Swings and down abouts

Sheesh, what a downswing.

I made a lot of good, well-reasoned decisions and plays tonight, in about three hours of play. Yet absolutely nothing would go right. I ran horribly bad and now have basically no bankroll. I will have to make a deposit on tomorrow's payday, which is going to hurt very, very badly. I really can't afford it.

I guess I must have been running really good for quite a while, because I had stopped expecting to get drawn out on whenever the money went in. But the last 48 hours have reminded me of that awful, sinking feeling every time a decent pot develops and your money goes in and the turn or river card appears and you know you just know that it will be a flush card or pair the board or make a straight or whatever the hell card it takes to fuck your previously dominant holding right up the arse... and another decent pot will slide across to the guy who made such a crap call and cannot play the fucking game to save his life!

I had this over-aggressive guy nailed on the flop, for instance. I had reraised him preflop with not all that much. The flop gave me top two pair, I raised his medium flop bet all-in, sure as can be that he had nothing. Well, he had nothing, but he called for some mysterious reason (as a 3-1 underdog) and managed to hit a bizarre runner-runner straight. Lucky is as lucky does, I guess. That cost me one of the many $50 pots of the evening.

So, lucky is as lucky does I guess. What really hurts, as many winning poker players will know, is two things:

First, the gnawing dread that ignores the evidence and conviction of your own eyes as to what has happened in a losing session - two losing sessions! - and whispers to you that actually maybe you are not that good after all and are destined to lose forever. Looking back at the records of winning sessions doesn't silence that fear. Only a winning session or three.

Secondly, the more rational fear - or perhaps realisation - that this sort of thing is an inevitable correction of a run of good fortune, which meeeeeeans that your precious hourly rate and all the half-arsed ambitions you have formed around it are just so much smoke.

As for me, I am barely above even for the month of November, I have to make a deposit instead of making withdrawals to buy little christmas presents, and I want to puke.