Dealing with Swings

[Bluffoon]

Hey we are not poker machines we are human beings and we get frustrated, sad, upset etc....

You can't deny your feelings and reactions. It sucks to take the worst of it over and over and over for days or even weeks. Accept that you are going to have negative feelings when you are in such a swing. It's normal.

I do a couple of things when an extended downswing hits. I look carefully at my state of mind. When I am playing and feeling bad (frustrated, discouraged etc..) I take a short break and do something I enjoy. I find it takes me about twenty minutes to come in off the ledge and I can go back to playing and I feel better.

The other thing I do is pull up a database from when I was running well and I review some successful hands and stats. This helps restore my confidence and I find it also helpful to compare my current play with my play during a successful run to see if any negative changes have crept into my game.

I am amazed at the length and magnitude of swings that are possible and that you will see over 100's of thousands of hands. You can talk about it and read about it but you really have to experience it for yourself. When I first started playing it took me a while to adjust to the normal swings of poker. Now that I have experienced a little bit of the larger and longer, outlier type of swings I hope that I will be better prepared when they hit again.