All poker players eventually go through a tough period where they string together many losing sessions or can’t seem to make the money in a succession of tournaments. 

Even the best players in the game have had significant downswings in their careers. One of the questions that the CLC coaches get most is “How do you deal with and recover from downswings?”.

We asked 2 of the most successful MTT players on the planet, CLC’s Chance Kornuth and Alex Foxen about their personal experiences with downswings.

Let’s dive into their responses!

Justin Lynch: 

What Was The Worst Downswing Of Your Career? 

Alex Foxen: 

I’d say the worst downswing of my career probably came in 2019. I definitely overextended a bit from a bankroll perspective, probably playing overconfident and not critical enough of my own game and that is the perfect recipe to create a big downswing. I don’t have an exact number but probably a couple million lost in that one. 

Chance Kornuth: 

I have taken the shots and went up to a million and then down to $100-$200k before I stayed over a million when games were softer and I thought I should have taken a lot more but now that I’m a family man, I don’t do that anymore (laughs). 

Justin Lynch: 

What is your go to activity to reset during a downswing?

Alex Foxen: 

Absolutely working out and doing something physical. Getting your mind out of whatever state it is in. Anything that creates that meditative singular focus that a workout or maybe doing something with your hands does. Something that can get you out of your head and into your body, that gets you into the present moment as much as possible. I think physical movement is really really good for that. 

Chance Kornuth: 

I like working out and spending time with my friends and family, watching movies and playing games. Doing anything nonpoker to get 100% of your focus onto other things. 

Justin Lynch: 

How Do You Measure if you’re running bad vs not playing your best? 

Alex Foxen: 

I don’t think that there is a perfect way to measure these two things. That’s why it is really important to be constantly critical and the best way to avoid a downswing is to always act like you are in a downswing, always put work into your game, always question everything you do even when it works. Ask the questions “Could I have made more on that line?”, “Could I have possibly bet bigger here?”, “What if he had this hand?”, “How would I approach it if the turn was this?”. All these different varying questions to ask yourself to keep yourself in a state of growth instead of stagnation.

For me and I also feel it is true for most people, downswings always come after a period of stagnation and then the downswing almost always end after a period of effort into change. I know so many people who decided to work with a mental game coach or decided to seek coaching for the fundamental side of their poker game or start working with a solver. So many of these people get instant results and I think there is an energetic aspect of that, putting your effort into productive things allows you to be at your best in the game and to be more open minded which leads you with more room for growth. If you just think what you are doing is right and you’re not questioning it constantly then when something comes across that someone else does or that is an option to do something it will be harder for you to accept it or consider it as an option for you just because of the nature of it and the state that your brain is in at the time. 

Chance Kornuth: 

I think that’s actually something that people mess up as far as running bad vs not playing your best. Focusing on the things that you can control as opposed to things you can’t is imperative

Justin Lynch: 

During a downswing do you put in more study vs more volume- what’s the mix there?

Alex Foxen: 

For me it’s mostly playing, I am doing a little bit of both all the time. So I think that studying is valuable, however without regular play it’s pretty worthless. There is too much to think about in poker, you need some things to be automatic, so if you just study when you get to play none of those things are going to be automatic, if you just play you are not as likely to question your decision making and improve on what you are doing and your process in the game. That side is pretty heavy in favor of playing over study, but you can’t optimize one without the other. 

Chance Kornuth: 

I would say definitely put in a little more study, it is definitely easiest for us to want to study more when we haven’t been losing, however for me it’s like preparing for a stop. I study for the WSOP or before I do certain things and if  I notice that I was inadequate on a certain board texture and I didnt know what to do, I tell Foxen,”Let’s go through the spot and do a webinar on it.”

Justin Lynch: 

What do you consider a downswing at this point in your career?

Alex Foxen: 

Honestly, I don’t have any kind of metric for it. I don’t think about that in that way at all. I consider a downswing when I look at how much cash I have and I am surprised with how low it is. I am not super meticulous with managing my bankroll, I have an idea where it is and I take risks accordingly but I am not necessarily looking at my results and saying “Oh wow, I am on a 23 buyin downswing”. The moral of what I am saying is downswings are only in your head, they are a construct they don’t exist. Yeah we go up and down in the chart but if you zoom out no downswing is actually real on a players graph, they just go up and down. There is only the present moment, that is the only thing that exists in whatever kind of esoteric principle.

If the present moment only exists there is no such thing as a downswing and there is no such thing as feeling bad about it. So if you stay in this present focused ideology of constant improvement and constant growth, then yeah downswings will happen but then you wont notice them because all you are doing is trying to improve your current self and trying to improve your current bankroll not worrying about what it was yesterday.

Chance Kornuth: 

I consider a downswing more of a monetary percentage. For example If I lost 60k today that’s more how I measure it. I never really thought about it in terms of not cashing X amount of tournaments or losing X amount of buy-ins.