This is one of the questions I get very often so I wanted to take a deep dive in the subject how long can a poker downswing last. So first of all we have to determine is player really in downswing. Maybe he should be constantly loosing due to his opponents skill edge. How do we know if a player is supposed to win or lose? And how much ? There are few factors. First we need to have a big sample of data on player . Poker tracking software like PokerTracker, Holdem Manager, or Hand2Note obtains a sample of data online . These tools will gather all played hands by player and give his overall winrate.

Poker Winrate & How long can poker downswing last ?

This is a number showing how much is specific player winning or loosing during his play. It will show in bb/100 (big blinds per 100 hands). The reason we want to have this value in bb/100 and not in dollars is simply because winning 100 dollars in a 10$ buy-in game is huge success and winning 100 dollars in 10 000$ buy-in is insignificant.

So how many hands we need to evaluate someone winrate ? Some starting point is at least 50 000 hands. For more accurate results we need 100 000 hands. Even with this relatively big sample I had many samples of 6bb difference in 100 000 hands samples. Even loosing in 100 000 hands during extreme downswing.  In order to have fairly accurate sample we need around 300 000 hands. I personally play around 30k hands a month some hardcore zoom grinders can go for even 100k hands a month so its a quite a long play until we can accurately determine someone real winrate.

Should a player win mathematically?

In order to determine is player loosing because of his bad luck in a span of time we need to consider few different factors. Was he winning in this same specific game for a big sample previously? Did the game stay the same? For example are there less bad players and more good players ? Are some players colluding or using real time assistance software? Did the rake change ? For example did casino or poker room decided to make bigger rake and less rakeback ? Did many players improve a lot so our hero has less edge than he did before? Or maybe everything stayed the same but our player with big mathematical edge is just running terrible for a long period of time.

Understanding Expected Value

In order to determine how is player running we need to check one important statistic called winrate EV(expected value) or in PokerTracker My C All-in adj( My currency winning all in adjusted). What is this statistic and how can it help us ? Every time a player is all in he has some mathematical odds of winning a hand. These odds are his EV.

For example if I go all in with AA preflop against JJ my EV is 82% so I expect to win in 82% of time. For every 100$ he is putting in the pot in this situation he should be winning 82$ in a long run. If he wins for example 10 times in a row he is running over EV winning 1000$ insted of 820$. If he loses 4 our of 10 times he is now winning 600$ instead of 820$ so running under EV being unlucky for a period of time. The same way EV is calculated for every spot player is all in .

How should we use EV information

In this graph I played 50 000 hands while loosing 1600$ . My EV was +1900$ making it a huge difference of 3500$ so 35 buy-ins on NL100$.  EV is not a definitive number of showing someone good or bad luck but can point us in good direction. Many spots will not be calculated in EV. Lets take up this example. We open UTG and CO decides to reraise we 4bet(reraise again) and CO calls. Board is 973 with a flush draw we bet the flop and CO goes all in we call and lose to his 99. This spot will NOT be calculated in run under EV because at the moment we went all in our odds of winning the hands were not anymore 82%(like if we went all in preflop) but 8% since our opponent already has a set.

Roughly, double the EV difference represents variance in a big 50,000 hand or bigger sample. This means that in this spot, the approximation of lost due to bad luck is around $7000.

How long can poker downswing last ?

So if we already determined by analysis that our loosing in a period of time is due to bad luck so how long can poker downswing last? In order to calculate this we will use tool called Poker Variance Calculator from a website Primedope. How accurate is this tool or how it was programmed is not something I am familiar with but it is best available software we have at our disposal. It is totally free so anyone can try and calculate odds for himself.

So how it works ? First we need to input our real winrate observerd on big number of hands. Than we put deviation from 60-160. So for Texas Holdem it should be 60-120 and for Omaha up to 160. Obviously in omaha since there are 4 cards in the hands and many spots will have closer equity the deviation will be bigger. Also in Holdem the more aggressive game is deviation will be bigger. My approximation for NL200 zoom games deviation will be as big as 120. In very passive live game where good players have huge skill gap deviation is probably 50-60.

As we can see in the simulator output for a 4bb winner with deviation of 100 so lets say some good NL100 regular tables player after 100k hands in absolutely worse scenario he could be loosing and in best scenario he is winning huge with SAME GAME over this sample. These variances will of course be very rare and very extreme most of samples will be somewhere in between like we can se other outputs and this player will be winning over this sample in 95% of time.

How long can poker downswing last if we reduce variance ?

Our winrate and deviation directly affect our variance, as we can see from the Poker Variance Calculator.. The more aggressive is the game the bigger will be deviation. So these are the main parameters in determining how long can poker downswing last.

So what can we do to reduce variance ? We can increase our edge and our winrate by playing better, learning, managing tilt and paying more attention to table selection. Also we can play in less aggressive game by changing poker room or by playing lower limits. This will increase our edge but will also decrease variance.

Final words

As we all know poker as a profession is not for a weak minded people. One of the key qualities of top pro player is stable mindset and quality mental game. Reducing tilt and game selection are absolute crucial in your poker career as well as constantly improving your skill and understanding of the game. How long will poker downswing last ? Nobody knows exactly but one thing is for sure. Better player will win in the long run.

Thank you for reading and good luck at the tables 😉

If you wish to learn more and improve in game try watching one of my play and explain videos.

If you want to get email after I release new article or video subscribe bellow.