Back To The Trap House

What trigger your spew? Is it a GF? Black People? White People? Drugs? The Government? Puppies? Fat Chicks? Bordem? Anger? Fear?

Whatever it is that caused me to spew tonight did a really good job. I have really worked hard on my bottom end game. The defense. The confidence you have to sit at the table and know you won't spew in bad spots. Some of you may have developed it. Some of you may still be working on it.

It's a valuable skill to have in your game. Not losing is actually winning considering how many pitfalls there are in the game of poker. So when you voluntarily spew you trigger a whole lot of bad things to happen. Some people may respond by chasing after losses and deviating from a profitable style and spewing more. We've all had those nights that bother us for days, weeks, months and sometimes years. 

Some of those sessions, if not properly rolled, will take you years to recover from. It can force you to question a lot of things. Do you really want to play poker for a living? Are you really that good? If you are then why did you spew that much?

I think I know what triggered my spew but thats not really important to discuss here. What is important to discuss is that I made a conscious effort to stop spewing and my spew sessions have been much more spread out and much smaller overall until today. 

Until I spewed today I hadn't spewed in probably 6 months. Thats a really long time, for me that is, maybe not you.

And that gives me confidence you get back in there and play again after a short break. Another difference this time is I have a bankroll to play with. Wins and losses are perceived much differently depending on how big your bankroll is.

If I just lost 1/2 my bankroll I would be flipping out right now but I haven't lost anywhere near that so the loss doesn't really bother me as much.

What bothers me is that I made those bad plays. Thats also good news though because I can control how I play poker so this spew is very fixable.

Which leads me to another skill winning poker players either have or must develop: Recovery. It's very straight forward. All it is is how well you can recover from a losing session without losing confidence. It's ok to have dips in confidence but you have to talk yourself back up to the point where you can play your game again. On a smaller scale its making the most profitable play from hand to hand despite the fact that you may have just lost a hand prior to the next. Is that loss going to make you play incorrectly? If so then you have to consciously work on this aspect of your game.

How I bounce back from this will let me know, and you, how well developed my recovery is and I accept that challenge as a poker player and you should too. None of this is out of my control. I can fix this and you can fix your leaks too!