When your "A" game drops to your "B" game or worse...

[italianstang]

Last night playing 5/5 No Limit I am dealt pocket 8's. A crappy player who bluffs too much is in the hand as well, the board is 7 5 2 and he bets too much, $100 or something, I make a read and put him all in, he turns over aces and he doubles up off me. At this point my "A" game immidiately slips in to my "B" game. I am upset that I made a shitty read, upset that I lost a big pot when I shouldnt have, and play accordingly. Of course "B" game only makes things worse and several hours later I am so far down the alphabet scale that I am calling someone's $95 all-in with 10-J offsuit.
I have only been playing relatively large scale no-limit for a few months now, and up until last night I have been exceedingly successful. You could say that I was just getting a great run of cards, but I don't think that was it, last night was the first time I really felt my game fall apart. The 8's vs the Aces weren't a bad beat, it was my fault, a dumb read, and I should have recovered by playing tight solid poker. My question is: When you feel your game start to go down hill in this fashion, what do you do?

[pokerjo22]

Go home

[goofball]

nod

[PokerSlut]

This is what I do, only I do it preemptively. That is, if I suffer a bad beat and feel like I might not play well because of it (i.e. I can feel my mood changing dramatically), I will pack up my stuff and leave before I have a chance to find out.

My losing sessions only typically result in losing a single buy-in. Say I get sucked out on by someone who hits their two-outer. Before I buy-in again I gauge how I'm feeling and if I'm pissed off, I will leave. If I'm not pissed off, I am likely to recover the buy-in I lost and then some from players who make those kinds of bad calls anyway.

[Grisgra]

Play catch-up and try to win back my money through sketchy play.

Hey, you didn't ask for good advice, you asked what I did . . .

[Blarg]

I don't always do it, but I try very hard to always do this: Ask myself right after a bad beat -- are you ABSOLUTELY SURE your game has not slipped? Are you psychologically feeling yourself slip into negative?

If so, I try to leave before that little downward slipping picks up speed and turns in on itself and becomes a death spiral.

I can sometimes tell myself truthfully that yes, I feel my game has deteriorated a bit because of that bad beat. I don't feel as emotionally distant as I need to be. But it's at a level I feel I can deal with it without really compromising my hourly earn rate significantly, so it's still worthwhile to keep playing until I see signs that I'm feeling bad or else acting stupid.

BUT -- I keep checking back on myself, asking myself first as a friend with my best interests at heart(what else?) and then as brutally coldly and uncompromisingly as possible -- has anything changed?

I really try to put major emphasis in my thought patterns on catching my mood going astray. I know where my shortcomings are in this regard, and I feel like I'm cheating myself if I don't honestly ask and answer these questions of myself on a very regular basis.

[italianstang]

This is a lesson that cost me $1000 last night to learn, but I HOPE I have learned it, I HOPE that next time this kind of thing happens I can go home, even if I drove thirty minutes to get there and I lost a few hundred bucks, I am sure it will save me money in the long run. Any tips from people on how to actually accomplish this?

[DemonDeac Holding Rockets]

Damn PokerJo, thats a hot picture. And I'm not just saying that because I'm drunk. A good, pretty poker player. ME GUSTA!!!!

[pokerjo22]

I usually stand up from the table, cash out my chips, get in my car, and drive in the direction of my home. Hope this helps.

[Blarg]

Orient your psychology toward maximizing your money rather than just winning money.

By that I mean take pride in spotting a lucky opportunity to not go on tilt where another guy -- or even you on another, worse day for you -- would have gone on tilt. It really is luck, too, and if you're smart you'll be happy about it. You have every right to be. Not everyone catches tilt in time. It's a matter of growing psychological strength to do so, strength of exactly the kind you need to be a winning poker player.

Everyone loses sometimes, but reacting in a mature, determined way to it is a victory right in the face of a loss. Well, that's kind of lucky and not the way things usually happen. And you every reason to take pride in that. You have to be alert to and appreciate the good things in life, especially the ones you're responsible for. Give yourself lots of credit for preventing tilt whenever you do; you fully deserve it. A lesser man or a lesser you probably couldn't do it.

Remember that $1,000 not lost spends exactly the same as $1,000 won.

Not going on tilt can have a cumulative effect, by the way. The more you do it, the more you realize how in control you can be as a person, and that calms you down and gives you some pride and confidence, and takes away some of the feelings of lack of worth or desperation that can make you go on tilt. It makes you less likely to go on tilt the next time. Remembering back to more and more times when you had the opportunity to make the worst of things and made the best of things instead makes of you an example to yourself, of what you have been and can be. After a while those accumulated good reactions are simply who you are and who you recognize yourself to be, and that's a nice thing to lay claim to.

Relish those seemingly small victories. They can add up into something much bigger.

[italianstang]

Wow, thats impressive advice. I am most upset at myself over this situation because I have read pretty much every poker book at Borders. I spend a lot of time thinking about the game, I am usually a winner, I track my wins/losses/hourly. I am proficient in several games and have faired okay in some tournaments. However, it seems like these lessons that I should learn by reading I have to learn the hard way. I have obviously read at length about tilt and control, and even worse, while I was sitting there a few nights ago I could SEE myself playing like crap, I KNEW I was playing like crap, but I fell in to the trap of trying to "catch up" to what I had lost. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[TonyBlair]

Everyone knows you're meant to leave/take a break when you're playing badly. I find it near impossible to do though because I don't like accepting that I'm tilting. Maybe you want to just want to get your money back.... or worse, maybe you want to get it back from a particular sucker and stick it to him good. Either way, these are dangerous thoughts.
The sad truth, Mr Stang, is that I've just realised that I have absolutely no useful advice for you at all. Once I learn how to walk off I'll post another message and then turn pro.

[jayrutz2]

1) Agree best course of action is to leave.
2) If you can't leave and you are steaming, keep repeating to self: Play the cards right, play the cards right, play the cards right. If you actually play cards right, you may still be pissed, but maybe you keep your game at A-!, esp if playing online and noone needs to know you are steaming

[Boopotts]

Here's what I don't get about these kinds of posts. You say you made a 'bad read', which I take to mean that there was information at your disposal which you either a) chose to ignore, or b)didn't fully account for. So which is it?

[nickpepper]

[wangarific]

If you drove half an hour to get to the cardroom and you don't want to brood and drive back, at least take a break and grab something to eat. Brood over food, you'll at least be full afterwards. You'll have some time to relax a little, not stress about the cards and about how after the loss you're still getting crappy cards, and then go back after you feel as if you're set back to normal.