Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 58 (M)
Posts: 2432
Everyone has had a downswing,when they lose for long periods of time,where they reach out to friends, coaches or learning materials to discover how to ‘survive . What you do in the reverse case,when you are running like god and winning everything you play ? How to avoid letting good variance go to your head ?
i Think you shouldnt worry about it, And be happy you have a upswing.... Its good to reallize you have a upswing and that normally not every best hands hold. Soooo just be happy and dont think its strange when you start loosing.. Realize that and youre fine
Joined: Jan '14
Location: Netherlands
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 508
The only thing you have to keep in mind is to not play at higher stakes or something like that to make total profit of an upswing, just play like you always do and try to do no stupid things like going all-in a lot of times.
Joined: Jan '14
Location: Portugal
Age: 56 (M)
Posts: 271
Posted by DDPascalDD: The only thing you have to keep in mind is to not play at higher stakes or something like that to make total profit of an upswing, just play like you always do and try to do no stupid things like going all-in a lot of times.
Tjis is all you need to know. Just remember you didn't get divine help and started magically playing better. Same stakes, same focus. And ride that s**t , make money dude
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 57 (M)
Posts: 1703
Man be calm and enjoy Son´t start looking for horns on a horse head A upswing is a wave to ride as long as you can just keep doing what you were doing so far and enjoy There is nothing wrong on winning money so stay focus and "milk the cow" It´s always best upswing bad is downswing
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Never thought i will see a title like this How to survive an upswing? Anyone has complains when winning? And i dont think that this can affect anyone's game.
Now you realised that these threads are copy paste?
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 58 (M)
Posts: 2432
In some cases, a big win can do more harm than good.Most people use a big win as a foundation. They use it to build a bankroll and steadily work on their game to climb the ranks. Other people use a big win as an excuse to play in bigger games. They stop working on their game because they think they have ‘made it’
“All confidence related issues in poker, whether it is underconfidence or overconfidence, fundamentally stem from your ability to distinguish skill from variance. If you think all your wins were because you played well, you will be overconfident, if you think every time you lost you were outplayed, you will be underconfident.”
“An exercise I advocate every poker player do is to simply ask themselves at the end of each session; how much of the outcome was due to skill, and how much was due to variance? With the skill, think of both your opponent’s skill and your own."
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Germany
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 1859
Posted by LIKEIT27: �All confidence related issues in poker, whether it is underconfidence or overconfidence, fundamentally stem from your ability to distinguish skill from variance. If you think all your wins were because you played well, you will be overconfident, if you think every time you lost you were outplayed, you will be underconfident.�
�An exercise I advocate every poker player do is to simply ask themselves at the end of each session; how much of the outcome was due to skill, and how much was due to variance? With the skill, think of both your opponent�s skill and your own."
Joined: May '13
Location: Mauritius
Age: 32 (M)
Posts: 2688
Well to avoid downswing you have to cut your loses and take some break and have a good bankroll management, but if you on an upswing you will not stop playing as you winning money , so the best solution is to have a good bankroll and never go beyond your limits if the bankroll has not reach it's peaked. Strct bankroll management is the solution and know when the swing is over and stop chasing loses on upswing thinking you could have won more and so on!
Joined: May '12
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 38 (M)
Posts: 2064
"Survive" is the wrong choice of word.
I mainly play MTTs, which I believe to be the swingy-est form of poker (could be wrong there - just my opinion). The point is though - you have to survive the downswings, knowing (or at least hoping) that an upswing is on the way.
Look for ways to prolong the upswing - if you happen to be doing something a little different to usual - keep doing it, see if it is that that's helping....
For example, my "normal" ITM% in MTTs is around 15%... when I played all day over the weekend, I was 33% ITM... and so now my Yearly ITM % is up to 25%
Is this purely down to a swing? Or what else could it be? Do I do better when playing multiple tournies at once? Do I do better when I know I'm playing tournies all day, knowing I don't have to force the issue? Did I do better because I was naturally playing tighter with so many tables to focus on?
I'll start seriously asking these questions when I'm on my downswing... but for now, just gonna enjoy it while it lasts
Joined: Jan '14
Location: Netherlands
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 508
Posted by BeMyATMplz: A lot of replies here are pretty light-minded. I'll write a blog post about swings in general tomorrow, covering both the ups and downs.
When you say a lot of replies are light-minded I really want to read that blog of yours, will be interesting I guess. Altough I wouldn't say that there is enough to write about for a whole blog, if you say you can then I'm very interested!
You know you can't do a lot about it since it just means mainly that you just play like always and win many pots due to getting a lot of playable cards. What I do want to know is if you can really not help it to get an upswing or a downswing.
How to survive an upswing?
