Downswing
A prolonged losing stretch despite good play
Definition
A downswing is a prolonged period of negative results that doesn't reflect the quality of your play: a winning player's long-term statistics mechanically contain long, deep losing sequences. The opposite (an abnormally winning streak) is called an upswing or heater — just as misleading in the other direction. The orders of magnitude always surprise: a solid cash-game winner (5bb/100, standard deviation 80bb/100) will regularly go through 20-30 buy-in downswings, and 50,000-hand stretches without profit. In MTTs, hundreds of tournaments without a final table are statistically routine even with an excellent ROI. Anyone who hasn't internalized these numbers will wrongly conclude they've become bad — or that the site is rigged. The correct response to a downswing rests on three disciplines: reviewing your game objectively (hand reviews, not results), moving down in stakes if the bankroll crosses its thresholds, and watching your mental game — downswings are when tilt settles in for good and leaks deepen. What not to do: move up to win it back, lengthen sessions, or reinvent your strategy on the evidence of 10,000 bad hands.
A winning reg at 5bb/100 strings together 40,000 hands at −2bb/100. Panic? No: the probability of such a sequence over that distance is far from negligible (the cumulative standard deviation over 40,000 hands is 1,600bb, i.e. 16 buy-ins). The response: an objective review, one stake lower while the bankroll is under its threshold, and the variance simulator as a reminder that this is the normal price of the long run.