My life has completely changed in the past few months. Add a girlfriend, new home, new environment, completely different everything pretty much, and you get some novelty-producing emotional swings. And what do we do when we're completely out of our emotional equilibrium?...Well, of course, us smart ones, we try to grind the greatest month of our lives and essentially ensure we dig ourself into mental turmoil.

April was definitely the worst poker month of my short career. Not only did I actually run pretty dam bad, I also gorged in the most insane tilt ever. Playing horribly, thinking worse, and somehow feeling even lower then all of the above combined. Needless to say, it's been quite the experience. In the face of something like that though, you definately get another crystal clear reminder of how "immature" you are pokerwise, and how much there really is to learn not only about poker, but poker life, just another manifestation of the fact that it very well is a "career".

In any case, it really is amazing how much your performance relies on how you're feeling, and how much "run bad" is really bad play, and how much bad play is really feeling down. Trying to maintain your positivity etc while having sessions with students during something like that is really something. I mean if there ever was a test of spirit...that would be one of them. Dropping 40 buyins in a couple weeks is not very fun, but to be expected.

Having started my career reading through 2+2 stickies, maybe my thinking was a bit out-dated. The mentality that, however "possible" losing that much is, it probably won't happen, is actually unrealisitic. Why? because in reality, it's not just mathematical variance that's at play (which is really what we're thinking when we carry the above mentality). Throw in just a smither of emotional disturbance, and the statistically improbable now becomes significantly possible and likely.

We can't forget to blame the good old ego either, when it runs amuck. When you think (even after a couple months of hardly playing and dealing with real life stuff), that you can hop on 12 tables and crush stakes again. Aejones mentioned in one of his videos once, that rangle exploration really needs to be continously practiced. I mean yeah that's obvious...but it really is truer then a simple nodding acknowledgement can convince.

It's funny, but even at the end of april, I would tell myself, as soon as may hits, I'm gonna start owning poker again. As if I couldn't start that day...but I'd still play, and I'd still lose, and I'd still suffer, but, mentally, for some reason, my redemption had to wait until some arbitrary date...go figure...Well may 1st has come and passed, and it's funny, cause my graph spikes down for a bit, as soon as may 1st hits, it takes a sharp acute angle in the opposite direction and hasn't faultered all that much since.

A strong reminder that poker isn't sitting down and winning. It's playing a certain number of tables, of a certain sort, at certain times of the day, sitting in certain seats...until most importantly, we are feeling a certain way. "A" game, highly touted but probably hardly practiced, is so super important, I don't even know where to begin.

We can stretch this all the way to something so often mentioned by the people at the top, and hardly practiced by those at the bottom, that studying is so important, that it is the school, and our sessions just the exam (Phil Galfond article). A coach from another site, a man who is a Harvard Law School graduate, a top litigator in the U.S. and at an "older" age, left his job to pursue poker full time, said, that the thing that separates him the most from most other high stakes players, is that he has logged more hours off the tables then on. This should be so obvious as to be standard, but it's not, and I've been guilty of not doing it for quite a few months now. But last month has definately changed that. I'm back studying whenever the conditions for play mentioned above aren't met. It's meant a lot less hands, but also a lot more profits, higher hourly rates, and definately a ton more enjoyment. Not playing when "A" isn't possible and actually using that time to study, it can mean so much more in the short term and long term it's not even funny.

I think, reminding ourselves it's a climb, and it will always be, that staying stagnant is not a choice, that this is a sport that continuously gets tougher, that our competition won't stop improving and changing, that we have to work just to maintain, is almost essential. Add in the prospect of excelling and growing faster then the competition, and this might as well be the olympics (when you're still climbing the stakes).

Anyway, this month has gone amazing, I'm amongst the top winners at my stakes this month on Party, but really most importantly, I'm having fun again and excited to improve and grow. Hit quite the snag, but the goals haven't changed, it's back to being simply a matter of time...and statistical reality. Don't faulter, do what you have to do to keep yourself psychologically in-line, and you'll probably "run bad" a little less and for shorter periods too...after all, we're just glorified robots.