How to? Convincing yourself it's not a lot of money as you move up

[Wardfish]

For me the solution is simple: I dont think of my bankroll as real money. Its money that allows me to play poker, in order to generate real money.

For me, the real money comes on the 15th of the month when I withdraw 10% of my bankroll.

Let me put some numbers to all of this:

BR at Monday 22 Oct: $24300
Loss for day: $800
BR c/fwd: $23500

Assuming I break even from now to 15 November (payday), this loss has only actually cost me $80 in real money ie. reducing my withdrawal figure by 10% of $800. Hopefully by payday there will be many more wins than losses, and the $800 loss suffered on Monday will be long forgotten.

When my wife asks me how much I have in the BR, I get annoyed with her, and tell her that "its not relevant - its not for spending, its for playing poker".

As long as you are winning at the level you currently play, dont even think about your BR as money. Your roll will simply generate more and more money for you in the long run but there will be ups and downs.

Just try to concentrate on what's important: playing winning poker.

[iRockPoker03]

maybe you should put in some overtime and grind out sort of a seperate bankroll for taking shots

like an hour extra a day? and once you feel its enough to take a shot with dont view it as money but time invested doing something you enjoy

idk just some thoughts

[SellingtheDrama]

[ QUOTE ]
I was gonna respond to this, but realized you are not playing live. Live....I know its a lot of money(to me). I had a really hard time wanting to move from $9-18 LHE to $20-40 LHE. I mean, the amount I am willing to put in play any given night exceeds my biweekly take home play. So I moved up slow and played a lot of hours of $10-20 and $15-30 in between. Once I got to the $20-40, I sold 1/3 of my action to a friend for a while and that helped lessen the sting(and earned him $2200). Now that I've logged some hours....it still kinda bothers me. But not at the table. I'm able to view my chips as just that and really don't think of the money involved until I leave the table.

But I have no idea how I would handle things if I was playing online. It's not so easy to say to yourself that you are just playing with chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know exactly how you feel...its even sicker since I play NL - I'll be betting multiple weeks pay on one street in some games.

I've gotten better, I just try to treat the poker hours as a part time job and focus on longer-term hourly rates and sustaining /improving them.