A few posts ago, I said something like there was "negligible risk" of losing a lot of money playing 1/2.  This has been true in my experience, as even when I run bad, there are enough bad players who give you "free" money to compensate.  I think I was 20 BIs under EV at one point last year and it never really got horrifically bad.  Well, apparently I was wrong. 

The other day one of the better regulars from 1/2, Newmanmi, posted the following graph, which was his worst day ever.  I have no idea how someone who wins @ over 3ptbb can be down almost 50 BIs in one day.  The other day, another 1/2 reg was having a bad day, chased his losses, and posted a 30 hour session where he played 21+K hands and lost over $8K (that's 40 buy-ins).  I suppose no matter how experienced you are, depending on your style of play, you can always lose more money than you expect.  That's all part of playing poker.  I'll write more about downswings in a later post.

I thought the timing of my post and the timing of these huge downswing revelations was "funny."  I pictured the following exchange and had a good laugh.  I consider Newmanmi a good player and colleague (even tho he likes to berate me in the chats) and we both post regularly in the forums.  His blog link is on the right if you're interested - he got a cute little puppy recently.  Imo it's just a ploy to pick up chicks.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

The sushi in our area is horrifically mediocre and absurdly overpriced for the quality.  The top rated place in our area always smells of dirty dish rags.  WTF?!?  Mmmm... that's what I want to be smelling when I have sushi.  That's got to be up there with smelling feces in a brothel - no thank you.  Not that I would know anything about that...

So whenever Mrs. Fly needs to pick up some exotic cooking ingredients, we head over to the Asian supermarket.  We found this sushi stall there, and normally I wouldn't want cheap sushi, but it was surprisingly adequate.  That's actually high praise from me for stall sushi, because I've eaten at some of the best sushi places in NYC.  Anyway, the platter above was $50, it tastes just as good (if not better) as the local restaurants, and we get a ton of fish!  Not sure if I should be proud or ashamed, but that's just for me and Mrs. Fly - we "share."  BTW, I weigh 2.5x what Mrs. Fly does.  I can put away an absurd amount of raw fish when I'm in the mood.  In case you're keeping score at home, that's DoubleFly 1 - Food 5.