Journal of a Poker Pro

Moving up quickly is a tricky thing to accomplish. Generally, if you're moving up fast, you are running well and won't hit too many downswings. But then, when you do finally hit one, it's amplified. This is obviously because that downswing is going to come at a time when you are playing higher stakes than your previous downswing. Emotionally, this is a tough thing to deal with.

For example : You have a bad day at $50NL and end up down $200 for the DAY. This happens and you recover, and don't hit a bump in the road until you're all the way up at $200NL. And then the inevitable happens, and quickly you lose $200 in one hand. And then another one - and all of the sudden, you've lost $400 in a few minutes. While this is a smaller downswing relative to the stakes, emotionally the loss is harder.

This is a point where many players lose thier patience, and go on tilt. Thier emotions begin to affect the way they are playing. This sub-optimal play fuels more losses, and the downward spiral continues until busto.

I hit a bump today. I had been running so hot, and then all of the sudden I dropped $200 in one hand. I shook it off quickly, because I had a big hand on another table. That hand I overplayed KK, and instantly dropped another $200. Looking back calmly at the hand history, I should've folded and saved myself $150. But I let the other hand affect my judgement and paid for it.

So now I'm down $400 in about 60seconds, when my biggest loss had been $200. I guess it was the speed as much as anything that got to me.

I just had to stop for a minute and reassure myself that this was normal and bound to happen. In fact, I hope to lose a lot more one day. I took a quick peek at my stats/graph and saw what a small bump this was overall. These things together helped me to calm down very quickly. I'm really pleased with how I handled it, and that I managed to play well afterwards. I hope when I hit my next little downswing (which will be bigger) I can look back at this and be reminded.

For what it's worth, I ended the session +$753 over ~1500hands. Still 13.88bb/100.