Winning and losing sessions
This is my first venture into this forum, but I feel like this post is about one of the biggest problems with my game. It's in a similar vein as the "Poker lifestyle questions, managing your schedule" thread, but I think it's different enough that it merits it's own.
I have what I think is a pretty big pyschology problem, in that it inhibits me from making the most money I can. Basically, the problem is that I cannot have a long winning session.
Every time I get up more than like 3 or 4 buyins in a session, no matter how long or short, even if it's like 2 buyins in 20 minutes or something, I just stop playing. I think some, if not all of this, stems from some type of fear. It's not exactly the money that gets to me... it's more that I'm afraid to lose money won, if you get what I'm saying. There's something inside my head that makes me want to have a winning session so badly that I stop as soon as I achieve it.
The real problem with this is it prevents me from making the most money I can, obv, but it also makes me much more of a breakeven player than I should be (I think). Because I have no problems with playing until I'm unstuck, my losing sessions can be very long - this results in some sessions where I lose a ton of money. But because of my problem, I'll never have a session where I win a ton of money. Basically what this means is that (and this has happened before) I'll play for a week and make a bunch of money, having winning sessions every day. But then at the end of the week I'll have one losing session that completely wipes out all profit I had made in the entire week, setting me back to even.
I'd love to know how you guys are able to get around something like this, or if any of you have ever had, or still have, a similar kind of problem. Obviously I'm not a great poker player, but I could at least make a little more money if it weren't for problems like this. The psychology I think is the part of the game where I'm weakest, and that's an awful place to be weak, so please help me any way you can. Thanks guys
- Pat
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