and the penatly for failure can be losing your entire bankroll.
Common Bad Responses to downswings
- These are some of the most common bad responses to downswings:
- Losing confidence in your ability and game
- Making radical changes to your play
- Getting obsessed with your losses
- Trying to ride out the downswing
- Moving up a limit to recoup your losses
Dealing with a Downswing
- You cope with downswings the same way you deal with anything else in poker. You make the decisions that will make you the most money in the long term.
- Your decisions away from the table such as what games you play, what limits you play, and how you prepare will all play a crucial part in ensuring you come through tough periods.
- If you are not playing well, then your results will deteriorate, magnifying the effect of the downswing, which in turn makes you even more depressed. This cycle can continue until either:
a) You have a lucky run of cards pulling you out of the downswing; or
b) You go broke.
- Having the correct attitude toward your bankroll and your win rate when you are running well will help you maintain that attitude when things inevitably go bad.
Staying in Control
- There are two things to concentrate your energies on during a downswing: Improving your game and avoiding tilt.
- The relationship between tilt and downswings is a vicious circle, and either can be the trigger.
- Some of the most common traps that can befall a player running badly include:
- Trying to get even
- Damage limitation (playing more defensive, passive)
- Unwillingness to gamble
- Breaking the pain threshold
Downswings and the Poker Mindset
- Preventing tilt when on a downswing is all about attitude. If you play poker in the correct frame of midn, you are less likely to tilt.
- Understanding the seven attitudes of the Poker Mindset is the key to avoiding tilt during a downswing. (I listed those in Part 1)
Improving your game
- Generally speaking, you should remember the following two things when you are on a downswing.
1. It is very unlikely that your downswing is entirely due to bad play.
2. Likewise, it is very unlikely that bad play is not contributing to your downswing at all.
- If you reduce the "poor play element" of a downswing, and improve your win rate, you will recover more quickly.
- While finding and correcting leaks in your game is an end unto itself, it also has fringe benefits helpful in recovering from a downswing:
- By concentrating on improving you game, you are keeping your mind on something other than poor results.
- By proactively improving your game, you can sit at the table with greater confidence.
Downswing and Your Bankroll
- If a downswing is large enough, there is a risk that you are not sufficiently bankrolled to play at your current limit and should move down.
- Unfortunately, players on a downswing are often bad at moving down limits, which can be for a number of reasons:
1. It's a step backwards.
2. It will be harder to win back losses.
3. The player might be in denial.
- If you cheat on your bankroll, you are risking your entire poker career.
Phone interview tomorrow, references/resume in order. Got a couple other things in the works, life is good atm. This could actually work out real well if things go as I hope. Anyway I'm off to finish watching the first two seasons of house.
Long time no blog, what's up LP? I'm so baller i'm stealing my neighbor's wifi because the internet people aren't coming until monday to my new house. They were supposed to come yesterday. I've been completely moved in for a week as of today and I couldn't play poker at all for a while because i thought I had no wireless pickups i could connect to but after I built my new desk and set my laptop on it i found out that I can get a decent signal in this spot.
So unfortunately, I've been not grinding much at all and playing mostly drunk which prob isn't so genius considering i for the first time in my life played a stake higher than nl200 two days ago when a mega donator fish berated me and offered to play for 1k so i insta jumped on a 5/10 table with an obviously less than sufficient roll. I won like 250 off of him in about 10 hands then bluffed off most of the profit the next hand and he insta said OWNED and sat out and left LOL. I've honestly never ever done anything like that before and i feel really dirty about it and i deserve to be berated cause it's insanely stupid so i wanna put that here.
I can't really link up PT graphs because cake made an agreement recently with HEM and they changed the way they save hands so that they would function with HEM. HEM is supposedly coming out with an update any time and i guess i'll have to buy that but i tried the trial out and couldn't get it to work for some reason so i'll have to get their support to help me or something.
As far as results go im up like 5.2k this month in 30k hands including 1k in rakeback. About 1/3 of that is nl100 though so i dunno what my winrate is or my stats or anything which bothers me because i like to introspect myself in all aspects but I can tell just by playing that I have edge over 95% of the people @ nl200 so im obviously not worried.
I had a girl sleepover recently but she was way too drunk and i didnt get any action, need to break in the new house imo. Maybe shots at 2/4 i dunno how good those games are on cake but i'd assume they are beatable but at a smaller scale like 100 in comparison to 200. I feel semi dirty about it though and like i havent earned it because ive only played prob 40-50k hands @ nl200 so maybe i'll just stick around at nl200 til i have 20k. I know i won't do that because i love to move up and it makes me feel accomplished + you get better faster + you win money faster. So maybe shots on days i feel good.
