The Anatomy of a Downswing

[TheProdigy]

Ok, so a little backstory:
I have played poker for 2 years, with small profits and not
much time invested. I have had school, sports, etc. and it hasn't allowed me to play very often. Even with this, it has given me enough cash monies that I haven't had to get a job. Well this year I am going to dedicate myself to playing so that I can see if this can support my expenses throughout college or if I am going to have to get a 9-5. So I played ~35k hands in January with a profit of 2.5k at 100NL. Although I am even this month now,(++ with bonuses), I started the month with an 11 buy-in downswing over approx ~35k hands. So I decided to analyze this downswing and see what the difference was between my winning month and this downswing over the same amt of hands. Hopefully I can come to some good conclusions to help everyone out. Edit: I noticed that once I hit 36k I had evened out the downswing. So I have chosen to take out ~27k of each to emphasize monetary losses.

So I am going to start with my main screen:
January:


35k Downswing


[Analysis:]
Ok, so during the downswing my VPIP dropped a whole percentage point. This was before I made any adjustments, so I assume this is from being gunshy towards the end and also some due to a lower % of good cards maybe? All other stats before BB/100 are the same or nearly the same..

My went to showdown is quite a bit higher during the downswing, 1.5 percentage points. I could use some input here: Do you guys think that is because of me playing worse or because of maybe getting more hands that were marginal calls and always ending up behind? We will have to see.

My won % when saw showdown is obviously the crusher here. 57.5 to 51.2. That is a huuge difference. What do most of you run at? Does this mean that the 57 was running hot and I suck at poker, or is 51 low? I think that the extra going to showdown % points helped shove this number down some more too in the losing weeks.

My AF is a littler higher during the time when I was winning. I think this has to be because I was catching more good cards which = more raising? We will have to see when I analyze the other parts.

Onto Positional play(I have changed the stats drastically, but this is all before I realized the importance of being in position):
January


35k Downswing


[Analysis:]
Wow, it looks like I have subconsciously adjusted my play during the downswing. Maybe that is part of the progression of just learning the game?

Now the weirdest thing about this is the stats. Look at before and after I adjust my play. January UTG+1: 19.8% VPIP, -.02 BB Feb UTG+1: 16.6%, .10 BB...I will chalk this up to variance mostly.

Now as I move up the board, the late positions are drastically different. I am thinking that I was playing less of the marginal hands in these position because of my being scared money basically. I think these hands probably are very profitable even if they are marginal hands, and they helped me cut into my winrates there a lot.


Ok, onto Misc. stats:
January:


35k downswing:


[Analysis:]
Working up from bottom:
Jesus, I had 4 of a kind 11 times!?! That is a huge difference from 1 to 11. Someone that is good with probability, what is the normal here? I assume somewhere in the middle of those two, so it was adding onto my winrate in Jan and taking off in Feb, but not a huge amount.

Full house: Winning streak: 4 less times, but winning +10% more. So obviously here, don't lose your ass off with huge hands, K?

Flush: Big difference here. +20 more times when winning, but -2%. So quantity over quality? I also think I cut out a lot of A5s type hands when losing, thus cutting out some flushes. I'm thinking those hands are verryy profitable in unraised pots vs bad players.

Straights: No big diff.
3 of a kind: Losing 4% more of the time when losing streak
2 pair: Not a huge difference

One pair and high card: Here is the huge difference. It looks as if when winning, I am winning a huge amount more(or losing less) with these two types of hands. Money and won at showdown percentages are huuuuggee. Look at one pair there, jesus. This might be the biggest difference out of all things I have seen on this whole analysis, and I expected it would be. I would like to look at a lot of these hands and come back for further analysis as to why this is as big of a difference.




Session Notes:
January


35k Downswing


[Analysis:]
I played shorter sessions, and won more often


Conclusion and tl;dr:
Basically, your one pair hands are your bread and butter. Mr. Sklansky has pointed this out in his books, and now I understand why. Your one pair hands make up such a huge percentage of your hands that they are by farrr the most important hands. So when thinking "man I need to learn how to extract money out of people when I hit a flush, that is my biggest leak" you might want to think again. If you are losing, LOOK AT YOUR ONE PAIR HANDS.

I know a lot of people already knew this, but I just wanted to do some analysis so that people could see it firsthand. I hope this helps some people!


P.S. I might add some individual hand totals if I get any interest in this...

