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Cash players still have downswings. Big, ugly, edge of the bell curve downswings. "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. Downswings where

Cash players still have downswings. Big, ugly, edge of the bell curve downswings. "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. Downswings where you start to wonder if you're actually any good at poker. That's the hard part of professional poker. It isn't the maths, it isn't the game theory, it isn't the table selection, it's the psychological resilience. You have to keep making very precise, very aggressive decisions even when everything is going to shit. You have to go all-in on the 51/49 coin flip, even when you've lost the last six coin flips. It all evens out in the long run, but the long run can be distressingly long.

mod 9y ago
> "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. That's nowhere near the worst downswing that even most midstakes cash game players have had. > the long run can be distressingly long. Especially in live cash games. It can go six months. It can make actually-winning players believe they aren't, and drive them out of the game. Poker swings were the most emotional time of my life--I played HUSNGs for a few years professionally and had very mild downswings, all things considered. I once lost 14 games in a row against one of the top-10 worst players I'd ever played with. I'm quite certain my winrate was about 70% against this player (exceedingly high for HUSNGs, almost the theoretical edge)