Suppose you left the house and drove all the way across the entire country and every single traffic light ahead of you was red. You'd say that's statistically impossible. No, it's improbable, and unlikely, but it can happen.

You know you're really running bad when you have people feeling sorry for you online!

I'm totally busto, or nearly so. I kid ya not. Since May 12, I have lost both my live and online BRs. I have suffered every kind of bad beat known to mankind. I had a friend stand behind me at various times both live and online who has witnessed the ass raping I've taken at the hands of the unholy poker gods. Anyone who has studied Greek mythology would feel my pain as Zeus has it in for me.

I have a losing record over the last 5K hands online with:

AKs and AKo.
I have a losing record with every pocket pair between 4 and 8, inclusive.
I have lost with KJ and AJ to pocket jacks 4 times.
I have lost AQ to pocket QQ, twice.
I have lost with 88 when they were the highest cards on the board and I had the top end of a straight. (89 was the ONLY hand that could beat mine.)
I was stacked on 3 tables simultaneously when I was the statistical favorite.
I was stacked with KK vs 55 when the board was K3467.
I was stacked with AA vs. AT all in PF when 4 came to the flush and opponent had the right A.

The last hand I lost live was with the nut flush to quad 3s.

I have $16 left online and am reduced to playing $2 SNGs.

I start a new job on Wed and cannot play any more poker until I rebuild my BR.

Mark Blade in his book Professional Poker said who knows how many good players have had bad runs of luck on a too short bankroll and quit playing because they thought they couldn't win. (Raises hand?)

The moral is--have a proper BR. No matter how good you think you can play, bad runs DO happen to good people. What seems statistically improbable CAN happen. Without having enough money behind as a safety net, you can hit the ground with a resounding thud. There's nothing you can do about it. It's painful. Extremely. You will know the meaning of, THIS SUCKS. 200, 300, 500 > BB drops DO happen. I've proved it.

CJ--former winner of many poker dollars and current owner of the Sucks to be ME t-shirt title.

That's sucky news.

I know another guy who loses 5 buy ins, then wins 4, then loses 3 , then wins 5.....and he also claims to be a TAG.

I dotn believe a good solid TAG can have swings like that. Your just not involved in enough hands for that to happen, and most of the time when you are in a hand you either get out right away cheaply or you have a strong hand and pour money in the pot. Nobody can get outdrawn enough that consistently to have swings that big all the time when playing a solid TAG strategy.

You guys (menaing Alex and my other friend) need to really look at your game, because either youre leaking like crazy or youre idea of TAG and mine are totally different.

Sorry CJ, really bad news. I'm sure you'll crank the BR back up, though.

Ice,

I just hope you never find out how possible all these losing streaks can be. I know you have played a trillion hands but you will get your share sooner or later. ANYTHING is possible.

On my last rollercoaster adventure on tribeca, i just couldnt win a hand, and lost 7 buy ins. I decided to make a KK power play, some bozo comes along and we are all in on the flop with a QT2 board. When we flip our cards he has QT. I dont improve. A few hands later, I am dealt QT on the BB. The flop comes with QT6. I lead and a very crazy LAG raises BIG and i just push. He has KK but the turn is a 5 and also is the river. Bye bye $70!

I try not to remember all those hands where I get completely raped because they can only make me tilt, but I can tell you, most of my losing streaks are not due to bad playing; and I admit at least one or ttwo buy ins are always lost due to anxiety during these streaks.

What do you say about being set over set 4 times in a session?? Impossible? WRONG! That happened to me in my last quest on the B2B neywork. On that same session I lost twice with KK vs. AA and got it a third time and I got the flush to beat the guy. -6 buy ins.

In just a year and something I have seen a lot. I hope you guys dont see as much of that.... but make no mistake, ANYTHING can happen and eventually it will....

Running bad does happen, even when you do have a large bankroll you can go BUST.

As of last night I am down 20 buy ins in 1/2 200 buy in NL 6 player table at FullTilt. That is FOUR THOUSAND loss so far.

It all happened in 35 days, and I have every one of 30,000 hands on Poker Tracker. I have tried to import every conceivable Rules Ratting and I always come out Tight Aggressive or Semi Loose Aggressive Aggressive or Tight Aggressive Aggressive. I starting looking because I was told the stock was for Limit 10 player tables and I thought I was doing OK withy a Semi Loose Aggressive Aggressive ratting. Then I found the post were you can DL a text file for 6 player NL games and once I did that I came up as Tight Aggressive for 30,000 hands.

Also, I have only a handful of winning starting hands, AA, KK and some lower, about 7 max.
If you add up all the times I was favorite and my opponent needed 1-6 outers to beat me for an all in of 200 or more you will see I lost 95+% of them. the total loss from these hands equals just under the 4K I lost. It sounds far fetched but you just have to get unlucky about a half dozen times in a month.

Also, is this month I have lost top boat to Quads 3 times, and Straight FLush once.

And, I kid you not, 40% of the times I had AA I won 1-2 bucks, just the blinds. And to add insult to injury, I had one table were the fella was sitting with 1200 on a 200 buy in game and raised 7 bucks every single hand for 3 trips around the table and the time I get AA on the BB, he decides to stop, and I only won 1 buck.

About 40% of the times I got KK somebody else had AA.

I checked out the "finding leeks" post and did all the calculations against my PT stats. Nothing screamed out, real BAD. I have sorted my net earnings and gone through the large losses all the way up to about -50 and I got sucked out on a high percentage of the time compared to just calling and loosing.

I have been playing poker about 14 years and have never had a loosing year. As a matter of fact, even with this 4K loss, I still have a healthy roll, but I split it between FT for the cash games, UB for the tourneys, and the majority for live play. Needless to say I have another 4K on it's way to FT right now.

I am determined to beat this 1-2 game. If anyone wants to see my DB send me your addy, I will email it to you for a look. I JUST happened to start using Poker Tracker and Playing short handed at the same time. before that I was a 10-20 Limit player, mostly, with playing NL in brick and mortal only. I decided to start out in low limit to get my feet wet, and BAM, I sank. Yes, that screams there MUST be a leek, I dare you to find it in my DB. haha. What will end up happening is you will watch hand replay after hand replay and start to say, "Ouch, not again, how is this happening!" Yup, there goes another 260 to a 2 outer.

I would be glad to share it with you so you can see exactly what I am talking about. And would appreciate any criticism you can offer.

My email is "b8factor@yahoo.com"
My Yahoo IM is "B8factor"

I will check the DB size compacted and not and get back to you this evening.

At the very least you will have a heck of a data mine as I leave it running with 8 tables up every single day. I have 1000's of players worth of data on the 1-2 on FT.

As I said I have 30K worth of hands on me.