Back to reality

Hi folks, thanks for the support after my last post. I woke up Sunday morning feeling like Saturday night was just a bad dream, i felt fine about it after a good sleep. I remembered that moments like this prepare us better for the future and remind us about good bankroll management and why we must not take that one shot at the big game (whatever 'big' is for you) with all your bankroll. I'm lucky I learnt that the hard way when I only had $50 to lose. Now I still have $1300 left and while it's a pain to step back for a few weeks, I'm happy to do it. It's the right thing to do, and in poker, we're always happy when we do the right thing, right ?!

So I'm moving back 2 levels from 4-tabling $200 buyin to 4-tabling $50 buyin. While I played on Sunday and was reminded how funny the $50 game can be I checked the hands from Saturday night in PokerTracker. They were bad beats, so I wont bore you with details, but I think it's worth mentioning that normally I wouldn't be so emotional about losing. The difference this weekend is that now with PT, I can see that my opponent is a whale with a brain the size of a pea when it comes to poker. So rather that thinking, hmm I better be careful here since I don't know him too well and he could have me beat, I'm thinking.. finally here's the hand, I'm gonna crush him at last, there's only a 6% chance I'm behind on the turn and only 3 outs that help him on the river, this is it ! Then the river hits him in the face and I feel cheated. I shouldn't, I know. But I do. I hate seeing stupidity rewarded, it happens all the time in work environments. People get promoted just so that others don't have to deal with them anymore, it's easier than firing someone you see, makes them someone elses problem. I think that's why I got annoyed, felt so lock-stock about it, like I was gonna throw up it felt so bad.

So I'm gonna get used to it, I'm going to allow PT to show me over time that this is a good thing. I'm also going to up my limits for stepping up a level to 20x the buyin rather than 15x, it's a safer cushion and should mean any losses have a less tilty effect on me.

That means that this week I shall be mostly grinding it out 4-tabling $50 games on Stars, trying to get my roll back up to $2,000 for a step back up. The Acorn had a tough weekend at the tables too, but puts it so well when he says "I accept that poker is a game of swings and so long as things are swinging my way over the long term I should stick to my gameplan."
He's right of course. Gutshots will hit, flushes will come, full houses will be rivered by better full houses, pot sized bets will be called and fish will win, but in the end probability will come good and we'll all be better off for it. I see now that even losing hands in poker are an investment in a profitable future. Sometimes the knocks are hard to take, but you've got to just cowboy up and get on with the job.

Good luck at the tables all.