The Big Dipper

   When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide,
   And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride,
   And I get to the bottom and I see you again       U2 (The Beatles)

   Dealing with poker downswings has been a bit of a problem for me in the past. Looking through my previous posts, there are periods of anguished self-doubt whenever my bankroll has taken a bit of a dive. I've had periodic drops in my bankroll over the years, some of them quite prolonged. The most notable recent dips happened from July to October 2012, and in two separate periods in 2013.
 It was during the first of the 2013 poker downswings that I decided to take a month-long break from poker (see 'Time Out'). This break worked very well and since then I've been stressing a lot less than I have in the past when facing a downswing.

   It's just as well really as the most recent drop in my bankroll has been a real white-knuckle ride. In the four months following October 2014 my balance decreased by about 40%. In the summer season I had an overall loss in every single type of poker game I played. The worst results in terms of actual cash lost were from online cash games, followed closely by online SitNGos. Even my normally reliable live tournaments let me down, showing an over-all loss of $10 over that 3 month period.
   The difference has been in my response to this most recent poker downswing. Although a drop of this size is of some concern, there has been no breast-beating or obsessive number-crunching this time round. I am aware that ups and downs are a part of the game of poker and I've remained quietly confident that the results would eventually turn around. And sure enough, since the end of February, the numbers have started to look a little more encouraging. Although there's a long way to go to make up the lost ground, any upward movement of the graph is better than nothing.
   That's not to say that I've just ignored the poor results and carried on regardless. I spent a considerable amount of time checking out online advice on dealing with poker downswings. Most of the advice boiled down to the same thing: DON'T PANIC. While a few sites suggested taking some time off, I've been down that road before and felt that I would be better off to try to play through it. But I did take some of the advice and took time to look at my game and see if I could find any obvious faults. The thing is, I spend a certain amount of time trying to improve my game anyway, so it wasn't exactly a revolutionary change in the way I approach things. But I did back off from playing so frequently and spent a little more time looking for holes in my game.
   The thing is, there are always ups and downs in poker, but if you come to the conclusion that the latest downswing is due to bad play and change your game strategy, you can end up actually making things worse. There is a very good chance that the dip in bank balance is due to natural variance and there's nothing drastically wrong with the way you are playing. So I resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes and just did a bit of tinkering with my game plan. It was really just a matter of stepping back a little, taking a deep breath and trying to see things from a slightly different angle.
   The most obvious cause of my change in fortunes has been the lack of good results from my regular Friday night live tournament. Although my results from online SitNGos and cashies have been patchy for a while, I've always been able to rely on the Friday tournies to keep things ticking over. But, after nearly doubling my money in this game last year, I just can't seem to get into the groove this year. For a while there I became convinced that I needed to become more aggressive in the later stages of  these tournaments. But I  realised that I was already the most 'pushy' player in the competition and this change was making no real difference. So I went back to my original game plan and kept plugging away at it.
   Despite the fact that I was showing a loss in every single game type for the summer season, I was not too concerned and found that I was handling this downswing much better than I had on previous occasions. As it turns out, my results seem to have turned a corner without any drastic moves on my part. Without getting too carried away with a few weeks in the black, I am reasonably confident that my results are back on track. The good thing about all this is the change in attitude compared to previous poker downswings. It looks like I've turned a corner in more ways than one.