What's your technique? Do you have one, or do you just play through?
Historically I am bad with swongs. My first serious one convinced me to move down stakes when I probably didn't need to, and my second serious one (which was really serious, and really prolonged) made me quit playing for almost a year. Psychologically these things can be very damaging to me. A drop of a buy-in or two here and there doesn't trouble me, but when they become sustained and extend through a few sessions, that's where I get into trouble.
The last couple I had I have employed a sort of stop-loss measure: I withdraw excess money from my bankroll except the amount I need to play my current stakes, I take a few days off to clear my head, and then I come back with the intent of multi-tabling more and playing a tighter style than I usually do. This has worked out well both times. Last night was a large moral victory though. Since I came back to poker in Feb., this was my biggest sustained downswing. It was about 8 buyins overall and constituted 4 consecutive losing sessions. The first half of it was mostly coolers and a couple too-thin calls; the second half was definitely tilt-fueled, and I made at least one call so asinine that I was actually ashamed of myself. Once that happened I told myself I needed to put the brakes on again. So I withdrew all but 16 buyins of my roll, took 2 days off. Then last night I came back to play 4 tables (2-3 is my norm) and just nit it up a bit.
The best part was that I had huge early adversity and survived. I lost most of my small and medium pots early and was stuck about 1/2 buyin. Then I got into a hand with AA vs. another guy's KK (he flat-called my raise to trap me) and the flop was K44, and that predictably cost me a full stack. At that point I was tempted to call it quits again and just take out the rest of my money before it all evaporated. But I stuck to it and kept playing my A game, and most importantly I didn't let tilt or fear control me. Probably 5 minutes after the aces hand, a decent player put in a button raise on my big blind; I 3-bet with AK, and he 4-bet to almost half of a stack. This would have been a good spot to get frustrated and afraid of losing again and just let him have it. But I made the right decision and put it all in, and he called me with AQ. Then right at the end of my session, having clawed my way back to even, I raised preflop with A9 and had a guy donk into me on a scattered low card flop. Again it would have been easy to roll over, but I read it as a test bet and so pumped it up to about 3x his bet. He folded, and that put me ahead for the session (if just barely).
Financially this was no windfall, but psychically this mattered to me a great deal. I can't wait to sit down and play again. So that's how I survive swongs - you?
