The fractal nature of impatience

Impatience is the enemy of good poker. There are many ways to be impatient, and none of them bode well. Impatience has a fractal nature; when you're impatient, you tend to be so on a large scale, on a small scale, and everywhere in between. Last night, I was not actually impatient in my play, but I was impatient in my table selection, which was just as bad. I ignored my recently stated goal of avoiding $50,000 BI+EF MTT NLHEs. I didn't willfully ignore it, I just plain forgot about it. I wanted to join MTT NLHEs which were nearing the end of their late registration periods, so I dipped into the $50,000 region without thinking twice. That was my first table selection mistake. The second one was to join one of them too late in the registration period to have a realistic chance of making the money. Tonight, I'm promising myself that I won't play a single $50,000 MTT NLHE :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000  6000       9    17     133   27    62        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    21     411   96   169        0
MTT   NLHE    43500  6500       9     3      77   18     0        0
MTT   8-Game  45000  5000       6    51      48    9    26        0
MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       9    15     121   36    83        0

delta: $-220,000
MTT NLHE balance: $719,248
balance: $10,352,080