Some Help When You Are Running Cold - Part 1

We have all been there if you play this game long enough. Long losing streaks where nothing goes right. Every good hand is cracked. Draws never get there or do and get beat on the river. We gets cards but no action or the chips are flying and our hands look like feet. Hour upon hour of bad cards or even worse - a string of flops that hit your opponents between the eyes every hand.

Been there, done that. Bought the t-shirt AND sent the postcards. It is UGLY when you are in the middle of it!

I went a year and a half (that is 18 months for those of you in Ann Arbor, MI) barely breaking even in casinos after winning for 20 months straight. I went six straight months with losing results on-line.

I am currently in a fourteen year losing streak at the NPP game. Ok, sixteen years.....ALRIGHT, eighteen years!

Here is an article I saved after I destroyed my third on-line poker computer and cursing the charity casinos in Windsor, Ont. Just kidding about the computers. ALRIGHT...two computers!

BAD LUCK

"Blaming forces beyond our control is often easier than taking responsibility for our own actions and holding ourselves accountable for the results we receive.

So you flopped six or seven flush draws in a row and they didn’t pan out. Whom should you blame - the dealer, the cards, the casino or website itself? All of them make good targets. After all, they cannot prove they didn’t do it.

But that is inconsequential. You are the poker player, the man at the switch, the engineer driving the train, the pilot, the guy with the compass plotting the course. And if you end up somewhere you’d rather not be, there are only two things that could of gone wrong.

Either you screwed up or you got unlucky and it is no one’s fault. And as far as a turn of a card is concerned, neither you nor anyone else has any control over that – as long as the game is on the up and up.

If you have made all the right decisions, you can absolve yourself of blame. After all if the pot odds exceed the odds of making your hand, calling or raising is the right decision –whether you win or lose that particular hand.

If you lose that time or six of seven times in a row after that – it is no one’s fault. Poker has an element of chance ingrained in every part of the game. No one can change that, and it does no good to blame anyone for bad fortune dictated by the turn of a card. Railing against randomness does about as much good as bare-knuckle punching a brick wall. [Editor's Note: I've done that and the author is right. It didn't help.]

Do yourself a favor and assume you are the problem. Even if it is not true, at least this assumption leads you down the path to corrective action. If you refuse to look at yourself as the reason you are not doing well, you may never discover the leak in your game. You may continue to make the same error time and time again.

If losing due to bad luck kills you, then lower your stakes. Make it a non-painful as possible. Continue to play your best game, continue to study and improve and the cards will eventually reward your hard work.

Money saved when running badly, spends exactly the same as money won when running well."

I read this from time to time. It saves my computers and my knuckles.