Poker Pro Bryan Devonshire And His Horrific Downswing

The life of a poker pro is never easy and as well as having to contend with a multitude of factors in order to gain an edge over your competitors, there also lurks the ever-present danger of wild variance combined with a soul crushing downswing.
Every poker player will have to contend with these facets of the game over their poker careers, but they are never pleasant and some may seem to go on forever with no end in sight. Casing point, US pro Bryan Devonshire had been carving out a lucrative career for himself, as one glimpse of his poker statistics would confirm.
From 2005 up until now Devonshire has won $2,115,160 playing live tournaments, and a further $696,405 online playing under the screen name Badbeatninja. However, Devonshire’s last cash online occurred back in February, 2009, and in the live arena he has won just $27,126 in 2013, so far.
Nevertheless, cash games have always been a poker pro’s mainstay, but on that score Bryan Devonshire is also having the worse downswing of his career and in the last 21 months has booked just one winning month. As the US pro mentioned recently in an article entitled “Bryan Devonshire: It Can Always Get Worse”:
“I’m neck deep in my fourth and greatest downswing of my decade-long professional career. I have won one out of the past 21 months, losing money on my 2012 tax returns, and losing every single month of 2013. By the end of 2012 it was approaching my worst downswing ever, so I moved way down in stakes, from $400-$800 to $30-$60, putting myself in the best game I knew of. In ten soul-crushing months since, I’ve had very few winning days, and have only been ahead for the month for about seven days this entire year. It has been extremely rattling both emotionally and financially, and I’m learning very clearly that things can always get worse. This weekend I moved down in stakes again and was rewarded with four straight losing days.”
In fact, things have been so woeful for Devonshire during his prolonged slump that as far back as May this year, he was already contemplating quitting the game altogether, explaining that he wasn’t having fun anymore.
Nonetheless, a few months on and it would seem Bryan Devonshire isn’t quite ready to make that decision yet, and instead in his latest article has been offering advise on how to survive a poker nightmare. Bryan’s suggestions include moving down in stakes, ignoring short-term results, and having something else in life besides poker.
All the same, it would seem that the talented pros poker career still remains very much in the balance, and as he concludes his piece by saying; “If I didn’t have other things going on in life, I would be on suicide watch. If poker was all I did, it would be really easy to fall into a deep, dark, depression, figuring everything to be pointless during one of these brutal downswings. If poker’s a hobby for you, then don’t play when it isn’t fun. And if poker is your job, then treat is as such, and do something else besides work. If you’re unhappy in your job, then you’re in the wrong job.”