[No, this isn’t a plug for Nike.]

My blogging counterpart, Mr. Paulsson, was recently on a downswing of such proportions that he said he felt sick to his stomach every time he played from fear of having yet another losing session. Up until May, I’d only played a fraction of a fraction of the games I was playing in previous months, and for similar reasons.

I too got (actually, I still get) sick to my stomach every time I opened up Pokerstars. I have to struggle with myself to actually buy in to a STT and play. The difference was that I was on a hot streak, and felt that an inevitable downswing was coming to eat up a huge chunk of my bankroll. The thing is that every time I actually register for a game and start playing, the sick feeling goes away and I play fine. Just like riding a bike when you’re a kid; you take a fall, get a slight fear of riding bikes, but eventually you get back on and it’s easy as hell. The difference is that poker is more like riding a bike and falling on your face every 10 metres.

I’ve played hockey for the last 12 years of my life, and ever since I started playing I’ve gotten butterflies every time we pulled up to the arena. Just as with poker, my game would come to me like second nature and I would feel fine as soon as I got on the ice. I think, at least in my case, it’s the passion of the game that makes me so nervous and shaky before I play. Of course with poker, there’s the money factor which adds a whole other level of stress. Even so, whenever I struggle to bring myself to play poker I just think of the butterflies I get before a hockey game, and it makes playing a whole lot easier on me.

On a side note, I’ve finally learned to play multiple tables properly, and it’s added to my winrate considerably. I’m perfectly comfortable with two tables now, and have played with up to four STTs simultaneously. I think I can eventually move up to 8 tables with time. I had originally planned to play a minimum of 50 STTs this month, but I’m sure I can reach a three-digit number at the rate I’m playing.

I’m on an incredible winning streak, and the surprising thing is that I don’t even feel like I’m doing that well until I check the numbers. I multitabled yesterday for an hour or two, and got absolutely hammered in 4 of the 6 games I played. I ran into AA with QQ, AK ‘ran into’ 66, QQ lost to KJ, AK lost to AJ (etc etc). After losing the 4 games on the bubble or to bad beats, I won the remaining two with some bullying and aggressive bubble play. I still felt like I’d done poorly overall, and only after checking my numbers for the day did I realize that I’d had a %70 ROI day. Nothing to gawk at :/

I’m gonna go play a few more STTs today, and probably have a beer on my porch in this gorgeous 16C sunny weather.

Cheers!

-ChuckTs