Threshold of Pain

Stones Hat ... Souviner from Wednesday's Show

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The Past two months have been my worst consecutive months of my poker career.

some saggy boobs .... or my current poker graph

But due to my struggling, I have been playing less hours and fewer hands. I have been spending more time thinking about the game and thinking what I am doing wrong. A friend recently asked me why I thought I was losing. I think there is no simple answer to this question. Its a combination of running bad (bad luck), tilting or playing less than optimally, poor game selection, and not "fully reloading" my account. These factors combined have created a spiral effect. I would take a couple bad beats, get frustrated, push a couple hands too hard against opponents who can sense blood and come in for the kill. Then when I ran out of money, I would only reload for a couple buyins; this was done out of convienience of smaller buyins.

For now I am just going to continue to play a light schedule and really focus until I play my way through and get back on track. Not really nervous about my ability's and I'm not in jeopardy of "running out of money." But all of this "sole searching" made me think about my entire poker career from the beginning. I have a bunch of funny / scary situations that were major issues at the time before my current comfort level. But now it made me think of my "threshold of pain."

The Scene: 3 1/2 years ago, the Saturday before Easter, on my Tanglewood couch in RI. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I would say I had about 60-70% of my bankroll (or total value of everything I have) in my Pokerstars account. I jump in the full stars 100-200 game, and lose a little as the game breaks down to Rabs, Jdags and Myself...clearly not a good spot for me. But hey, I was stuck a little and may get lucky. FASTFORWARD 14 hrs later, about 20 1k heads up sit n goes, and a little headsup with Toronto Toro and I had busted my stars account (this was my first major bust on stars, but a pattern that would repeat itself over the years). Now its about 2 or 3am and I have to drive to an Easter Brunch in the morning. The beating had really taken a toll on me. Spending a day with the fam, talking about my "new poker career" which was going great with the exception of the precious 24 hrs. FASTFORWARD Now almost 4 years later and my current downswing being more than triple that single day loss. I have created a new threshold. But I still can not recreate that same "pit" I had in my stomach on that dreadful EasterSunday.