[BigJimSlade]

Nice post BW.

I've just read through the thread and i'm really surprised at the number of people that are playing with 10x buyin. Considering a lot of advice that is given towards marginal situations is "if you are properly bankrolled, taking this gamble wont be a problem", I assumed that people would have 20x buyin (15x minimum).

This rule became even more important for me after I first moved upto 50NL. I finally got my BR to 1k and felt that my game was good enough, my roll high enough and I was confident I could handle playing for bigger stakes.

So I made the move and WHAM! Within 2 hours I lost 4 buy-ins from horrible luck (set under set, AA all-in twice pf and lost to KJ and JJ, that kinda thing). Then I went onto lose 2 more buy-ins from tilty bad play (i'll describe this form of tilt further down).

So now i'm looking at a roll of only $750 and I had to ask myself "What now? Drop back to 25NL or continue here? If I continue, how much can I stand to lose before I drop? If i'm worried about the money, can I play good poker?".

So I decided to drop back down. Ever since then i've considered even a 20x buyin to be too small for me because I saw for myself how quickly things can go wrong. When I got my BR back to $1250, I felt confident enough to move up again because even if a horrible downswing happened, i'd still be at what I consider to the minimum BR required for that level and could make a decision on whether to continue.

I'm actually now close to the BR required for 100NL, but I know I wont be making the move for a long time.

Tilty Bad Play...

A lot of people will believe they aren't tilting because they're not calling big raises preflop with any 2, or becoming super-aggressive and attempting to push someone off a hand when you have air. When i'd tilt, this is something i'd never do, it'd probably be better if it was because it would be much easier to spot I think.

My tilt (and I think a lot of others) is when I no longer KNEW I had the best hand, it's when I PRAYED to the poker gods that I did. I'd look at the board and say to myself "Wow, that's horrible looking, but SURELY it's my turn to win a big pot! I mean i've sat here for an hour, had my big hands cracked by these idiots with junk and now I have top pair-top kicker, sure there's 3 to a flush but it'd only be fair for me to win here!".

This post turned out longer than I expected and probably didn't have a real point, sorry about that!