What is your longest downswing/upswing due to variance?

[trader01]

[ QUOTE ]
My horrendous downswing that caused me to withdraw all my money from online poker was about 15k hands and about $5k at $1/$2 NL. I've never seen anything so disgusting in my life.

I used to think 20+ buy-in downswings were BS, but they are there. Probably 5-7 of my 25 BI downer could be attributed to bad play due to running bad, I tried and tried to overcome and not tilt, but I couldn't. Taking a few weeks off. Probably going to rebuild at $100 to get my confidence back, but I won't be on for a long while.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's an interesting question: what were the tables like at $1/2 NL where you were playing? What was the average seen flop%? PFR? VPIP? What were you running at in terms of BB/100 before your downswing?

My BB/100 has been very high (10+ BB/100), but then I only play against bad players, leave the tables when the VPIP/PFR drops too much, make sure that there is at least one really stupid donkey at the table every time, and that the bets are big enough to pay me off when I hit a monster hand. If I'm only going to make 4BB when I have AA, that is not the table I want to play at. Given all of these conditions, and the fact that I am constantly monitoring them and walking away when things tighten up, I fail to see how I could possibly suffer something like a 5000 hand downswing. It's hard to imagine a run of cards so bad that would take me out like that when I am playing against people that consistently call HUGE raises when they're only holding mid-pair or ace high. Does anyone disagree with this notion, or am I right in assuming that the really bad downturns can't happen against players that are so much worse than me?