[AndyatSD]

Without actually doing the math behind it (I'm sure the math has been beaten to the death on this anyway) - I think the isolated cases you're bringing up is exactly that - isolated instances/statistical flukes.

There are a lot of people playing poker. Even among the high stakes regular, there is still a good # of people. For 1 or 2 or even 5 of them to have gigantic swings (especially with short handed the mainstream game now) would be the exception and not the rule - yet at the same time not surprising.

I think a lot of people also underestimate the combined negative impact of tilt AND running bad. Also - it's not too difficult to spot tilt and most of the time this also allows your opponent to adjust easier to you and oftentimes play more correctly against you. I think these three elements tend to make big bad swings worse. I also don't necessarily buy the theory that someone going through a tremendous downswing is always on their A+ game. They may think it doesn't effect them - but intrinsically it does. The level of effectness may not be visible but it's there. By the time you realize it's effecting you it's already monkey tilting.

Remember if it's probable it's possible. While I am surprised to see 450BB downswings or whatever, the fact that it happens doesn't affect my mentality on variance.

I think the majority of us fall under statistical norm, and a small subset falls under first order of standard deviation, and a further smaller subset falls under second order of standard deviation... and so on.

Sounds normal to me.

For what it's worth I'm also 2+BB/100 (mostly in 100/200 albeit most of that data is from PartyPoker) over the past two years - and I don't recall ever going through a bigger than 200ishBB downswing. I may just be the luckiest whiner alive, though.

~andy