Dealing With Downswings

A surefire way to get me to play a ton of hands is to turn on my doomswitch. When I run bad, I inevitably try to grind out more hands and push through the downswing. This is inherently a very bad thing, as if tilt effected my game as much as it does many other folks, it probably would have done severe damage by now. Fortunately, the gap between my "A game" and "B/C game" when tilting or tired from playing too much isn't terribly large. So although my "true winrate" probably drops a little bit when I'm trying to grind through a downswing, the extra hands I play likely make up for it in terms of net profit.

Needless to say, this weekend was one of those weekends. I had a very nasty downswing on Friday, to the tune of 9 BIs. After a quick review of my history grinding FR NL, I've never had a downswing larger than 10 BIs. This is quite fortunate, but also a testament to how little tilt affects my game I would think. At any rate, after a painful start on Saturday I did eventually come to a significant upswing, and did end up making money on the weekend. When you consider the ~$200 in FPPs, the total probably comes to about $400... not impressive at all, especially over 14k hands. At one point on Friday, the gap between my Sklansky bucks and Showdown winnings was perhaps as ugly as I've seen it since the February downswing near the start of my grinding career.

Here is my EV graph for the weekend in total (by the end I'm out about $400 in showdown equity, and about $200 in set over set coolers versus heaters):


For reference, here is my month so far at $100NL:


My EV luck was getting so close to neutral on the month after a rocky start, then this happens. Ah well, hopefully I'll pick up some heater sessions in the near future. I'm still very happy with my game, and while there will certainly be more adjustments to make, I feel very comfortable at the stakes I'm at. Practice shall make perfect, especially against some of the regs I haven't seen playing lower.