The Flip Side of Variance

I usually show graphs of huge upswings or great days, great weeks, etc. This stems from my hatred of hearing and/or talking about bad beats, bad beat stories, or any other forms bad beats may take - I much prefer to talk and hear about running good than running bad.

In any event I thought I'd share a few graphs of what a fairly bad downswing looks like. Currently, I'm at about 400 big bets making it the second longest of the year. It comes on the heels of a 2000 big bet upswing. Taken out of context it looks really ugly:





Put back into context it looks very normal. And this what I try to focus on during these times. Ideally it's best not to be results oriented at all but that's asking too much, at least of me, so my focus is always on the long term. At the very least it keeps me sane.