ROCK BOTTOM

In keeping with catching my emotions as they happen, I’m writing now after just suffering a severe blow online. Up until this week, I’d yet to encounter a losing day, but now I’ve stumbled across 3 at once. I currently feel ashamed, angry, and disappointed. I can take losing money, but when it’s my own fault, I find it unacceptable. Usually I walk away from the laptop and forget about it within minutes, but this time, I’ve been beating myself up about it. Perhaps it’s because it’s my living now, maybe it’s because it was my 3rd consecutive loss, I could just be tired, who knows? Either way, I feel absolutely gutted.

All that hard work from the previous month, all that good play, all that resistance to tilting. Then I go and blow it all by playing like an idiot. For the first time in a long long time, I tilted. I didn’t just blow off a little steam, I raised the bar to the highest level of tiltness. Firstly, I started reaising preflop with rubbish in order to create action. I created action all right, but none of it was beneficial to my stack. Then every time I missed a flop, I tried a bluff, which always went pear shaped. If I actually hit something, I always seemed to be reraised by a hand which I knew was better than mine. But did I have the sense to release? Oh no, I refused to lay it down. I hit top pair with my AK, I know the reraiser has trips, so why on earth do I carry on playing the hand?! I even had a conversation with myself about how I should be laying the hand down, but I still didn’t listen. To make matters worse, I spread my titling over the four tables I was playing. I was doing all right on some of them, but I let my bad fortune on other tables effect my game across the whole board. Then, to tip it all off, I start racking off my chips. Instead of just taking my small stack and leaving the table, I looked for spots to gamble. All were stupid gambles, and all were deservedly punished. Sometimes, I make myself so mad it’s unbelievable.

I’m just not sure what’s wrong with me at the moment. I never ever tilt like this, so why now? Okay, I can honestly say that today I received the worst run of luck I have encountered in 4 years of online play. However, that doesn’t automatically mean that I should go on complete tilt and throw my remaining chips away. I’m full time now, if I do it again, I guarantee that I’ll give it all up and get myself my job. It’s that simple, what more motivation do I need?

Right, enough of the ranting. As you can clearly gather, I’m still furious with myself. Time to get a grip now. These things happen, nobody’s perfect. I thought I had tilting under complete control, but obviously I was wrong. I need a break, I won’t play till after Christmas, perhaps in about a week. In that time I will gather my thoughts and look back at some of the decisions I made. I was obviously fatigued, so I will sleep more and get myself into shape. Healthy body is a healthy mind, and I’ve ignored this recently. I just haven’t been thinking straight. Also, I’ll read some poker books to keep my brain active. Maybe watch some poker on tv, anything to keep me occupied.

Bottom line. Today I hit rock bottom, so the only way is up. I messed up, it won’t happened again, and if it does, I’m quitting.