First, we need to be honest with you: nothing, including hand histories, can eliminate downswings entirely. But purchasing hand histories can indirectly reduce the number of downswings you’ll see in two different ways, helping to make them less common and less severe that the ones you might suffer through now.

First of all, we know that hand histories can improve your winrate by giving you an edge over opponents who don’t have the same kind of information on you. Winning players have fewer downswings than losing players; in fact, it’s hard to really call anything a “downswing” if you’re a long term loser anyway! This continues to be true as you improve your winrate. A player who doubles their winrate will see far fewer downswings, simply because they need to run into a lot more bad luck to turn their long-term winning play into a short term loss. The higher your winrate goes, the less often you’ll find yourself on the short end of the stick – and the shorter those losing streaks wil last.

Secondly, hand histories can prevent downswings by giving you more certainty over your actions. When you have a good idea of what your opponent is holding and how they play, you can reduce the amount of variance in your results somewhat. This is especially true at lower limits, where many of your opponents will become extremely predictable once you have enough information on them.

This combination of a higher winrate and lower variance means that you’ll see fewer (and shorter) downswings when you purchase hand histories on your opponents. It’s just another benefit of having more information than the other players at the table.