[BigDan9]

I think I know the answer to this question, but is it common amongst solid, winning players to play 14,000 hands (in a fortnight, in my case) and still be losing? Do other players suffer extended periods feeling that they can't do anything right?!

With money in the bank after leaving my legal career, I've been playing online poker full-time since June.

I played an average of 20,000 hands per month in each of June, July, August and September and averaged around $3,700 in each of those months at primarily $1/2 and $2/4 NLHE. My PT BB/100 averaged around 4-5 for June-September at both limits and my bankroll has grown from $6,000 to $20,000.

I was very happy with that start as I only moved from limit cash games (and NHLE tournaments) to NLHE cash games in April this year.

I'm a tight but reasonably aggressive player who feels very comfortable taking on most players although (as I guess we all do) I'm still finding the most aggressive, thinking opponents tougher to deal with.

After a pretty solid start in my adventure into full time poker, the last couple of weeks have been extremely tough. I've played 14,000 hands and am down around $1,000 (mainly because most of my tough beats have happened at the $2/4 tables). That's not a huge dent to my roll, of course, but it feels like I'm being dealt big, second best hands every hour, failing miserably to get anyone to pay off my monsters, getting outdrawn fairly often and that a number of the tough calls/folds I've made have turned out to be wrong (with the benefit of hindsight).

I've certainly had bad days in the last four months, but not a seemingly endless run like this!

Does this sound like a relatively inexperienced player trying to deal with his first extended period of tough beats or someone who might be better off going back to his tedious office job?!