I had my worst night in a long time last night. I was playing at a couple of very aggressive short handed tables and was playing very fast. I wound up getting stacked on both tables in about a 15 minute period towards the end of the night. One was KK vs. AA and the other was middle two pair against top two pair. It might seem crazy to lose all your money on either of those hands, but they were both monsters based on the context of the table.
A voice in my head said, "Stop playing and go to bed. Sure you're down about $1,800 on the night but look how much you are up for the month and year. It is one long game that isn't measured in how you do in one night or one week. You are tired and aren't playing your best, go to bed."
Did I listen to that voice and go to bed? Of course not. We rarely do, even though we should.
I ran into Loopy at the tables and he wasn't having a good night either. He is just getting into playing cash games a little more than he has in the past. I reassured him that he will have losing nights and it isn't any big deal because it is all about the long term.
The funny thing is - It took me telling Loopy this to realize it myself. I needed to Stop Playing and Go to Bed and finally did after talking to Loopy. I was telling him to quit for the night and win it back later instead of trying to win it all back in one night. Maybe, I was just talking to myself.
You have to remember, you can have losing nights. It is OK. You are not a bad player. You may be playing bad though. (I was.) Pick it up the next day and don't worry about it.
I think this is probably the biggest leak in my game right now - playing when tired and down for the night. I have to learn to call it quits for the night when I'm not playing my best. No telling how much I would have lost last night if I hadn't run across Loopy.
How do you deal with being down for the night? Do you chase your losses? Do you just go to bed and pick it up the next day with a clean slate?
Today I know I wasn't playing my best last night, but last night I thought I was playing great and just getting unlucky.
cmitch
Posts
We've posted and discussed this with some other folks before regarding having some sort of braking system in place (max loss in one session). General rule of thumb is 50-60BB. Additionally, I think one thing that most folks don't do a good job of is a post-mortem of the session. It's easy to look at the bad beats, but did my game change afterwards (either getting too loose, getting fraidy-scared, playing position poorly). For me, I enter a dangerous territory not so much of chasing the loss but just getting frustrated and doing dumb things.
CC
10:20 AM
That's pretty funny, because I went through the same thing last night (and blogged about it).. I once toyed around with stop losses; but I nixed the idea as I would rather look at other things to determine if I need to quit.
WillWonka
10:42 AM
Wow I run bad on Tuesday and I mess you up by Thursday! I was actually coming to find that article you mentioned on position in short handed games.
The biggest thing about running bad is that you try to quickly stack the poor players at the table. You start to think that your middle two pair are enough and you push on the river knowing they will call with TPTK. Instead they stack you and we consider it lucky for them.
I find I like to start the next day playing at a lower level and mixing things up. Win a couple hands and then go back to my regular level for the evening. I find that gets me back into believing that I can beat the game as long as I play right.
Guin
4:50 PM
This weekend I not only chased my losses, but I committed a graver sin - I moved UP in limits to chase my losses, resulting in what? Greater losses of course. Usually I can grind it back out to even before I go to bed, but with the day job, it is pretty easy (usually) to set a hard time limit so that I won't be completely useless the next day at work.
John G. Hartness
9:40 AM
i have been trying to quit this game ,has been hard ,but as of today ,i have decided stop playing.one of my friends introduced me to this home games.sleepless nights,stress,
loosing money.last year $40000.00
i am gone with this.
Anonymous
2:38 PM
i have been trying to quit this game ,has been hard ,but as of today ,i have decided stop playing.one of my friends introduced me to this home games.sleepless nights,stress,
loosing money.last year $40000.00
i am gone with this.
Anonymous
2:38 PM