Stop loss

When your goal is to consistently earn steady, unspectacular amounts over time, the worst thing you can do is to refuse to take your lumps. By this I mean, to refuse to accept that sometimes, it just isn't your night. You must be willing and able to stop playing when you've been "felted" (to use a Phil Laak coinage). I have a stop loss strategy I now adhere to, though I admit it took me a while to come up with it and to realize its utility. I now stop playing for the night whenever my chip count hits zero. Many players on pokerstars immediately replenish their stacks when they get busted, but I think that's an emotional response which should be avoided.

Employing this strategy, there's a maximum amount you can lose in a poker session, but no maximum amount you can win. That's a beautiful thing, when you look at it the right way. Tonight, I didn't win a single showdown. I was being pretty patient, so I saw a fair number of hands. My last hand of the night, I was dealt a pair of kings, and thought my patience had been rewarded. I felt confident enough to be the final reraiser pre-flop. After the flop, which was rainbow undercards, I felt confident enough to reraise until I was all in. I ran into a pair of aces, my main pre-flop competition, and was out. I was sure that only a pair of aces could beat me, and was pretty sure that no one had it.

Here's the thing -- you can't really beat yourself up in that kind of situation. You just tip your hat to the poker gods, intone "I am not worthy" a la Wayne and Garth, and hope for better poker karma in the future. Let's face it -- poker is largely played on the basis of educated hunches, and the most educated hunch in the world can still be wrong. If you're going to wail and moan when the unexpected and unlikely happens, you just shouldn't be playing.

For those keeping score at home, my net pokerstars worth after tonight's $2000 loss is $243,304.