Downswings...the curse of the devil himself.

Poker's a fun game right? I started playing this game 2 and a half years ago in my kitchen, being taught by my friend and his girlfriend, and I was laughing. Having a good time. I was winning too. Weird how things change.

I went through phazes. There was a phaze when I started playing live poker, thankfully it was a free bar league, where I was schooled by people playing way above my level. This was back when 2 face cards meant I was golden, and the idea of laying down AK, or JJ was so alien to me I would literally strike someone for suggesting it.

Suffice it to say, I sucked. But, I learned. I talked to friends, one in particular who ran the free bar league(who is now a poker analyst for Pokerstars...congrats Sonny), and I slowly learned. I got better, and better, and better. I got to the point where folding KK preflop wasn't all that hard for me if given the right situation. I got to the point where my reads were typically correct, and I felt like I was a winning player.

I finally travelled, went to Las Vegas Nevada and played down there for 2 weeks, nearly straight, burned myself out worse than I've ever been before(and I already keep weird sleep schedules, infact I'm writing this at 3:30am). I won though, alot. I came back up a fair bit, including cashing in my first ever WSOP event. I felt like I had proven to myself I could play.

I got home, and put some of that money on Pokerstars. Decided to devote alot of time to online poker. How has that worked out?

Go to www.officialpokerrankings.com and search for "kevvybrown" under Pokerstars game room. Here, I'll save you the time, here's the important number :

My prize money earned since I got back? 25 bucks. My profit? Well, let's say it's not a profit at all. My ROI(Return on Ivestment), is at for those of you who are also big time poker players, a cringe-inducing, -90%. My results? Well in 14 tournaments I've cashed once...for 25 bucks. That's a 7% success rate for cashing. And that was a 7th place finish. The sickest part? I consider myself a better tournament player than cash game player. The last 2 tournaments I played in, I finished on the bubble.

Why do I bring this all up? Well, alot of what I've done on this blog has been talking specifically about my results by actually fundamentally going into details about my sessions. Today's not that at all. I'm not going to relive these tournaments, I'm going to express in my opinions, what a downswing can mean to a poker player, and what can be done to deal with it.

Downswings for someone whose fully competitive about this game can be the sickest feeling in the world. At first you just feel like it's a dry spell coming to get you, and you're getting unlucky. After a while, that goes by the wayside and you start questioning yourself : "How can I be that unlucky? What am I doing wrong? I don't think I'm making mistakes...does that mean I'm just a bad player?"

After a while, you get to the point I've been at, where I'll actually steam. During the event. Because as soon as I lose one pot, I start to despise the entire game of poker again and feel like it's only a matter of time before it strikes me down again. It happened in the Pot Limit event I played last night, I flopped top 2 pair, and this guy called me down with top pair, and backdoored a runner-runner flush to knock me down just below the average chip stack. I absolutely fumed. I typed in a profanity laced swear-a-thon to a friend on MSN about how poker was making me her bitch. I actually doubled up 3 hands later, and still couldn't shake that feeling that poker was still coming to get me. Sure enough, it did in a way, right near the bubble I raised with Ah/Jh, got called, and saw a flop of Jc/7h/3h, a massive flop. I got my money all in, against QQ. And didn't improve. Afterwards, again my mind steemed. "Why did he smoothe call with QQ preflop? If he re-raises I can get rid of the hand maybe. How can I possibly run this badly?"

So, I did what any poker player does, I started reading around. I actually ironically saw a thread on this on jackseven. I saw suggestions for articles on pocketfives, and read them all. I searched out other articles and read them. I kept playing today, but not tournaments, I tried my hand at some cash games, and did very well, turned a big profit today.

What's the driving force behind a downswing. I think it's alot of things. First of all, math is a cruel beast. If mathamatically you're a winning player, and do well on average, there will be times when you run really well(just ask fishbones!), and times you run really badly(just ask me!). Presumably, if you flip a coin an infinite number of times, 50% of the time it'll land heads, 50% tails. But, that's an average, not a finite number. It's not going to go heads, tails, heads, tails, heads, tails, etc. There may be a point where you flip that coin 400 times and it comes up heads every single time. Variance is cruel. What's worse? For a poker player that prides themselves on being "ahead of the curve" or "ahead of the game", variance provides doubt. Suddenly your amazing play and your winning style, hasn't won jack squat in 2 months. Suddenly you're asking yourself if you're really all that good. And suddenly, you start going into poker games prepared to lose, which as anyone reading this can pretty much tell you, means you're going to lose.

So, what can be done. I remember, of all pros I met(alot of which I didn't name in this blog), while I was down in Vegas, the one meeting that sticks the most with me, was Erik Lindgren(E-Dog to the poker world). Erik Lindgren is a near model of consistency in that every year he's reporting million dollar profits. I remember asking him, "How do you keep consistently doing well during a down swing?", and his response was the one thing a pro said to me down there that I'll never forget. "All I can do is play well enough to give myself a chance to get lucky. Keep yourself alive as long as you can in a tournament, and you maximize the chances of you getting lucky, or picking up a big hand."

It brought me back to my own experience in that WSOP Event. 14 hours Day 1, never saw AA, only saw KK once, when a really short stack pushed into me. Never saw QQ. Only saw AK once. Only saw AQ once. Saw JJ a couple times and play most of my biggest pots with that hand.

But yet, 3151 players started, and 184 players remained when I was eliminated. Never made a full-house. Only made the nuts once the entire tournament, and it was my J/10 vs 99 race when I rivered broadway. So, when Erik said that, all that ran through my head, and I just looked at him and thanked him for his time, feeling like he had re-assured my feeling on this subject.

Poker's variance, it's bad beats and tough breaks. You'll give them and you'll take them. All you can do is keep putting yourself in chances to get lucky, or to win hands, and eventually you'll start winning them. Riding a downswing out can be one of the sickest things, I'm still trying to cash again in an online tournament, hopefully that'll be Thursday Night when I play the Hendon Mob Shootout Event #1 on Full Tilt Poker, 100 dollar buyin, 125k guarantee prize pool. Even if it's not, I look back at my old Full Tilt account, and see the numbers. 35% of tournaments cashed in. Profits in the positives. ROI of 53%(231% for Pot Limit and Limit tournaments), 14/41 cashes. Much more along the lines of what I expect, and realize that there'll be a point where my pokerstars account should correct itself, and where I'll start doing well on that site. I've been close a few times, and I've ran into a few bad setups. All I can do, as Erik told me, is keep putting myself in positions to get lucky, and to go deep, and eventually it'll take it's course for me.

Hopefully, for whoever might read this, they find that at least somewhat theraputic, I know I did when writing it, but that might be because I'm writing it and working through some of this. Tonight's cash game session was a big plus, it actually put me back to where I was before the down-swing. All that's left is a few tournament cashes, hopefully sooner than later, but I've found a peace about where I am in this swing that I desperately needed 2 days ago, and for that I thank all the people mentioned(pocket 5's and the jackseven crew) for giving me opinions to read and stories to relate to, and realize that everyone goes through this. In that way, all poker players are the same, we all find ourselves yearning for the days when this was a fun game. And as soon as that big cash finally comes, we'll all realize that the game is still fun...even if it is cruel at times.