[cartman]

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So please either soothe my fears or let me know what I am in for, as a 450bb downswing would make me go crazy.

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Dean,

I hereby benevolently attempt to scare the sh!t out of you so that you don't go busto at some point. Almost literally every player I know that has logged a lot of hands has had at least one downswing in the 500BB area. The games steadily get tougher and this effect is amplified when players move to higher limits where the competition is stronger. We have only heard of a handful of established winners going backward 1000BB+ so far, but I suspect that is sheerly a function of the number of hands we have collectively played and how many people we consider established winners. I suspect that a year from now we will have heard of 10 or 20 more cases of 1000BB downswings from people we "know" have have a decent or better edge.

I also strongly suspect that a number players who were in EV terms winners have hit these dreadful stretches early in their careers and gone busto or just decided that they must not be winners at all. I remember posting questions about downswings almost two years ago and essentially the consensus was that 300BB was HUGE and that if you had one that size there was almost certainly something wrong. Anyone with a 500BB downswing back then would have been immediately written off as a certain loser.

We need to look to the guys who have the track records prior to their downswings for the evidence that it can happen. They don't all of the sudden forget how to play. They don't all of the sudden develop a prohibitive tilt problem after posting solid results for 500K or a million hands. They aren't just breakeven players who were lucky their entire careers. Variance simply caught up to them and dealt them a brutal blow.

My table selection criteria is virtually unparalleled and I literally never ever ever tilt and yet I am quite confident that I will have a 1000BB downswing in the next million hands (if I live long!).

Playing with less than 1000BB worth of bankroll is criminal in my opinion. Playing with less than 500BB is suicidal.

Cartman