23

My biggest downswing is 23 straight 9-man sngs without cashing. This was just as I moved up from playing $10 and $20 to playing only $20 to $30 sngs. That really hurt..

If we count number of buyins dropped over a period of time, aka from "top point" to "bottom point" and accepting cashes or wins in the meantime, I dropped about 16 buyins which I have done a couple of times.

So I guess you can count on buyin drops of 20-25 buyins if you are a good player. So: remember BR-management!!

These stats are from a sample size of about 1,5k played, so my numbers should give you a general idea, but over a bigger sample size I'm sure you can see even worse runs than this.

Good luck!

-Coke

if you want to reduce your downswings, try the non-turbos. Although in the long run, your total profit will probably be higher in the turbos.
i have twice had 80 buyin downswings in turbos, and 25 buyin downswings in non turbos.
if you are looking to improve, try pokerxfactor.com or sngicons.com.

I have had 250 game downswings before, where its nearly a freefall with a 3rd place here and there. Usually my downsings are less than 250.

If you tracked spacegravy's bet to win 25k in a month, you see he was on a losing streak from 4k games played to like 5k games played with a serious downward spiral for about 250 games in there. There is a lot of variance due to the nature of only winning 10 percent, and its not unnatural to lose for long periods.

Melborne Joe is correct non turbos have much less variance. Its hard to stomach the bad streaks at times and you just have to stay confident that in the long run you will win if you do the right plays.

250 games is a freaking huge downswing.

I just had the worst downswing of my SNG career (my sng career consists of just over 2000 total games) the other day, and that in the end came out to be roughly 11 buy-ins.

You will have downswings all the time, its inevitable. I find I have a downswing about once every 100 games. These range anywhere from 5-10 buy-ins. But in the long run, your total profit graph should climb steadily, you should almost be able to see a linear interpolation of what your history looks like. If you sharkscope my name you will see what im talking about. It is most visible if you do an advanced search for just 6 max sngs.

The key to maximizing my profits is to really minimize the downswings. For instance,t he other day I feel as if I could have saved ATLEAST $100 just by walking away from the computer sooner. I knew I was having a shitty day but instead of giving in and just calling it quits I grinded out a couple more and as a result my BR took an unnecssary hit.

ALl in all, id say if you are on a downswing that lasts over 100 games, meaning you cant get your total profit graph to hit a positive trend over any 100 game span, its not just a bad run of cards. A bad run of cards will almost never cause a good player to become a losing player over that big of a sample size (Even though it is not even big).

Perhaps try playing different styles of SNGs, I play 6 max turbos and find a lot less variance than playing full tables. WHatever suits you best, just stick with it and try to not let your poor run affect you mentally.

can someone look at the crappy little swing ive got going in HU sngs on Full Tilt

<span>ALl in all, id say if you are on a downswing that lasts over 100 games, meaning you cant get your total profit graph to hit a positive trend over any 100 game span, its not just a bad run of cards. A bad run of cards will almost never cause a good player to become a losing player over that big of a sample size (Even though it is not even big). </span>

Unless we're talking about a super-player with 30%+ ROI, this is untrue. I could do the math here if you want :
- A player with 20% true ROI has a 7% chance to lose money over 100 consecutive games.
- A player with 8% true ROI (more accurate for a $60+ grinder) has a 28% chance to lose money over 100 consecutive games.
That's why it's always said you need to play 1k+ sngs to have a (even not that much) accurate idea of your skill. And as Mayor pointed out, some high-volume top players can experience downswings over 1000 games.

As for the longest losing streaks you can experience, well, it's hard to tell. To be really sure it's because you are losing too many critical races on the bubble, review your hand histories with SNG Wizard. It will tell you if your pushes/calls were correct or not, that's what matters. The rest is up to lady luck unfortunately.

im all out of medals but I do have some nice ribbion if you'd like

From my experience, the only prolonged downswing come from insufficient quality of play. Im not sure whose graph that is, but if you ask him I almost guarantee he had a serious flaw in his game after the initial descent. There i NO reaosn why a "top sng player" would take 1000 games to break even after having 4000 games of winning poker. Luck is important, yes, but it does not cause us to lose for 1000 games, ESEPCIALLY if they are single tables. I would bet money that there was some flaw in this guys game that seriously hurt him, its just a matter of how long does it take for you to patch the holes and turn the negative trend around. That what really seperates the great SNG players from the best. There are plenty of people out there who you can find via the sharkcope leaderboard who do not have losing trends lasting over 100-200 games.

Also, for those of you who are confused on my comment about not having a postive trend over 100 games....

You dont need to have a POSITIVE PROFIT to have a POSITIVE TREND. What I mean is being able to turn around your poor streak and show a sign of creating a positive upswing. You may lose $500 in your first 25 games, then slowly recoop the losses over the next $75 averaging $5/game. In this instance, youa re still down $125 over a 100 game span yet are showing that you have clearly broke the downswing and are already on the way back up.

Ef downswings!

I used to only require a 20 Buy-In minimum before moving to the next level. I just recently bumped that to 40. I just went through a terrible downswing, but am running good again. I run at about 15-17% ROI and 40 should be good for most variance. But 100 would be really safe. With that being said, I would suggest when going through a bad run lets say 10 or more without cashing then you should reduce the # of tables that you are playing if you are multitabling. If you usually play 4 at a time, then I would bump down to 2 and really pay attention to the table and your play.

Never underestimate how bad you can run.

My worst non cash streak is 34. I normally play the 45 man turbo sit n goes, so maybe that has something to do with it. Going 34 straight games without cashing, will make you wanna lose your mind.

I've had my share of downswings since I started playing poker, and I always find that it's hard to know if they are just variance, or result from poor play. It definately is reassuring to know that huge downswings are possible even for winning players due to random variance.

To illustrate this fact, I created a simulator that takes into account a players finish distribution, and runs a specified number of trials. The simulator tracks things such as ITM%, ROI, max downswings, etc.

The following is based on my personal finish distribution within 9 handed $22 SNGs on pokerstars:
1st: 14.72%
2nd: 14.42%
3rd: 16.56%
FYI, these numbers produce 45.7% ITM, and 22.73% ROI.

I ran 20 simulations, each consisting of 500 sngs. In these simulations:
- Total profit ranged from $1,312 to $3,866.
- ROI ranged from 11.93% to 35.33%
- ITM % ranged from 39.60% to 50.00%.
- Maximum downswing ranged from $218 to $506 (approximately 10 to 23 buyins)

During some of my longer simulations (10,000 sngs), I've seen downswings of up to 50 buyins. I've also seen a "breakeven" streak that lasted 1200 sngs long.

Of course, the lower your true ROI is, the higher the maximum downswings could be. Another factor that should impact the size of your downswings is your finish distribution. I would guess that players who play super aggressive and get lots of 1sts, but few 2nds and 3rds would have larger downswings on average than the player who plays tighter and gets into the money more often, but wins less, assuming their ROI's are the same of course.