feels so good to be back

This post is intended to help out people who have been recently losing alot. A couple weeks ago i cahsed out 100$ (my principal) and had 150$ left. Some of you might have heard of the cashout curse, it exists, i swear. I lost 110$ in a day playing low stakes SNG's. A few days later i was down to 25 or 20$ and was playing 1 and 2 dollar MTT's and playing 1/2c cash tables to sustain my habit. i was hoping to hit id big. i did that for a few days, felt like an e-bum. Anyways i was bored one night n i figured id try out a $3 1 table turbo. Id never liked turbos before, but i ended up winning. I joined a couple more and got a 1-2. Felt pretty good. Kept playing and learned the game better n better. Today i started with $130, felt really good about it. I figured id take a shot at the $6 version. I ran 3, got a first n a second. Ran another set of 3 10 minutes after i was done and got another 1st n 2nd. im up to around $180 not n it feels great. Moral - take chances and dont give up. +WPP!!

Moral of the story: don't give up and don't play out of your bankroll

Sounds like you got struck by overconfidence, then it took a while and some negative feedback to get you back seeing things how they really are.

Last summer when I was playing 100/200nl waaaaaaaay under rolled, I thought I was a poker GOD. I won like $500 in a day and that was absolutely huge for me. Within the week I lost it all and then some. I then did the whole cliche tilt thing and did a 109 SnG (with a 500 BR) and busted out 4th. IT WAS ALL BAD BEATS OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT GUY CALLED MY RE-RAISE PF WITH 55 AND FLOPPED A SET AGAINST MY AA WOW WHAT A SUCKOUT. I believed everything in that caps lock statement at the time.

The sad thing is, this is really hard to avoid.

The way the human brain is wired is that you standard have access to all your memories. It doesn't matter what you logically know, it's all about what your "mind's eye" can see. Now, if your brain shuts out access to negative experiences, you get what is above described. If you scan your memories (which happens automatically) all you see are positive things happening.. so even if someone tells you to be careful etc, it doesn't matter.. to you it seems nothing can go wrong.

Now, you'd be chronically depressed (there are documented cases of this) if your brain is not able to suppress (ie, refuse functional access to) bad things that have happened. IOW, your brain shuts out the negative memories to boost your confidence. To a human being, things will always look better than they are.

Ofcourse, if it shuts them out too much, you get a lopsided view of reality and you won't be able to function properly. In poker, you'll play out of your bankroll, assume everything will go well regardless of what you do, etc. And you can't help it.. you simply only see positive things.

One way this could happen is if the negative experiences are so bad (like trauma's) that your brain has to shut them out to keep you sane.. or, more realistically in poker, the positive experiences feel so good that you just kinda get stuck there.

To knock you out of this, you'll need some negative feedback. Kinda like a reminder things can go bad too. Sadly, in real terms this usually means you have to blow most of your BR.

So if you're in a phase of overconfidence, you are basically stuck in memories of good things happening (in poker). It might be nice to keep some evidence of things going bad (negative feedback) handy.. kinda so you can confront yourself with it and get 'complete access to your memories, the good and the bad' without the need to blow your roll in order to do so.


Well, I didn't really have a point here, just felt like giving a psychological explanation lol. I personally always like this more than a peptalk.

-edited massive post as it was msotly rambling