[GrandMelon]

Very nice sir.

[Push_Fold]

No matter how bad you think you can or are running you will or can run worse.

[Berge20]

I have to be honest, this inspired me to look at my major downswing this month. I basically have 15k hands at the level in question, almost perfectly split 7.5k and 7.5k between up and down (Feb 13th was when I started to plummet).

I don't think that sample size will really show much, since it is so small. However, I definately need to take a look.

My VPIP is almost a point lower during the swing as well, but part of that is intentional tightening up. I always try to get back to the basics when I'm running poorly to cut out potential big leaks I've developed on my own.

My W$SD plummeted from 60% to 50%, which is obviously a huge drop. 60% is certainly a bit on the high side (but not too far), but it is always discouraging to only win 50% of the hands you show down when I'm only showing down 18% or so. This is even a bigger kick in the balls because during the upswing I was running at 21% showing down. So not only am I showing fewer hands down, I'm losing more with them (doesn't make sense).

Winning money without showing down is a big key too. During the drop, I was only winning 28% of hands like that compared to almost 34% previously.

Digging into my actual hands, I am just getting slaughtered on the downswing. Everything but Straights/Boats are 55% or lower W$SD, which just seems sick.

Flush 54%
3-of-a-kind 52%
Two pair 55%

During the upswing, all of those climbed well higher except 3-of-a-kind which only won 50% (odd?!?)

I probably will take the time and go through these hands to see what other leaks I've got, but a quick run over the numbers just seems to indicate some serious bad luck for me. While these are a very small sample to extrapolate from, it really is the worst stretch I've ever had (squished into 7.5k hands ta boot)

[dirtysanchez]

berge, if it helps at all this downswing of yours couled easily be almost all bad luck. i had a similar run for 20k hands of 100NL (6-max but w/e) in january where i dropped 17 buyins and was losing money w/ fullhouses and 3 of a kind. OP, nice post, downswings really really suck and it is huge to look in detail at your play and make the changes that need to be made (if any) to fix it. regarding one pair hands , during my downsing i stopped getting anywhere near the value i should be from them because my downswing was making me timid. and this is not always an easy thing to spot, often i was just checking turns for pot control in the wrong spots or missing some thinnish value-bets on the river.

[Jurrr]

I'm not on a downswing, but if you say that pair is the bread and butter and all then I may have a major leak here perhaps:

Final hands $Won/Hand (mix of NL25 and NL50):
FH: $7.70
Flush: $5.60
Straigh: $6.46
Three of a kind: $4.51
Two pairs: <font color="red">-$0.21</font>
Pair: <font color="red">-$0.11</font>
High card: <font color="red">-$0.44</font>

Is this really really bad?

[capodu]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not on a downswing, but if you say that pair is the bread and butter and all then I may have a major leak here perhaps:

Final hands $Won/Hand (mix of NL25 and NL50):
FH: $7.70
Flush: $5.60
Straigh: $6.46
Three of a kind: $4.51
Two pairs: <font color="red">-$0.21</font>
Pair: <font color="red">-$0.11</font>
High card: <font color="red">-$0.44</font>

Is this really really bad?

[/ QUOTE ]

Make sure you have the only see the hands that went to showdown

[dirtysanchez]

juu, no its not bad. loosing (marginally) w/ 1 pair hands is fine, its not a great hand. but loosing a lot overall w/ 1 pair is bad. by bread and butter he means simply that you need to play these hands the best, because they are the most frequent.

[Jurrr]

[ QUOTE ]
Make sure you have the only see the hands that went to showdown

[/ QUOTE ]I have PokerOffice so I don't know how to do that.

With One Pair "Showdowns %" is 15% and "Showdowns Won %" is 40%. Two Pair it is 42% and 55% respectively.

Oh, and btw I am -$0.44 per hand with High Card with 5.79% showdowns and 9.28% showdowns won.

Overall, I have lost with 2pr and weaker about as much as I have won with flushes and stronger (with straights and three of a kind equaling my profit).

My apologies to the OP if this belonged in another thread, I was just wondering what the others average with their 1pr and 2 pr hands.

[MatthewRyan]

op - the entire difference is in your won as showdown numbers. And 25k hand streches are really too little to draw any conclusions from, some extra 2outers for set/sets, not people folding to your AA/KK pre a few too many times above normal and BAM there goes all of you profit in those 25k hands.