downswing :(

Sometimes it helps to record yourself playing and posting a short session here for a review (30 min or so) , might help u discover some leaks or some form of tilt that might be present during the downswing.

I remember when i was playing 3/6 and loosing(pre-rakeback) for 3 months and i wasn't really sure why, then i realized after watching some coaching video i was 3-betting low pocket pairs vs utg range's therefore getting crushed and forced to fold way too often. The point is i never realized this during the actual grind and the reason for my mistake was i made a few months break and i memorized the 3-betting ranges vs utg wrong and that costed me alot of money

Also i wouldn't focus too much on wtsd numbers since they only tell a part of the story (my W$SD is lower then yours and i'm running a bit over 2BB/100 for the last 30k hands).

A public whinery?

Wow, didn't think that was coming from you.

I know the feeling, every session turns into a disaster, every big pair is cracked, you never draw out, they always draw out.

Here is what to do: Play on until you hit your stop loss unless you are certain that you suck. Can you find blatant mistakes on your opponents part? Are they worse than the mistakes you notice that you are making (during play or review)? If so, then it's just variance. I've experienced the opposite too, +8-10BB/100 for well over 10k hands several times.

Edit: Here's another thing to do: It sounds like silly season reasoning (like the RNG is going to compensate you), but it still might well work. If you are up against horrible opponents but run horribly, then don't quit that session (if you manage to avoid tilt). Chances are good that you'll scoop a few large pots sooner or later, better than the chances that you lose much more. Iv'e had several hour long disaster sessions ending with scooping over 75BB within minutes, making the whole deal break even. End edit.

The danger with going on is that it might affect your play. Your thin value bets are suddenly always raised (and you call), your bluffs are picked off by K high, you make tight folds only to find out that you were way ahead, ... When this happens you probably don't play well. Break the session and start anew the next day. This is much different from just running bad, watch out for it.

My recent story is similar to yours: -3.3BB/100, but only 3.3k hands. Still not fun since I restarted at 2c/4c with $2 and worked it up (via 5c/Tc) to $110 (I was really crushing) before (well, I thought so) I could safely and easily build $250 at 10c/20c to proceed to $0.25/$0,50. But I'll keep playing because I observe pretty much a mistake in every hand on part of my opponents. They can't win in the long run over me playing like they do. I also quit a session after a few bad beats knowing that I'm incapable of handling this sort of tilt (being beaten by badly playing opponents).

A 7k hand sample is meaningless and tbh the Standard deviation calculation is probably useless over that many hands as well

In LHE, and tbh in any game, you're going to go through bad streaks some of them longer than you can believe. That's poker, you don't always win when you're the best player at the table.

It never hurts to analyse your game but you have to do it with an objective viewpoint. Going in from one side or another never helps.

This is from my first week in february playing .25/.50, thats two ~190 - 200BB swings there, and I'm doing 1.6BB/100 over a 325k sample.

The first 25k hands this month ended me up at -40BB

Heres a graf/picture, text in swedish, for every try on a new limit sorta, from when I started climbing the stakes from 0.05/0.10. Had one of those when I started playing 1/2 aswell, never fails and I have no idea why, been like that everytime except for when I started playing 2/4 for some reason, ran silly good then, was awesome

you just have to keep going

I think it's totally wrong to ignore 250BB swings. I think it's wrong as well to ignore samples over several thousand hands. Sure, they are small, but not tiny. It's not like you suddenly can become sure when you pass some "magical" limit of, say, 50k hands and that the sample suddenly is "sufficient". I'm sure JLeitmotiv knows his math. The uncertainty is bigger (a 50k sample might yield -2.5 - -5.5 BB per 100 hands with 95% confidence). But over such a small sample size luck is a huge factor and even though memory tend to be selective, one should be able to assess its influence.

Even though 250BB swings has happened, and will happen, they should be taken seriously and somehow handled. They affect the mood and the bankroll severely. If you are conservative and play with a 1000BB roll, well, that's 25% down the drain. It takes practically forever to step down and grind it up again. (Have done it myself too many times, not from 75% of an adequate roll, but from 1%. Not fun really.) But worst of it is the frustration. (I truly honestly don't give a damned about a few measly dollars, I want to be a winning poker player.) I'm sure it affects all of us - even those who (officially) pretend to ignore it. Hell, even Boomer has been known to express his frustration on occasion. As for me, I've built myself a whinery ♦

I usually work more on my game during downs than during well runs, or have done during the past, now since I play so many hands and feel kinda secure with my game being winning at the limit I dont put more "study hours" on my game during down swings, but when I was moving upwards I always worked alot harde with my game when I wasnt winning, so I recon the down swings probably helped me some in the long run... But I still hate em poker is a god awful game that takes a dump on your face on a daily basis. I'm down -~140BB on the last 500 hands btw

Originally posted by floaty
I usually work more on my game during downs than during well runs, or have done during the past, now since I play so many hands and feel kinda secure with my game being winning at the limit I dont put more "study hours" on my game during down swings, but when I was moving upwards I always worked alot harde with my game when I wasnt winning, so I recon the down swings probably helped me some in the long run... But I still hate em poker is a god awful game that takes a dump in your face on a daily basis. I'm down -~140BB on the last 500 hands btw

Doesnt beat my tilting sessions. I remember over 2 years ago 1 day -2500BB down (Im so happy it was at 5/Tc)

Originally posted by YohanN7
Hell, even Boomer has been known to express his frustration on occasion.

You ain't seen nothin' yet

My down swing ended at ~200BB after 1k-ish hands and then the next ~800 hands i won 220BB

7k hands and 200BB ? I wish I had only such downs...

Originally posted by kavboj84
7k hands and 200BB ? I wish I had only such downs...

You in the "Don't feel it until it's 300 and only get tetchy when over 500BB" camp?

yeah sort of...