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I just had two weeks of losing which means two weeks of suffering - not just for myself but also for those around me. I get so depressed about my poor results and the fear of running bad till I go broke makes me play even worse. It's a cycle. I have tried to calm myself with a very strict BRM and setting stop losses. I have moved down in limits and back up during this period but I stayed fearful and depressed even when I followed my own guidelines. The general advice is to have 20 buy-ins for the level you are playing. But when I just moved up a level I might have as little as 5 buy ins before I have to move back down. Then I start feeling nervous about moving back down again. And the cycle continues.

So I decided to ALWAYS have 40 buy-ins. How? I simply start every session by dividing my entire poker bankroll by 40. That is the maximum amount that I can buy in for at that session. So if I have 1200$ in my bankroll I can buy in to 30$ tournaments or sit down at any cashtable with 30$. My stop loss for the session is 3 times my maximum buyin amount. So in this case I quit when I'm down 90$.

I know this is super nitty - but that's just me. The numbers can be changed to suit you. I know that when I am stuck 3 buy-ins my C game is just around the corner. So I hit the brake before I get there. If you hit your C game when stuck 7 buy ins why not stop after losing 6?

Another great thing about progressive BRM and the stop loss is that THE MORE YOU LOSE THE LESS YOU LOSE. After a streak of ten losing sessions your maximum loss is less. And knowing that takes away a lot of the fear and stress of losing streaks. And this again allows me to play better. It's a cycle too.

Another upside to this is that you are constantly moving up and down. Your bankroll is always changing and so is your buy-ins. Instead of playing 2 months at your normal limit and then moving down and feeling like crap about it you start to see that every day, every minute and every hand is a move up or down. Impermanence! Because you are constantly moving up and down there is no up and down. When I have 30$ as my maximum buy-in I somtimes like to buy in at 50NL and play short stacked and sometimes I like to play deep at 25NL. I'm just surfing my bankroll.

I know this is just a band aid to my tilting and anger. So the key is to use this band aid to create enough stillness in my mind to work on these things and find the cure.

The cure to poker suffering? Tommy Angelo. Thank you!

PEACE

I def agree that winning and losing at poker is a cycle. The more you win, the more confidence you have, which makes you play better, as a result you win more, etc. Unforunately, the same thing occurs with losing.

Good luck sir.

I don't agree with the 40 buyin amount for tourney's due to their high varience, but for cash games, this is about right. Currently, I'm playing with a 20 buyin amount, but I'm trying to start over in the micros.

20 BIs is almost nothing. The idea that 20 BIs is a good roll stems from a time where you could crush at incredible winrates and nobody really understood how big variance actually was. With the tilt issues you describe I'd strongly recommend playing with 75 BIs or so and quit poker if you can't stick to it. And you might even want to consider quitting poker to begin with given the effects it has had on you so far.

I'm only playing 20 buyins because I only felt comfortable putting $20 onto Merge and grinding $4NL.

It seems like constantly moving up and down between stakes would make it difficult to see if you are able to beat certain levels. I think it'd be better to get a decent sample at a lower stake and making sure you can beat that level before deciding to move up. If you aren't beating it, then you need to work on your game and improve until you can imo. You also really need to find a way to separate yourself from bad sessions. Losing should bother you if you aren't playing your best, but not to the point that it's depressing you for long periods of time.

I'm only playing 20 buyins because I only felt comfortable putting $20 onto Merge and grinding $4NL.

20/4=5

20 BIs is almost nothing. The idea that 20 BIs is a good roll stems from a time where you could crush at incredible winrates and nobody really understood how big variance actually was. With the tilt issues you describe I'd strongly recommend playing with 75 BIs or so and quit poker if you can't stick to it. And you might even want to consider quitting poker to begin with given the effects it has had on you so far.

Im wondering Grindcore, did you ever have any tilt issues? If so, what did you do to prevent it? Do you think people can 'learn' mindset things, or do you think that some people - just a few % of the population - are able to make it mentally wise (which implies that the vast majority is not capable of playing poker )

Personally the best way to prevent tilt is doing workouts, cardio, fitness things. To play my A game, I need a workout session every single time before I start playing.

