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Old 12-28-2005, 01:03 AM
AKQJ10 AKQJ10 is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
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Default A dangerous trap (Psych)

Perhaps this is better suited to the Psychology forum, I'm not sure. But I hope it comes off as a generic tough-luck story.

From early morning Monday to early morning Tuesday, I played about a 23-hour session at Foxwoods. I finished stuck about $240, $80 at $4/8 while waiting to get in a $2/4 game (-10 BB) and $160 of that at $2/4 (-40 BB). This is hardly a cataclysmic downswing, especially in a high-variance game where some maniacs were capping every round for the sheer hell of it. I'm pretty certain I have the best of it in both these games, but especially certain in the $2/4 against opponents who will cap with JTo preflop from EP.

Nevertheless, this session frustrated me, and therefore I extended it longer than healthy non-professional-poker players should go. (Fortunately my "day job" is extremely flexible so I may be working some weird hours to catch up on sleep!) I realized that part of what kept me there, trying to get unstuck, was the expectation that's sort of emerged. I've had so many sessions of 10-20 hours where I went way down, only to have an hour or two where I win a ton of big pots -- often medium sets like sevens or nines filling up -- to bring me back to net-positive territory. Since you don't know when those insanely-profitable hours will come, it's very tempting to think, "I'll just hang around until fortune swings my way."

Anyway, this is just to say that I need to keep in mind it's a random walk. I'm no more owed that one big hour at the end of my session than I'm owed lousy luck at the end of a great session. Sure, it's psychologically difficult to leave a fishy game stuck 30 or 40 big bets. (Especially one with fun opponents including attractive women, when the whole table is talking each other into staying, but that's a different topic.) But games like the Foxwoods $2/4 will always be very loose, so there's really no harm in ending the session down and planning to make it up in the long run.

Anyway, just wanted to share that anecdote in case it's useful to anyone.
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