Deviating From the Strategy

Don’t mind me, this is simply a reminder to myself that there’s a damn good reason why I devised a set of poker rules to follow…and when I follow them, I become a profitable poker player.

It seems that every time I stray from my carefully laid strategy I am reminded why I put the rules in place to start with. I think we humans are naturally prone to self-destruct even when we are aware of the consequences for breaking the rules. It’s all too easy to tell yourself, this time it’s different.

I’m in the middle of a 3 day losing stretch at the moment and I’m hoping it doesn’t stretch to four. The disappointing part of this is that 2 of those losing days would have been winning days if I had have adhered to the rule that underpins my entire profit stratgey – leave the table as soon as a profit is made.

I played only 3 hands at one $5 NLHE cash game, starting with an opening stake of $2 (as is my norm) and had just taken down a pot to take my stake at the table to $2.88. A handy little micro-table profit that I should have stashed away into my bankroll. My mistake – I allowed myself to be dealt into the next hand which happened to be J J. Well, I’m not folding those and naturally, by the time the hand was over, I was behind and chasing that profit for the session.

Within half an hour I had whittled my way down to broke and was more annoyed with myself than I was with the god-awful calls that were being made by fish who kept hitting on the river.

Lesson to self: When you have devised a winning strategy, stay with it to the letter. It’s called a “winning” strategy because it bloody WINS.