Swing and a Miss: Busto at Month Two

Hello. Among other things, I recently took a crack at learning poker. I am, to date, a failure at it, but this is consistent with expectations. I'm a young, college-educatedwhite male; that is to say I'm egotistical, insecure, impatient, and inattentive, four of the worst possible traits a poker player can have.

A short account of my first shot at poker, to explain where I am now:

This March, I deposited $200 onto Full Tilt Poker, and turned it into $500 in about a month of casually 6-tabling $0.25NL. I also became an avid poker reader, starting with three of Harrington's Hold 'Em books (two on tournaments, the first one on cash games), and started posting in the 2+2 poker forums.

About a month in, I hit a pretty bad run, and my bankroll sank to $220 over the course of two weeks. I realized that I had to step down to $0.10NL to not risk going busto, so I did, and I continued to run bad for another week, breaking about even over 10k hands at the ultra-micro limits. One fateful friday night I made the severe mistake of going on "tournament tilt" out of frustration, further kicking my ass down to ~$50 in one night.

That's where I am now. About two months in and more or less busto. On the one hand, I'm incredibly embarrassed by my behavior. On the other, I think this is probably the lightest possible way to learn what tilt can do, and what the psychology of even a very small downswing can feel like.

I plan to write a lot more about tilt as this blog progresses because I find it so fascinating. I am by nature a relatively sedate person, but poker is sort of like driving. Everyone who isn't you is a dipshit when you're on tilt, and their idiot plays make you MAD. This, despite the fact that their idiot plays are supposed to make you HELL OF PROFIT. It's not only completely illogical, it's completely ass-backwards.

So now I have $500 on Absolute Poker (a poor choice in retrospect), $150 in rakeback coming from Full Tilt, and a few days to reflect on my game before customer service at Absolute validates my account.