[Josh W]

I guess I'll chime in.

Variance follows some statistical patterns, but no laws. The worst feeling in the world is when you just can't win a hand. There is no guarantee that a downswing is going to change at somepoint, just a likelihood.

But if you play long enough, everything is likely to happen.

See, Dean, I don't know if you play live at all or not, but there are certain things that are guaranteed live. For example, when the local donator loses KK to AA, he'll say "I finally pick up kings, and I have to run into Aces, what are the chances of that?"

Well, on this very next hand, the chance is very small. In your next session, it's also unlikely. In the next year? It's almost guaranteed to happen.

What are the chances of a winning player having a 1000BB downswing? Well, starting your very next hand, it's very small. Starting your next session? It's still very small. 8 tabling for 8 hours a day for two years? It's likely.

In your OP, you said you wanted your fears to be calmed (I think you said that anyways...and I **know** I'm too lazy to check). Well, your fears can't be put away entirely. If you want to guarantee that you never have a 1kBB downswing, quit poker forever when you hit your first ever 900BB downswing.

As for my screenname...it was pretty public knowledge. But I don't see what good it would do. Of my first 2000BB downswing (which has kept increasing online, I still can't win...I don't have a going problem, I have a growing problem), I fully admit that I lost 250ish BB to tilt. Of the next 500BB, I lost probably 250BB to tilt.

Then, I basically stopped playing online. I went back to playing live, and I win consistently up to 100-200. I tinker around online still, and I'm still losing. I'M TINKERING AROUND....I'M A LOSING PLAYER AT 3-6. And, so of my last 200 or 300BB, none of it is tilt.

Towards the end of the first 2000BB (when I for the most part played well), I got staked for many tens of thousands of dollars. These people staking me are also very successful online players, and they oftened watch me play. One of them lives in Vegas (well, 2, actually, but 1 is part of this story), and I went out to visit him for a week or 10 days. During this time, he'd sit behind me and watch me play online. This lasted for maybe 2 days and 3000 hands. Then he got up, punched a wall, and said "forget it,I can't stand to watch anymore, this is worse than I've ever seen anybody run, ever". He's been a pro for 9 years.

[as an aside, i lost all of this staking money. i, however, cannot lose my friends' money, so i have paid them all back in their entirety except for one last guy i owe $3000 to. i still continue to crush live games. and i can't beat 3-6 online]

I have people ask me, about every 2 or 3 weeks via PM, "hey, aren't you the guy who ran really bad? I'm running bad now, what advice do you have?". I tell them "I can't give you any advice. variance is worse than anything else in the world, except stale donuts. I still lose". And, with all this losing, I have friends telling me I should coach players. I have one friend who does coach for big bucks ask me for lessons.

So, you can speculate all that you want that I'm a losing player. And you can certainly go hire a team of players to go digging through their hand histories to find hands where I was (admittedly) on tilt. My screenname was pretty common knowledge. For most of the party skins, it was either JoshyPooh or GummywormAA. Go have a blast.

And, after having that blast, you can come back here and report your findings. But if you think that will make it so that you know more about variance than people who have played a lot more than you, people who have lived through it, and people who still have a better winrate at 30-60 than you (even after going through my downswing) over a larger sample of hands, then why are you even here?

It seems that you've already ignored the sage advice of many in this thread. You seem to want to hold on to the notion that BK can't beat 10-20 and Josh W can't beat 3-6 and any downswing more than a couple hundred BB must be tilt induced and and and.

I could literally rattle off 10 names in 10 seconds of people I know who have had a 1000BB downswing in the last 12 months who play higher than 30-60 on a regular basis and make a ton of money doing so. I mean, these are fulltime players with no other source of income who lose 1000BB and don't even think of dropping down. Many of them are 2+2ers, but not all.

What were you hoping for when you started this thread? That's a serious question. Many of the best and most respected posters are telling you "hey, it can happen", and you still don't believe it. Were you just hoping that there were going to be enough novices to come on here and say "no, it's impossible" for you to hang your hat on?

And if you never want a 900BB downswing, quit poker forever when you hit 800.

Josh

edit to add: I forgot about one guy who staked me in tournaments and I lost about $5000 of his money that I haven't paid back yet, either. It's a long process. To those who I haven't paid back, I'm still very sorry.

Also to add...this probably makes me sound upset, which I am not.