Still Losing...

Ok my head is definitely not in the right place now for playing cash games. Each bad beat tilts me way more than it should and I’m paying off people left, right and centre. About five hands into this session I doubled up when a regular bluffed his stack off with King high into my full house and the omens were good. However literally one minute later I had another reg call a 4-bet OOP with JK and outflop my TT (I don’t know why but when someone makes an obviously bad play and wins it tilts me like crazy) and then two hands later the same reg wins with a straight flush draw against my set all-in on the flop. About 10 minutes after this a fish rivers his gutshot to win a 200bb pot with AQ v my AA on JT66K (150bb were in by the turn) and I’m officially on tilt.

I’m now about 2 hours into this session and I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I’m not playing well but I can’t see how I can leave when on every table I see a massive 45+ VPIP fish. I feel like I need a break from cash games but I definitely don’t want to be playing tournaments either (nor learning PLO or anything like that). I know that cash games are by far the most profitable form of poker for me and that I therefore need to be playing them.

I think I’m going to renege on my challenge again, despite having set it for myself only a few hours ago. I entered it with good intentions but as soon as I started playing I realised that it wasn’t going to change a thing. It wasn’t going to make me play better or concentrate more or anything like that. And when you think about it, it’s actually pretty obvious why that is so. You don’t get an athlete to run faster by telling him to aim to run faster. You make him train and exercise and eat the right foods and whatnot. Similarly I can’t get myself to make $X merely by setting a goal of making $X. It just doesn’t make sense.

Unfortunately in poker the equivalent of an athlete’s training is simply playing more hands, which of course is the very thing that I am having trouble doing right now. I guess you can also study up on training videos and books and read poker forums or something but I’m not really in the mood for those either right now. I guess I’ll just have to find a way to get through this little period somehow.