The imp of the perverse

I first used this blog post title on April 1, 2011. Here's an excerpt of what I had to say:

Wednesday night, I lost a ton of chips. $80K worth, to be precise. The maximum starting stake at two consecutive tables. Both hands that I rode to the felt, I had no business going all in on. What's more, I knew as I was going all in that I had no business doing it -- both times. Edgar Allan Poe called such behavior "the imp of the perverse".

Doing something you know you have no business doing is the quintessence of the imp. Last night, the imp struck again. After narrowly missing the money in the first tournament I entered, I jumped right into another tournament, one with a much bigger buy in. I should just have cut my losses and called it a night, but couldn't summon the will.

style flavor buy_in entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6     221   60    68        0
MTT   NLHE   174000 26000       6     151   42    66        0

delta: $-250,000
MTT NLHE balance: $8,975,668
2020 balance: $1,953,343
balance: $63,761,353