Ah man, gravity sucks, it’s constantly pulling me down. I yearn to fly free, but this oppressive weight never seems to let up and it’s driving me crazy. Does anyone have any advice on coping with gravity?

Variance just is, man. Being upset over it as productive as being upset over quantum theory, electromagnetism, or the laws of thermodynamics. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

You’re focusing on the wrong thing.

You’re attention is consumed by your perceived ‘bad luck’ when all those scenarios you describe are the best of luck. Someone was willing to get it in with AQ versus your pair of Kings, that’s great luck that someone had a worse hand than you and was willing to go the distance, that’s freakin’ awesome. Every other situation you describe are a poker player’s wet dreams.

Losing when you’re ahead is a bummer, losing a crucial hand when you’re ahead is a bigger bummer, and losing a crucial hand when you’re ahead at a critical juncture in a tournament is the biggest bummer of all. But it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen a lot. Over and freaking over and freaking over… and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

My best advice to you would be to look at all the different kinds of ‘luck’ that are involved in tournament poker and to try to find a more balanced perspective on something that is too complex to quantify in any tangible way.

Learn the definition of variance.

Focus on the aspects of your game you can change rather than waste your time and energy on something that you can’t.

I’m sorry for the beats, bro. I feel your pain, I really do, but only up to a point because I try to set a limit to how deeply I’ll allow myself to be affected emotionally by things I can’t change.

My problem is coping with the mistakes I make in a productive manner, not letting myself become embroiled in a vicious circle of self-loathing and low self-esteem that rears its ugly head every time I make a big blunder. Fortunately I’m willing to make myself my own laughingstock and to move on to analyzing the mistake critically.

And that’s the last piece of advice I’d give you. Do some freaking math.

Being analytical doesn’t allow any room for feeling emotional and for me the change in mindset from emotional angst to math-brain breaks me out of my habituated emotional responses in a profound way. Feeling emotional impairs your capacity to think critically and I’ve found that the opposite is true as well, thinking critically prevents me from feeling emotional. It also allows me to work on my game productively rather than stew in my own evil juices.

I didn’t mean to come across as presumptive or condescending and I certainly apologize if I’ve given offense. It’s important to keep things in perspective though. Losing when you’re ahead is heartbreaking at times, but there’s no magic formula for coping with it, it just needs to be accepted.

I’d suggest that if a person can’t deal with losing in a game that is mostly about losing, as is tournament poker, then they may want to look at other aspects of their life to find the emotional balance they need to continue.

There’s no point in talking about variance if one’s lifestyle choices are causing unhappiness. If that’s what we’re really talking about here then there are lots of things that one can do to change one’s lifestyle but bemoaning misfortune is not one of them.

Nothing I said was mean-spirited, spirited perhaps, because I feel strongly about these things, but in no way malicious. That is seriously the best advice I can give and how I personally approach the game.

Poker is brutal. There’s no way around suffering misfortune, mistakes, and disappointment. Sure, there are moments of elation, but for every such moment there are many more of anger, woe, frustration and misery. It’s the nature of the beast.

I love its brutality. I love how it challenges me emotionally and intellectually. I love stepping into the ring and testing my mettle against the katana wielding sharks, the drooling troglodytes, the merdonks, and the sicko mofos who make my life hell.

As much as I love and hate the game, poker is ultimately just a small, dumb thing when compared to the things in life that truly matter. That’s the most important thing to keep in mind. There are lots of ways to invest time and energy that are much more fulfilling than poker and no reason to play if it’s just making you deeply miserable.

I maintain though that you are choosing to be miserable about something you can’t change and strongly urge you to reconsider, broadly speaking, the way you think about luck and the role of variance in the game.

I wrote the above in response to the poster questioning my assumptions and wouldn't have bothered had I seen your reply before posting it, Club.

I'm still reeling from a mistake I made last night.  I busted out in 9th place in a $5 3K guaranteed tournament at Carbon when I could've folded, had 20bbs left behind and a shot at winning.  I had all the information I needed to make the right play, I just didn't give it enough thought and frickin' tooled-out.  Still grumpy with myself, but I'm going to try and run it through the ICMizer to see how bad it was.  Going over my mistakes in detail is how I do my penance.  I force myself to understand my error in an attempt to come to terms with it and surprisingly enough it usally works pretty well.

Anyway, you seem like a good guy and I hope you work your way through this.  If there's anything I can do to help feel free to contact me.

That's very considerate of you derSchwartz, I appreciate the apology, but the tone of my post does sound a bit flippant and I didn't think your objection was entirely out of line.  I was going more for mildy amusing in semi-serious way, but I do kind of sound like a ****, so I can't hold it against you.  In any case, no hard feelings from my little corner of the world.