My session tonight

After returning from a late 10:40pm indoor soccer game, I put in 2 hours 4-tabling $5/10 6max on Party. I've been playing well there since I got back from Vegas. I especially feel like my postflop play has improved, and I've managed to come closer to emotionless poker than I've been in a long long time. I've also been running well, which tends to give me confidence whether my decision-making deserves the confidence or not.

That confidence was immediately put to the test when I lost over 50BBs in my first 200 hands. That's over $500 in about 30 minutes. I almost decided to quit right there, but I realized that I was playing good poker and sitting at good tables with several bad players. I'm proud of my decision to stick with it in spite of a painful downturn; as recently as a month ago I might not have had the emotional control to keep playing good poker after such a swift series of tough beats. Luckily, the cards rewarded me and I was able to get back to even for the night just as a few bad players went broke and quit.





Downswings of 50BB and worse are extremely common, even for excellent players, so being able to keep playing well after such a swing really shouldn't be a huge accomplishment. But frankly, for me it is. My game usually suffers when I'm losing. Everybody has a breaking point, but the best players have a much higher threshold for coping with the emotion of losses. I'm not that great of a player to begin with, so if I have made genuine progress in regards to dealing with adversity, that will be very valuable to me, and hopefully it will open the door to other areas of improvement.

As always, one good week is pretty meaningless. Lets see how I'm doing after 50,000 more hands.