Take it for what it's worth

I'm sure there's probably a million posts or possibly even a couple articles written on the matter, but I think I'm gonna put my two cents in anyway (I have that right ).

It's extremely important to be in a sound state of mind if you're trying to be serious about the game of poker. Right now, where I'm from, it is 3:30 in the morning. As you may imagine, I'm getting pretty tired. I signed up for a late freeroll though, and I wanted to stick it out for a while and see how I did.

The first part of the tourney was pretty uninteresting. Got a lot of hands with Qx, so I immediately mucked them and went back to surfing the web in between hands. Finally, I caught a pocket pair - a pair of 8's. The blinds went around, someone raised it up a small amount (2 or 3x bb). Pretty loose table, so I decided to re-raise and see how it played out. Couple people folded, and then some donkey went all-in. Couple more people called (I think there were 4 people involved in the all-in, maybe 5). I flip over my eights, a couple people have overcards, and one person has pocket tens. Crap. And btw, the donk had Q-3 off.

Flop comes out 8-9-J...I pick up trips, someone else picks up a straight draw. Eh. Pick up another pair on the river and I win with a full house. Good right? You betcha - a risky play but it was early in the tourney and I was trying to raise my chips early - if I got knocked at, at least I could hit the hay.

Now, I don't even remember what the hand was that I lost it all in, but it happened shortly after almost quadrupling my chip count. I got tired, made some mistakes, played very poorly, and lost everything. Guess what I'm driving at is it became very apparent to me that it is necessary to be in the right state of mind when you play. If you are tired, on tilt, or maybe even drunk (I know, I know), you're most likely not going to bring your "A" game to the table.

Like I said before, I'm sure this is repeated a million times in other forms and threads around the site, but I learned my lesson firsthand. Hopefully some others might be able to learn from this as well.