Setback

This post isn’t fun. If you’re looking for humor try this one. It’s still my favorite. This post is for me; I wanted to get this down on paper while I was thinking it. I want to reread it during my next bad run.

I’ve had 60 days that I am forced to view as a setback. It reinforces the fact I realized 3 years ago that is more true than any other thing I know about poker:

When you’re running bad, you can’t imagine winning. When you’re running good, you can’t imagine losing.

It’s simple but dead-on correct. You’ll get immediate agreement from every poker player you say it to.

So what happens when you’re in the middle of this period? You drift from non-optimal play. You get fooled by the randomness of the event but it will try it’s best to get you to change what you know to be true.

You have to refuse to raise to $50 with Jacks so you don’t have to play them. Don’t go all in on the flop to stop the flush draw from calling. But that’s probably the easy part. The hard part is not accelerating the loss and donking off the rest of your money. Either way I think it’s safe to say that if the money is important, that this is the time where you can positively affect your results the most by sticking to what you know to be true and not giving early Christmas gifts to your neighbor. I guess what you have to do is keep the faith. But it’s discouraging.

I know guys that play poker that don’t have fun AND loose money. This group thinks they’re unlucky and it’s going to turn around. You feel like convincing them they don’t HAVE to play poker. But you don’t. I also know pros that don’t have fun. It actually looks pretty miserable. It appears to me that going pro and having fun playing poker are pretty close to being mutually exclusive. There’s a blend in there somewhere. (But they probably find 8:30 meetings pretty miserable; who can argue with that logic?)

It really comes down to what you really want out of playing poker. Is it fun? Is it money? Is it escape? Is it friends? It is entertainment? How does it fit into your life? You should know and you should make sure it fits. Or does the fact that I’m asking these questions just mean I play too much poker??

You have to decide for yourself, but I'll leave you with this:

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
Which road do I take? she asked.
Where do you want to go? was his response.
I don't know, Alice answered.
Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.
Lewis Carroll - "Alice in Wonderland"