I really promise im gonna get my video up soon, ive made at least 10 of them and they never work out right and are over 1gig or they are 1frame per second and altering stuff doesn't seem like it's helping anything and i dunno wtf my problem is but I promise im gonna get one up sometime.
now for the fun stuff, pics of my very undecorated room. + Show Spoiler +
Pm me if interested or just comment. I have PT3 - I am not serious about poker anymore and have no need for it. No this is not a scam I have only one version and registration code. Due to recent scams I will accept a $35 payment - then I give the code - then I get the other $15. Pokerstars, FTP, and UB cash all accepted. Opwestacct@yahoo.com on msn - Lemme know.
Basically listed out everything that I plan on playing over the summer today. I'm heading to Vegas Friday morning so I'll prolly get in around 3-4pm. Obviously I'm not going to be playing all of them, since Day 2 will overlap into a lot of those tourneys and I plan on making a lot of Day 2s. Anyways here it is:
On the off time I'm probably going to be around the Rio or Bellagio playing cash games. Planning on coming home (San Diego) for one or two of the weekends. Other than that, I will be in Vegas til July 18th in a house 10mins west of the Rio on Spring Mt with GoGators86(UB/AP) aka plzlemmewin (FTP) , RetiredAt30 (UB/AP), and UnderAAged (PS). My house WILL bring home a bracelet this summer. I'm calling it now!
PS: If you see me in Vegas, don't be shy! Say hi! I swear I don't bite. This is me:
may went good i cant complain, i feel my game evolutioned a lot and also i got great help from locoo <3 hopefully will be moving up to nl400 at the half of june.
I'm finally moved into my summer apartment, and I'm going to be grinding consistently every day now. I'm hoping to put in at least 3-4 hours a day (unless I'm tilted or something). I'll be grinding NL100 FR, and although I haven't played non-HU poker in about a 1.5 months, I've been pretty active in reading and giving advice in the forums, so I'm feeling really good.
I've also been doing a lot of research via Holdem Manager, as well as looking into some hand histories to see traits that some of the bigger winners have. You can seriously find out a ton of things about your game if you use the filters. I'm also testing out a few theories, and I think I currently have a HUGE edge at NL100. I could be way off though, and you can all laugh at me if I go busto .
Anyways, I'll be posting my progress as well as stats. Probably not a good idea since there are a few LPers here that it'll help, but whatever.
Where I keep updating the summary/important bits as I read through the book. This is part 3
Essential Attitudes for Poker Success
- The hands that have a big emotilnal impact are those where you lose a big pot.
What happens When You Lose a Big Pot?
- How much losing a large pot affects you depends on several factors, including:
- How big the pot is
- How good you felt your chances were of winning the pot
- How you lost the pot
- How your session or recent results have been going
- Whether it is in a tournament or cash game
- How adequately bankrolled you are
- Your attitude
- When you look at all of these factors combined, you can see why it is difficult for many players to tune out their emotions completely.
- Fortunately, what is really important is not how much losing a big pot affects you emotionally, but how it affects your play.
- Beware of the following pitfalls that may snare a player who has recently lost a big pot:
- Berating your opponent
- playing the next hand badly
- Playing badly in similar situations in the future
- Tilt
Reaction to losing a Big Pot
- There are four stages in how players react to losing a big pot:
- Each stage represents a better reaction than the last.
- Players at later stages will be better able to rationalize the loss of a big pot and not allow it to affect their play.
Applying the Poker Mindset
- A player might read and understand the four stages to losing a pot, but still be unable to consistently react in a way congruent with stages three or four. There are two main reasons for this:
1. Emotions are difficult to control.
2. His entire approach to poker might be wrong and everything goes awry from there.
- Understanding the seven attitudes of the Poker Mindset can help correct your approach to poker, which in turn will help you to respond better when you lose a big pot.
- Whenever you lose a big pot, rather than focusing on your emotions, focus on these two important questions:
1. What does that hand teach me about my opponent's play?
2. Could I have played that hand better?
Bad Beats
- Broadly speaking, there are three ways you can lose a pot:
1. Bad Play
2. Bad Cards
3. Bad Beat
- The average player gets angrier over bad beats than over any other kidn of lost pot. Some of the reasons for this include:
- Entitlement - Players with a strong hand will often (subconsciously or otherwise) belive they are entitled to the pot.
- Rewarding Bad Play - For the myopic player, bad beats are seen to reward bad play.
- Directed Anger - Anger is often stronger when there is something for the anger to be directed at.
- Bad beats are the best way to lose a pot as you make money in the long term when your opponents make mistakes:
- Bad play makes you money in the long term
- Bad beats keep bad players playing
- Bad Beats encourage bad play by rewarding it
- A good player will take more bad beats than he gives
- Bad beats are an integral part of the game
- Bad beats are a good poker player's best friend!
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this is one of the latest tricks i learned:
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