How to Cope With Downswings
You can do all the mindset work you want. Nothing is going to prepare you for the biggest downswing of your life. It's sort of like being a surfer who has only surfed 10-foot waves. Then, one day, a 20-footer comes out of nowhere. Before you even have time to react, this massive thing is on top of you, and it's about to crash.
There's no going over or under the wave. You can't go around it. You just have to ride the fucking wave, and it's really scary. But once you come out the other end and realize you survived, you're not as scared of 20-foot waves anymore. Maybe 30-footers are the new 20-footers, and now you look at 20s like you used to look at 10s. That's called growth.
But growth is never pretty. When you're down an amount of money you're not comfortable with, you're not going to play your A game. It's impossible. I used to not want to admit this to myself. I prided myself on having a rock-solid mindset. But I have made some mistakes during my last two huge downswings that I really don't think I would have made unless I was under extreme performance stress.
This actually isn't such a huge problem as long as you know how to manage it. First of all, if you're a winning player, then you should only experience these massive downswings a small percentage of the time. But when they do happen, the tilt can be pretty costly, and we obviously want to minimize that. So here are some practical tips for not losing your mind:
Don't expect yourself to play your A-game. Instead, shoot for a B+. Maybe you won't make the really sick plays that you make when you're totally dialed in, but you'll still be very profitable in the games.
Don't change your volume schedule significantly. Increasing volume will reduce your ability to focus. Decreasing volume will make the downswing feel like it's never going to end. Just put in the hands you planned, give or take a few thousand, and try to play as well as you can.
Put the variance in perspective. A lot of players don't realize how hard it is to punt even 10 big blinds in a single hand. If you're on a 20 buy-in downswing, that means you would have needed to make 200 of those mistakes if there was no variance in the sample. Spoiler alert: you didn't play that badly, you just got unlucky. If you're a winning player, try reflecting on your results over the past year instead of focusing on the past month.
Beyond that, I can't give you much advice except to put your head down and play through it. Remember that downswings are only temporary. If you're a winning player, that means by definition every downswing you have ever had has been offset by an even greater upswing.
At some point you just have to realize that it's stupid to get mad every time. As long as you have good bankroll management, you're not going to go broke. Downswings don't kill you, they make you stronger.
