There will always be times in poker where you hit long stretches of bad runs of cards. There is very little that you can do about them, and they will often leave quite a large dent in your bankroll. You can play the best poker in the world, but if the cards are out to get you then there is no way to stop yourself from losing money. Over time, the aim soon shifts from trying to earn your money back, to trying and reduce the damage that the cards are causing to your ‘roll. In these sorts of circumstances, a short break away from the game is the best plan of action.
With so many bad runs and numerous bad beats, it is difficult to not let it affect your game. When you find yourself on the losing end of a horrific bad beat, it is not uncommon to go on tilt and try and win back the money that you had almost unfairly lost. Players will adopt the mentality that “If they can win with rubbish, then so can I”, as they enter more pots than they should with sub-standard hands. As you can guess, the majority of the time this does not work out too well, and they will end up losing more money than if they had continued to play normally.
Most players, including myself, will get up from the table to take a short break and cool off after taking a sickening bad beat. In this period I like to simply remind myself that I got all my chips in with the best hand, and that is the best I can do. The question is, how do you know when to take a longer break from the game, rather than a quick 10 minutes to cool off?
In a typical bad beat situation you will have probably lost your whole stack or the majority of it, which is more than we would like to lose. In a typical bad run of cards, you will lose anything from 3 buy-ins or more (my personal best, or worst, being 7 buy-in losses altogether). As you can imagine the bigger losses will have a bigger impact on your mentality, and thus your ability to play well will be affected greatly. A bad beat will usually linger in your mind for a few minutes or hours, whereas a bad stretch will be hanging over your head constantly, reminding you of your losses. When you feel that heavy burden hanging over your head, then its certainly time to take a week off to get things on track.
In this week off you will want to put poker at the back of your mind, so that when you come back your losses will almost all be forgotten about. Think like you are starting off afresh, and you will find that you will be back to making the optimum decisions each time, and that you are chasing draws far less often than you used to. It’s not always easy to make yourself take a break, but time is the best cure for a bad run so take advantage of a week off from time to time. Its better to take time off and win nothing, rather than keep on playing and lose everything.
