Well, first of all calm down. Quite a huge swings are possible due to variance and close spots (since everyone is getting better in poker overall these close spots comes more often). I am NL4/5/10 6max player my self so I don't have that much of experience. But recently I had 20 buyin swing and just nothing worked for me. "Always" 1) outkiced 2) outdrawn when holding set 3) everybody holding set against me 4) when holding strong hand noone "ever" called me 5) cbet bluff "never" worked 6) cbet value "never" worked. Now, when this happens, even people with quite a ok mindset will withstand this for a couple of thousands of hands.

But more and more loosing spots come and slowly you are getting frustrated. More and more hands. It still keeps coming. Thousands of hands. You just get frustrated. Your mind set starts to fall apart. Emotions start to take control in your brain. Maybe you don't know about it, but it is there somewhere ! So you actually begin to play poorly. You begin to just doing hero calls instead of folding. You begin to overbluff spots instead of check-folding. You begin to going all-in against raises with your TPTK and you literally will call any river on any board when holding the set and facing large bet or raise. This poor play together with downswing due the variance = huuuuuuuuge $$$ lost. This comes simply from not understanding/believing variance can be a bitch even over really A LOT OF HANDS and from your destroyed mind set.

How I dealt with situation ? Well, I got frustrated same as u are. I was telling my self same things. Like I am intelligent for example. I have been studying poker. I was able to win before. So what is this ?! Let's just f**ck it you know ... I started doubt my self and my play (which is of course not the crushing one, but definitely not whale's one).

So I just closed the tables. I started to read 'Mental game of poker' and just focused on reading hand histories from others on forums and trying to answer them with what I think etc. I watched many videos from coaches crushing my limits, even some on theory and flopzilla stuff etc. etc. etc.

After this I started with 1 or 2 tables, slowly. The most important thing just to SUCK IT and go down the limits. Just do it man. Don't play what you are not rolled for. It is always hard to take a shot at higher limit, but it is even harder and sign of a solid good poker to take a step back and go to lower limits to rebuild.

Don't be frustrated, stop playing for a while and just mark all loosing hands higher than 15bb and winning hands higher than 15bb and start going through them. And I mean from the very beginning of your play this year. Turn off villains visible cards, go throught it. Every single hand you will have question about, or you want to comfirm your play and thought process or hands where you are completely lost ... every single of them put on forums.

Good luck man ! Remember: rebuild and make it more strong - your mind set !

P.S.: Forget about GTO. You don't need it. It will make you spew even more. I mean, maybe not. But it is very probably. And if you are experiencing downswing right now ? It will definitely make you loose more money.

It would help to know anything about your actual play style, maybe you play too loose or too passive, overvalue your odds, just auto c-bet any spot etc.

Yeah, definitely posting all of your stats, especially by position would be great.

Hey Jimmy. Currently I am a 50NL player moving up to 100 today beating the game for 12bb/100 over a 220k+ sample size. Pretty sure it's not variance because before black friday happened (and all my money was seized), I was a winning reg at 1/2 and 2/4.

If you want I'll help you for free. A friend of mine helped me get used to the way the games changed when I came back, I took about 2-3 years off, so I told him that I would try and do the same for someone else. I've been playing for a living since I was 16 and I'm 28 now. Have bought my house in full and everything else I own from poker. Kind of weird for me to be starting over at low stakes but the games have changed pretty dramatically in the past 2-3 years so I wanted to take the safe approach and get used to everything again (mentally too because all of my money was seized on AP), as well as fine tune any leaks I have coming back and problem areas.

Let me know if you'd like me to review some stuff and figure out where you're going wrong.

Eric

ps- Here's my graph over ~180k hands (my first 40-50k hands were not tracked but I ran hot and was crushing even harder) so this is more like 220k+

180khands

Forgot to add you can add me on Skype "ericmt87" without the quotes or search Eric Thompson. Good luck man.

I'm not going to give you a perfect 'diagnosis', but here are some things I'd think about:

-opening to nitty (26% @ BU is just insane),
-not defending the Blinds enough,
-not defending vs opens @ BU enough (especially COvBU)
-3b/4b too little,
-not fighting for pots often enough,
-calling down too light,
-not vbetting thinly enough / vbetting too thinly.

These are just off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure it's something worth thinking about.
All that said, I defenitely wouldn't recommend totally changing your game in 1 afternoon - just take your time, one concept at a time, and slowly implement new things into your game.
What helped me a lot (and continues to help me), is marking every little hand where I wasn't sure what to do) and posting it in the forums/discussing it with my friends.
Don't think about the past - focus on what you can do to improve as a player.

Should I maybe just stop trying and give up? Have all my work been for
nothing?

I suppose the fact you posted here and the way you formed the question implies that you already know the anwser to this one. Don't stop believing! :)

Pretty sick graph but I think it can be variance (or not). Variance is not just about AI EV, it's also on how the board run, setups, don't get paid whit big hands, bluffs unsucceed... I don't see a huge leak in your stats. Maybe to tight in BTN opens (what's your RFI in CO? BTN? SB?). Maybe you are also calling to light OTR, a stat like river call efficency (1.3/1.5 is standard) or river call win % (45/50% is standard) can help figure it out.

IMHO, continue playing, move down if necessary (it could be a good thing for confidence too), reduce your number of tables (if you are playing 6, just play 4 and focus more on spots). Analyse you sessions after playing, look for leaks...

Personally I think stats are just a guide, you can definitely play 40/35 profitably if you adjust to opponents and understand the game enough. Maybe go back to baby stakes without a Hud and dont worry about stats for a week. I occasionally play a 2NL session, abuse the fish and move back up with a new confidence. Definitely worth a try. Dont give up!

mix of playing bad and running bad. just work on game and you will be back in green within 1-2 months

totally buttfucked? i c wat ya did der

Play lower stakes to check your fundamentals and boost confidence. Go down to 2Nl and play 10-20k hands and check your winrate. If you aren't doing at least 5bb/100, work on your game, be a active in the forums, and keep working until you get that winrate up. Then move up to 5NL. Rinse, lather, repeat