Well, the whole limit thing was going well for a couple days....

Today I got a pop-up from Party offering me a bonus for up to $100, so I withdrew 400, put it back in and got the bonus......and then things went bad, I'm trying really really hard right now now to be a party poker conspiracy theorist lol. But anyway, that's not the point of the post.

The point is, I have enough experience in NL to know what a bad day is, but I really have no idea what a bad day is in Limit. Today I dropped $110 (55BB's) over 862 hands. To me, this seems like a lot of money, considering that even if I was beating the game well, it would take me 2-3k hands to win that much money. Even more disturbing is the fact that the exact figures came out to (6.66) BB/100 when all was said and done.

So, experienced limit players--- What kind of downswings do you go through, how do you know when it's just not your day, and do you have a daily stop loss?

I reviewed my PT stats for the day and everything seemed pretty normal, VP$IP was a little lower than normal at 13.5, and W$SD was I think a little low at 42%, but then again, it wasn't that many hands so it's hard to tell. But the one thing that did stick out was my agression factors, they went like this Flop - 5.00 Turn - 1.76 River - 1.54, usually it's more like 3.5, 2.xx, 2.xx, not really sure if that's relevant.

I broke even at 5/10 over 15,000 hands. So things can go quite bad for a while.

I stopped playing limit since, I'll probably go back once my roll is adequate for the 10/20 as the rake is just crushing at that limit. w$sd should def be higher, but it is a small sample. either stick it out or drop it, limit does screw with you a lot especially at that level.

I can't really say whats typical. But for what its worth, losing 50BB in a session isn't that uncommon for me two-tabling 6-max 3/6 and 5/10. Thats also my stop loss (for a session), because I tend to tilt somewhere around that point and its too easy to fire off a ton more on SH tables. I'm always willing to come back a few hours later though.

10 handed 1/2 is a pretty variance ridden game anyway, with the number of people that see the flop. I remember playing a ton of sessions where winning or losing depended largely on whether my jammed draws got there or not. A couple of 20BB pots can really make or break a session.

My worst day was a loss of about 90 big bets. I don't know how many hands it was, but it was less than 1000.

I have had several daily losses of more than 55 big bets, and don't consider them as unusual. You can make up such a loss in a day. Just yesterday I had a win of over 60 big bets in 201 hands.

I don't have a stop loss. To the contrary I tend to play more when I am losing. I don't consider this a good thing though, and I am trying to change.

As long as you are playing good poker and making good decisions, I wouldn't be worried about the amount of loss that you are talking about.

Playing limit at a loose table you should be jamming the pot with your strong draws and from your agression numbers it looks like you do. This can make for some big swings up and down. I had a -$180 session about 700 hands last weekend at $1/$2 limit, thats 90 BB. I missed several strong draws and had my best hands cracked several times so I think your swing is not uncommon.

If you are down 250 to 300 BB its time to do some serious analysis of your game but 100 BB swings are nothing to worry about as long as you don't start tilting away more.

BK