This happens to many players that go on later to be successful.Often in hindsight the professional realizes that this struggling time was really tough and tougher than it needed to be due to emotions and a lack of hard work.That's not to say you're not working hard or are emotional.  That's not always the case, just the most common thing heard when good players look back to major struggles in their low and mid stakes careers.I'm not sure which blog to look at here specifically.  I know Jaws Washington had a bad run in December or early January that I believe he's jumped back from.  Players like scw and Skates have had large swings, same with Primo and they always end up bouncing back strong.  But those are more like high stakes swings and a lot of it is purely due to variance I believe.Still, Hokie, Primo, myself all had struggles I remember when I was starting out (hell, Primo had already gotten to 1ks and busted, then came back from the lower stakes by the time I started, Hokie had a less dramatic drop and back up but still the same type of thing).Croix, I believe, busted a large amount of money early and grinded back.

Can't give you the complete comeback story yet but I am working on it. I put in a lot of time studying. Took Cog's course. took three (3) other courses. Got hand history reviews. I was still a losing player. I could talk the talk. I could explain things in the forums. I could explain things to people at the bookstore in the poker section. What I could NOT do was to stop trying to push calling stations off of hands by bluff shoving all in. I could NOT fold my pocket pair of Jacks when nits who had raised me less than 5% of the time after thirty hands, raised me pre-flop and bet pot, pot, pot, post flop. I could NOT let go of top set when a fit or fold player was betting on the flop, turn and river after three cards of the same suit flopped. I could NOT turn down my aggression. I could NOT do what I had learned. So I decided to retire from poker. After a one day retirement (actually it might not had been a full 24 hrs), I decided I would study one more time and do exactly what I learn from my studies. So I studied MWJ006's Beating the low stakes and beating the mid stakes. PrimordialAA Heads Up Sit and Go from Scratch. Cog Dissonance Post Flop Play. Mersennary's End Game videos. Leak Finder videos from various instructors. After all this I played a few 6.25 turbo's just to test myself. Winning did not matter. The only thing that mattered was could I slow down and ask myself these questions pre-flop. I knew if I could get myself to recognize these things I would make much better decisions. 1)Position 2)Effective Stacks 3)Opponent Type 4)Opponent Range 5)With these cards do I expect to win with showdown equity or fold equity. If the answer was fold equity, then I needed to be able to tell myself what street I expected my opponent to fold or in what situation did I expect my opponent to fold. Then could I slow down and ask myself these questions on the flop. 1) Position 2)Effective stacks 3)Opponent type 4) Opponent range 5)Did I expect to win with this hand with show down equity or fold equity 6)How many bets did I want to put in the pot with this hand in this situation 7) Was this a value bet, bluff or an attempt to pick up dead money. I am still not doing this 100% of the time. Catch myself auto piloting sometimes, but even my auto piloting play has gotten a lot better. One of these day i will go through all of these questions on auto pilot. I notice that after about two hours of play I start making moves without a read or a reason. Just make a move to be aggressive. Now I am able to take a break when I catch myself doing this twice. So far I am winning 59% of my matches at the 11$ level. Sample size is not enough to impress anyone, but every one of you who have gone through something like this know you don't need 10,000 matches to realize if you are playing better. You don't need a large sample size to know if you are playing your "A" game. Your "A" game might suck, but it is still the best you can do. I started my HUSnG bankroll on Full Tilt with $900.00. It got all the way down to about $186.00. I started my HUSnG career on Stars with a bank roll of $900.00. It went down to $203.00. So I am re-starting on Stars with less than 20 buy-ins. I am very confident I will make it this time, and if not, I can go back to 6-max cash and be a multi-tabling nit, who lives on rake back. It is still a living. If you look through some old post you will see where was I going to leave my job in December of 2010 and take my shot at playing for a living. Well I did leave my job in December of 2010. Taking a shot at making a living was no longer in the plans though. I do have a lot of time to work on my game and post on the forums though. Anyway to make a long post longer, I will be posting the getting the bankroll back part of the story in the near future. Hopefully we both will. Paul IB_Fishing Making the long journey back to regaining my $1800.00

Thanks for this post Paul. It has inspired me to continue to learn, improve and not give up.I had some initial success, but recently can't seem to win... opponents always sucking out and hitting 2 or 3 outers. I don't want to turn this into a whinge about any particular sites, and take responsibility for having made mistakes in those games. I am guilty of the mistakes you have mentioned, and it's very easy to slip into some kind of aggressive auto pilot mode without really taking note of and adjusting to opponent's tendencies.I wish you the very best... onwards and upwards.

I broke my first bankroll of 500 $ Load my credit card 800 $ and broke it Win a 5 $ tourney 400 $ , go up to 2000 $Go down to 1000 and after a do up to 10 000 and make a living for 1 years  .. Broke the 10 000 in 20 day , try to move up to fast and tilt ... My friend say to me : in 1 week i will give you 1 000 $ for play , you not ready to start again ! i go up to 24 000 and make a living for 3 years , i steel make a leaving but my bankroll is 9 000 aftet a life time bad run in nl200 /400 hu   

@ IB_Fishing Gold story , hope you get success !!  

Great players are defined by their ability to bounce back after a downswing. Here's how I look at it. I was a losing player for 3 years. I would run up my roll from $25 to $2000 and lose it all in 3 hours after months of hard work. I could have quite and cursed the poker gods. Instead I looked at it as an education on how to cope with the financial and emotional swings poker has to offer. Take this as a learning experience which will give you an edge over softer, less experienced players. Poker is a long term investment. Buy and hold. The hardest thing for a player to do is to walk away from a losing session. It hurts, especially when your head hits the pillow late at night. Don't worry. You will make your money back, with interest.

Go to the husng section of 2+2 and read the croixdawg well, primo well, any well will do.  Alot of good inspirational stuff in those

I don't have anything to add except this amazing quote: "The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach. "Keep the good work!Cheers!

Bona , I love that thought ,  it make sense and can be reversible.......

I just recently had a 2.2K downswing (might be a record for me) and made it worse by playing high stakes cash games when tilted (but I stopped quickly once I noticed I was tilted). I took a break for a week and things are going much better. Although I have midterms and can't play much. Downswings are just part of the game and as much as it feels rigged at the time - I've come to accept that randomness is insane. I'm sure mjw006 can attest to that as he also had a brutal downswing (making mine look like peanuts) and he came back stronger than ever.