Good session that ends badly?

[sirtimo]

I went to a B&M this weekend to get away a bit and play some hard core poker. My wife and kids were occupied with a charity event so I had free rein and no deadlines.

Long story short is I played very very well. Made good decisions. Was up some, was down some, back up etc, but the stack size was not what defined the quality of my play. I was very satisfed.

Anyway, at the end of a very long session (about 16 hrs)I made 2 almost back-to-back very dumb plays that left me busto and pissed. By busto I mean my pocket money not my roll and I can afford the loss.

My question is this: I am seeing this whole session, the whole weekend, my whole free "me time" spent as a failure now just because of how it ended stupidly. Having a real hard time reconciling this feeling with the reality that the trip was very very good with a just a few mistakes.

Any ideas? Is this just something I have to work through?

[keith123]

you probably need a little time. but after that, you need to look at why you lost your money so quickly. it was seemingly tilt related, so you need to think about what exactly put you on tilt.

my biggest problems especially late in a session are if i take a bad beat from a clearly inferior player that thinks very highly of himself, i overplay the next hand i am in with him and often lose. also sometimes late in a session i will gamble a bit more in situations where i would always fold earlier in a session, and then i get pissed at myself and try to gamble to win instead of playing right. for me, if i tilt it is always late in the session. not because i am tired, but because i know that i could have very easily never seen that hand and wished i had just left.

now as soon as i am in the ballpark of leaving time and i take a significantly bad beat or make a dumb gamble play, i just go.

[.KeviN.]

Used to happen to me, it's something I've worked on getting past for the past month. I found that I tilt away my money around the 9th hour, ESPECIALLY during sessions where I was playing my best. I think this is bc during the sessions where you're playing your best, you are constantly focused and your mind is grinding away second after second. You can only do this for so long until you feel the effects. It's like exercising, if you workout too hard for too long you overtrain and you end up hurting your body insted of helping it.

I find that I can go longer when I am more at ease and zone out from the game every now and then. It's funny bc I was forced into a 22 hour session just this past weekend and I tried this out. Even though I owe alot to the red bulls, I liked how this sort of playing worked out. I felt the tilt coming on around the 10th hour again, but when I did I took "a break" from the game and relaxed on autopilot playing ABC poker.

So my advice is either shorten your sessions, or pace yourself if you know you will be there for awhile. Think of it as marathon, dont over exert your mind in the beginning and middle if you know it will destroy your results at the end. Take breaks, zone out for a little bit, play it straight for a while, things like that. Also, dont make a 2 hour drive home in the rain after a 22 hour session...very bad for business.

[bias1]

I've had a same problem were i've had a good session but ran bad at the very end. I was at Morongo Casino, i arrived 9 at night and played until 5 in the morning, when i lost all the money i had made during that time. I was playing good poker, and i was eventually up 3 times my initial buy in over the course of 9 hours. However, i started to lose small pots and put myself on semi-tilt. A few hands later, i looked down at pocket aces, under the gun, and raised 15 dollars (blinds were 1/3). The guy immediately to my left called as well as the big blind. The flop was 8 J 10, i bet 40, and the guy that called my 15 raised immediately to my left went all in for 200 dollars. I easily could have folded, knowing he wouldn't be going all in with A J or A 10. He probably hit a set of 8's. When i called, to my dismay, he turned over a mere J 10 offsuit, and took the pot down. Wow, after 9 hours of solid poker, i lose it all to a hand i should have thought about longer. Another case of a good run destroyed by a few bad hands.

[pfapfap]

Sounds like you don't do B&M that often. The more you play in them, the more you see them as the proverbial "one long session" and not each visit as a special trip. But yeah, it sucks to play well and go busto. Just give it time, reflect upon what you did well, think about what you could've done better, everything everyone else said, etc etc.

[Off Duty]

Play 15 hours?

[sandsmarc]

If you played 16 hours straight, there is no way in hell you "played well". Your subconscious realizes this, which is why you feel like crap.