Experts often say that you can tell how good a poker player is by seeing how they react to downswings. You may be great at poker strategy on a hand-to-hand basis and even do the right thing a huge percentage of the time - but if you blow your top after losing a few bad beats and start attacking the higher levels while in an angry mood, you're more likely to make the wrong decisions. And if you do go ahead and do this (which is more likely when you're under-rolled and facing more tricky opponents) and end up losing a ton of money - then you're just kinda rubbish.
I also think that another test of character is how you react to huge upswings or "heaters" as they have come to be called. In my "Idiot Floor Manager" post I wrote about my £650 jackpot session when I competed in two consecutive monster hands at the live cash game tables at The Empire. Now the only place to go after going on a huge heater is down, and when you think about it, this is inevitable. The problem is that you undergo a type of ecstatic euphoria when this heater occurs and it can sometimes be hard for the mind to re-adjust when you're shooting down the slide on the other side. It's like part of you just insists that the money should keep flowing in your direction and that it's a massive injustice when it doesn't.
What I found myself doing yesterday, while playing online after my winning cash game session, was kind of insisting to myself that the money should have been flowing my direction and in order to make this happen I played far too many hands, far too loosely, and ended up sustaining a small dent to my bankroll. In a nutshell, this was down due to good old fashioned bad play - pure and simple.
LESSON LEARNT: SOMETIMES A REST AFTER A BIG WIN CAN BE JUST AS NECESSARY AS A REST AFTER A BIG LOSS.
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