There are two inevitabilities in poker: downswings and taxes. The best poker players are so successful and brilliant because they have gone deeper through downswings than anyone else. Statistically, the longer you play poker, the stronger the downswing.
We naturally tend to think of ourselves as poker players in terms of what we are like when we do well and are successful. However, how you deal with downswings is just as important, if not more so, in terms of your true potential in the poker world. Again, how you deal with downswings is a vital part of the skill. Being a top poker player is not just about capitalising on upswings and nice charts and moving on. Dealing with downswings is a big part of the journey. It's gritting your teeth, punishing yourself, over and over again, day after day, and holding firm. Being a great poker player when you win is not enough.
You have to understand that every moment there is a possibility that you will be caught in a storm of variation so big and powerful, so destructive that you may not survive it, so fierce that it will break you. And one day, if you keep playing poker anyway, you will encounter a downswing bigger, deeper and longer than you thought possible. This is a statistical fact. No amount of good play, prayers or good karma will protect you from it. It is only a matter of time. So the question is. How strong are you really? What size of tissue are you prepared to withstand.
There are many players who have done fantastically well in the ocean of good run. But when they couldn't cope with the storm that hit them, they were left behind. This is one of the oldest
stories about poker, but it goes on and on and on, even though it's not talked about out loud. 
Most poker stories revolve around successful, upward-looking charts and smooth, steady winrates. The masses of people who play poker seek out these stories, they choose only these stories and surround themselves with them, as if they are trying to shield themselves from reality. But poker is what it is, it is like a fickle lover.
So skill and winrate in poker should not only be measured by how well you play when you have a good run, but also how well you play when you have a bad run. The winrate during the bad period is part of your overall win rating when looking at the long run. This seems obvious, but most players, without even thinking about it, do the opposite when calculating it. When you look at your winrate, when you have a good run and play well, it is not real because it is positively skewed.
Downswings always make you play worse. How much worse? It depends on your emotional skills in dealing with downswings. So we should ask a more pressing question. What tools do we need to deal with downswings and how can we strengthen our emotional skills?
Imagine your worst downswing. Close your eyes for a minute and let your imagination work. Think about the weeks, the months it has been going on. Losses day after day. The constant need to reduce the sense of improvement. You lose one day, the next hoping to recover, but the next day you lose more, and the next day more, and so on. Maybe you're not a good player anymore, maybe you've made mistakes, maybe you've lost the skills you once had? It feels like poker is punishing you. A feeling of overwhelming and indiscriminate injustice. But worst of all, it feels like you are going downhill. As if you're not going to climb any higher. You feel as if you have begun a slow and uncertain descent and that things will never get better. These feelings feed back into despair. A bad period causes you to lose confidence, you think you'll never win again, so you play worse and more often tilt, which makes you believe even more that things will never get better. You end up in a closed circle, like a snake swallowing its own tail. This period is sometimes referred to as "poker hell".
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