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...