Running bad or Low Confidence?
A lot of people consider themselves to be in a drought or running bad when they have a long streak of bad beats or tourny losses or losing cash game session. Although I do believe in luck, there may be a more logical explanation for this and it's called low confidence. A LOT of poker wins don't come from having the winning hand. if you pay attention to when you're "running good" you're catching
hands, yes, but you're also winning pots by pushing other people out of the pot. i have no idea what the stats are, but let's say with premium hands while running good you you flat out lose 25%, flat out win 50% and push people off the hand while ahead (or behind with a well timed
bluff) 25% of the time for a 75% win rate. Then you start "running bad" and lose your confidence. Suddenly that 25% of the time you were pushing people off the pot results in more suckouts and rivered straights or flushes because you're not betting as confidently and allowing them to get to the river. Suddenly, the percentages change to flat out losing 25%, getting sucked out on 20% because you aren't confident enough to push people out of hands, losing what you would normally win 10% (because bad luck does happen during this time), flat out winning 40% and winning by pushing people off 5%. So your premium hands now give you a much lower win rate of 45% and it only seems like you're getting sucked out on way more because you aren't betting as aggressively to push people out of hands.
Now, people may come back and say, "but when I'm in a bad streak I make the same bets and people still suck out on me." Well, then the question becomes are you not only making the same bets, but are you making those bets just as confidently as you normally would? Maybe you're hesitating and other people are picking up on it. Or maybe you're playing them too quickly and people assume you're just trying to push them off the hand. Not only is the size of the bets important, but how you play them can be important as well. And when you have low confidence in your bets, you flat out play them differently than when you're "running good".