20/4=5

That's what I started off with. I'm now up to 20+

Im wondering Grindcore, did you ever have any tilt issues? If so, what did you do to prevent it? Do you think people can 'learn' mindset things, or do you think that some people - just a few % of the population - are able to make it mentally wise (which implies that the vast majority is not capable of playing poker )

Personally the best way to prevent tilt is doing workouts, cardio, fitness things. To play my A game, I need a workout session every single time before I start playing.

Yeah I tilted, like any other human. Though I have a very calm personality in general that probably helps a lot. Tommy Angelo is much better at teaching how to handle it than me though so I'm not gonna elaborate too much.

When I first started playing poker I was on a roll for half a year. Then came the first downswing. Then the next one. Then the - ok you get the point. The problem was I thought this was impossible. I strongly believed that I was the unluckiest guy in the universe when it came to poker. And the only thing to do was play through it and wait for better cards to come. I had the wrong outlook on things for three years and it really hurt my poker-self esteem. And my level of happiness shrunk after each downswing. So did the love of the game. I stopped being serious about poker and went all out on an unhelathy lifestyle. I never quit poker entirely but for a long time I was playing with half a heart - the last 50% was spent on entitlement tilt. If I was in a full 6max ring game I was at a table with 5 idiots within half an hour. Or however long it took for everyone to take some of my $$$.

Now I'm in a much better place to get my mindset right. I have a healthy lifestyle, eat and sleep well and exercise regurally. All thanks to my supportive girlfriend who helped me get my act together. No more long sessions of chasing losses, smoking cigarettes and weed and drinking coffe like a horse drinks water. All clean and serene and back for poker vengeance! Hell I just figured out how to calculate pot ods correctly :-) Never needed that to beat the games back when I began but now I am so hungry for poker - and life - again. I have always kept records of my ups and downs so I know that I have made a profit over the years. But no more record keeping - I will just go with the flow and try to be in the present as much as I can. So maybe I should have quit back then but now with a new and better plan for BRM plus a better base of operations I am gonna give it my best - again!

I really can not recommend Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo and The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment video series enough. I have managed to walk away from potential verbal fights after reading and listening to the ideas presented. And I love verbal fights! Now I am able to close the argument before it takes hold of me with a slightly rewritten quote from the Dude: "Well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man." Even on a guy calling me an idiot on the beach for hitting him with a bit of water. Accidentally. His anticipation game was way off when he decided to go to the ocean and didn't expect to the get just 2% wet. And in poker if you don't anticipate bad beats or losing streaks - your anticipation is way off too!

Next step for me? Yoga and meditation and more strategy studies!

@"GLUIPERIG" I agree! But for now I will keep it this way since I only play tourneys once a week and don't rely on poker winnings in any way. My object of the game has changed from making money to having fun and not going into Darth Vader mode (heavy breathing and anger issues causing fear and suffering around you)

@snarble5
This is so right. I keep trying to remember this.
Poker is like trying to talk to girls in clubs/bars. If you are confident, then you are not thinking about getting rejected /losing. You just do your thing, because you belive its the right play and dont doubt about yourself.

I'd strongly recommend playing with 75 BIs .

I recommend even higher BR for cash games.
I had hit 120 BI under EV run once (almost a year).
Games are not the same like 7 years ago, and you need to adapt your bankroll managment too.

Poker is like trying to talk to girls in clubs/bars. If you are confident, then you are not thinking about getting rejected /losing..

This is so on.

You might have an uber bad run for a couple nights. Weeks. Hell, even months no matter how hard you try. Then one night you'll go out and it'll just fall into your lap (pun intended).

Poker it compared to golf alot, but since I don't play I compare it to picking up girls. lol.

I'm on the 100bi's rule.

I just play without worrying about my bankroll the whole month and I only check the results once per month, so much more focused on playing poker.

Ofc, it certainly depends on which stakes you play/ wr and player pool so you can probably use smaller for lower stakes, but usually the more the better, unless you think you are sacrificing a big edge in higher games.