[AdamL]

I'm curious how any number of you might characterize downswings of different sizes over a fixed sample of 50k hands. For example, I could characterize a 50bb downswing as caused by missing the flop more than often, having a hand cracked perhaps, or getting cold decked. But for a downswing of greater than 200bb, you would need to see significant hands being beaten with quite a bit of action going in on a regular basis. It can no longer simply be a case of pairs not holding up.

The point is to be able to see where you are beyond statistical stuff. If a newer player is getting cold-decked but has dropped over 100 bets as a result (again in a given sample) it's more likely that they are compounding the problem with their own errors.

A while ago, years ago actually, I think someone did something similar from a more statistical point of view, by calculating the averages for how often different hand strengths ought to win at showdown. This is useful too.

I'd say there are at least three distinct "stages" of a downswing, where different factors are introduced with expected reasonable losses. Beyond those losses it's probably player-related, tilt or skill.

Within the span of 50k hands or less, what would have to happen for a *solid* player to experience a 300bb downswing? 600bb?