The definitive bad session benchmark

[Ulysses]

OK, lots of crying on these forums lately about bad beats, bad streaks, blah blah blah. Well, last night, I had (from an odds perspective) my worst session ever. Now, I've lost way more than this in terms of big bets or $$$, but never in this manner. So, next time you think poker is rigged and you just can't win, consider this session:

Last night in a little over 2.5hrs I played a little over 1000 hands of 10/20 6-max.

In that period, I flopped 10 sets. My net earn over those ten sets was -$1200. I lost 8 of them. All 8 were multiway pots and I always flopped the best hand. The two times I won were heads-up. I should have lost even more, since when I had AA v. 99 capped pre-flop and capped on the A59 flop, 99 didn't raise again on the deuce turn and 8Ts didn't raise the river when he made his flush!

I had AA 4 times. Won once. I had KK 4 times. Won twice.

I flopped 4 straights. Only 1 of them won.

Net on the session, -$1800 / 90BB.

Why post this? Well, I've been reading a lot of posts here lately about bad beats, bad sessions, bad downswings. And they all seem ho-hum to me. 'Cause it's all happened before. And every time it happens, you should realize one thing. Whatever you've seeen happen cards-wise, it can always be worse. And eventually it will.

Anyway, last night's session was in ways the most crushing session I've played in my 2.5yrs of poker. It really sucked at the time and I was really annoyed after the session. But you know what? That's poker. I'll play again this week and most likely will win and somewhere along the line I'll have a session like this where all ten of those sets hold up and I win $4000 with them in instead of losing $1000.

So, just keep playing and stop worrying about these individual sessions. If you play well, it'll all work out. And when you get depressed about a session, maybe compare it to this one. If it's worse than this, you have my sympathy!