What's the longest downswing you've ever had?

I am the cooler. My whole life is a down swing.

I would probably say 3 months on a downswing- followed by 2 months of bad poker playing- playing my draws too much, trying to gamble with AQ vs. a small pair pre-flop and losing, etc.

At that point I took a break, did other things besides poker for a week, read a couple poker books, watched some televised poker and railed for about 2 more weeks - after I did that, I reloaded and haven't looked back. I have had periods where I've gone card dead and had to step down in limits and grund it out- but thankfully nothing real dramatic thus far.

I have read many times in the past from winning players (if they can be believed ) that 60k break-even streaks with *huge* downswings in the middle are not altogether uncommon.

Depends on what you're playing though... the variance and swings are (generally speaking) inversely proportional to the number of people at the table.

A friend of mine is currently on a 40k downswing in only 2 weeks....

Grindit9 said:

A friend of mine is currently on a 40k downswing in only 2 weeks....

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@ what stakes?

I'm in my worst one now...it began abruptly on June 2nd of this year...from March 1st til June 1st I'd probably won about 5,000 playing 1-2NL about once to twice a week in that span...then on June 2nd I had Q-J of spades on a flop of 3-9-10 with the 9 and 10 of spades out there...a bet of 15$ from first position followed by a raise to 30$ from 2nd position...I immediately shove all in for 250$ knowing I'm behind but I have been running red hot and figure I have half the deck to win the hand...I get called by the first player who is holding 3-5 of Spades...I am currently 65-35 to win the hand despite him holding a pair...turn is a Jack giving me the lead...river....a red 5....since then I have had 3 or 4 winning days total and thankfully two of them were about 700-800 a piece otherwise I'd be in disaster territory for someone who plays low stakes like I do...I'm probably -2,500 or so since 6/2 but that is significant for a tight player like me who plays so few hands and only has a 300-400$ limit for max buyin at any session.....I cannot tell you how many times I have had 10s, Js, Qs only for someone else to be holding an overpair, there was one day in particular where it occurred 4 seperate times with me running into Aces three times with Kings another day (it had happened to me only one time the previous 4 years before that)....if I was a super aggressive player I'd probably have lost 3-4 times what I have....I was able to avoid going broke in most of the overpair scenarios despite there being 3 or 4 low cards on the board.

vanquish said:

@ what stakes?

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10-20/25-50 NL HU