Fighting the Urge to Move Up to Chase Losses

[MegaFossil]

I'd like to think I'm a very solid MSNL player and playing 1/2, 2/4, and 3/6 NL I've been right around 3-5 ptBB/100 for the year and this is while 8-tabling, so my hourly rate at just these limits is around $110-$140/hour. The problem is, whenever I have a poor session where I drop let's say 4-5 buyins I get too upset and feel like I have to make that back instantly.

So inevitably I move up to 5/10 NL and try to stack someone and get back to even. Problems arise when I don't do that well at 5/10 and all of a sudden I'm down $2k instead of just the $1k. Sometimes I will just accept the loss, but other times I've moved up to 10/20 and even 25/50 to try and chase these losses.

It's extremely frustrating b/c if I had any discipline at all with just sticking with what I'm bankrolled for I would be up $50-60k for the year, but as it is I find myself only up $10k. Obviously $10k is still a nice figure, but the moving up to chase losses is the big key here. I'm kind of a perfectionist, so when I input my session results in my Spreadsheet I might see 4 days in a row of nice wins, and putting in a big loser kind of messes with my mind and I just want to get back to even for the day, which doesn't always go well.

Just wondering if anyone else is dealing with these kinds of issues, I wouldn't be surprised if many are, but maybe on a different scale. Poker and gambling in general is a dangerous area b/c to be successful you have to fight the urge to go for a big win instantly and whatnot. Part of the problem might also be that I pretty much have no expenses, my rent is cheap, car is paid off, etc. so I can mess around to much and it doesn't matter a whole lot b/c I don't depend on the money. Can anyone offer up some similar stories and advice to combat this feeling?

[gameoverjc]

In process of my biggest downswing. It's tough to be up 8k beginning of month and down 2k by end of it.

Imagine, all the top pros who been playing for years have the very same swings, there is not much you can do. Moving up when you are running bad/playing bad(possibly) is the worst idea ever yet some people continue to implement it into their strategy.

Imagine when you see a guy stuck in a game rebuying constantly, and how you/table preceive him (as a loser on his way to lose more), compared to when you see a guy crush the game and leave after 2 hours. Both are fundamentally wrong, but that is the way the human pysche works for some people; which is also why they won't be big winners in the long run.

If you feel bad, life could be worse:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=1#Post10539980