What Mike says is absolutely right. You have to build up or deposit enough for a bankroll. Having a bankroll makes all the difference.

It sounds more to me like you had a few bad beats and then started playing WAY too many hands in order to "get back" to where you were...and next thing you knew you were down to the felt. Believe me when I say I've been there. It was a hard lesson to learn that yes, having a bankroll is a tremendous asset when the inevitable downturns take their toll.

Now, I can offer some advice on playing on a short bankroll since I've been doing that for the past month. I only have ~700 to play in my live 3/6 game. That's not enough for such a game so I have to make some adjustments.

From a self-psychology perspective:
- after a bad beat I remind myself that sometimes suck-outs happen and that I had the hand read correctly (if that's the case) and I made it as expensive as possible for them to suck-out
- after a mis-read I remind myself that I'm an imperfect human, prone to mistakes, and sometimes those will cost me some chips
- after a significant dip (~20BB) I remind myself that variance is a part of poker and I ask myself if I'm playing as well as I can play and if I feel I'm not I get up and leave...if I feel I am, I re-buy.

I also started wearing a watch, and set a time at the start of play at which time I ask myself how well I'm playing. If it gets that time and the cards aren't coming or I'm not playing well, I go ahead and get up and leave. If they ARE coming and/or I AM playing well, I stay.

In the end though you have to be VERY disciplined and not let yourself get on tilt. Find for yourself what triggers your tilt and come up with a way to counter it. For me it's the feeling I described above, of needing to "get up" after losing part of my buy-in. When I feel that feeling coming on now, I get up and leave. I actually did that this past saturday...was down $110 and felt I wasn't playing well, so I cashed out and left. Best decision I made, I think.

Over the weekend I signed up at Pacific. On Tuesday I discovered they credited my account with $10. In the 2 days since, I've played 3 $2+.20 2 table tournaments (finished in the cash in all 3) and about 6 hours of $.25/$.50 using the self-psychology techniques I mentioned above. By doing that and playing solid poker (mostly 7-stud hi/lo and Omaha hi/lo ring games) I've gotten that original $10 up to about $50.

Not saying you'll do this well, but try applying the techniques I mentioned and see if that doesn't work out for you.