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Internet Poker Downswings

Internet Poker & Downswings

No matter how good you are at poker, you cannot expect to avoid hitting a few bad beats in a row or losing coin flips with your AA vs 33. A solid LAG poker player will obviously be cashing out more in the long-run then he buys in with. But he will always have to come to terms with the fact that poker is a game revolved around luck and probability. Such things are out of his control. Every decision you make, whether it is calling a pre-flop raise or value bet on the river, will be determine by pot-odds. But you cannot control how these situations play out in the long term or guarantee that you will win a pot when you get your money in as the 80% favourite.

Variance

Variance is the name of the game. Every poker player will have to come to terms with the occasional downswing or sequence of suck-outs. Sometimes they can come thick and fast losing coin flip after coin flip and you have nowhere to escape the stress and pressure. Even WSOP champions will suffer from variance. Tom Dwan’s $4 million downswings were making poker tabloid headlines back in November 2009. The 2+2 communities were up in arms about his exploits, mainly because it was the first time that anyone had seen Dwan touch something that hadn’t turned into gold. He was caught moving down the stakes from $400/$800 to $25/$50 at times, which was a true indication that he bankroll had deteriorated.

Unfortunately, I think players will have to come to terms with the fact that online poker is becoming a tougher game. The average poker player is better than he was last year, and he makes more optimal calls and decisions. The impact that this has on you is that you will have to suffer more from short-term variance then you used to. You will not necessarily have weaker opponents dominated as much you used to, and you’ll need to adjust to these changing dynamics.

There are certain strategies that you can employ in your game to limit variance:

  • A TAG playing style can help to avoid sticky situations especially in the low stakes games. Limiting yourself to premium hands like AK/AQ can reduce the number of chips you bleed. This has the potential to reduce daily variance.
  • Multi-tabling tends to lead to higher daily and weekly variance since you are playing far more hands and getting your money into more marginal situations. Multi-tabling will reduce your monthly variance however, since a higher volume of games can average out bad beats.
  • Omaha Poker is generally considered a very wild and swinging game. Your odds in the pot can massively change by the turn of a single card. Again, while it is argued Omaha has more daily and monthly variance then Texas Holdem, it is also full of more nits and the variance tends to even out on a monthly basis. This makes Omaha more profitable than Texas Holdem in the long run.
  • If you are a good player then playing a higher volume of games will help pan out the variance and incidents of bad beats.

The Mental Effect of Downswings

The biggest problem that a nasty downswing causes to players is that it affects their mental game. It makes them tilted, causes them to start playing wildly and making bad decisions like shoving over the top of a 3bet from UTG with AJ and losing to KK. Under optimal conditions a good player would fold here but the variance triggers something in your mind that makes you more aggressive and prone to poor decision making.

The best way to pick yourself back up from a downswing is to take a break from the game or even start working at some MTTs/SNGs which reduce how much you can lose from a buy-in. I think cash game players obviously suffer the worst from tilting since they can end up losing an infinite number of table buy-ins in just a short space of time.

Another way to cooler yourself is to move down a level or too. While you might have been playing perfectly at your existing level with nothing to fault, at least moving down a level can reduce your potential losses and get you on winning ways a bit faster.

Overall, downswings suck and usually people can’t help but blame themselves when they happen. You just have to come to terms with the fact that poker is a game built around luck and it is also becoming much more harder to grind the same amount of profits as it was last year. Even by playing perfectly you can become prone to short-term variance which can last a month or two. You just need to be able to pick yourself back up from it, and remember that it happens to everyone.

Discuss poker downswings at these poker forums, where the members are friendly, helpful, and eager to help newbies.