TAKE RESPONSIBILITIES FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS:

I'm not sure where I should start this entry. At the moment I am extremely disappointed at myself. I'm going to be flat out honest and say yes I played some blackjack today and the results are very bad, as expected. I am so disappointed at myself I do not know where to begin....

I started off having a pretty bad day at the 2-4 tables. Losing 6 buy ins in about 1k hands. I did not play my A game and I did not run particularly well. I'm not here to bitch about how I didn't not hit a hand while the donks hit just about every other hand. I did not play my A game anyway. I made some bad decisions and played poorly and my results have shown. I'm not sure why I was totally steaming at that point and did not walk away from the computer or other stuff like I said I would do. I was down 2.4k and I thought, hey why don't I go play some blackjack, bet 500 a hand and tryta win back 1k. sounds easy right? well sometimes you may do it, but like me today, I couldn't and that was the start of the disaster....

instead of winning 1k and leaving, i quickly lost my initial 1k buy in surrendering 16 twice to face cards and lost 1 hand. boohoo right? my gambling addicted brain decides to play some more and try to win back the 1k I just lost and I said ok fine I'll just take -6 buy ins but at least give me my 1k back. Before I knew, I was down 16k!!!!!!! from betting 500 a hand. It was the max. I assure you that if it wasn't the max, I would've increased it to whatever the max was. That's what kind of gambling mode my brain was in. Once in a long while my brain would go on this mega tilt and its really so hard to stop myself. I had that feeling of fuck I'm going to go busto again and it felt SOOO terrible. Its like one of those end of the world feeling and obviously at the point I have surpassed the threshold of misery....

I was this close to having a mental breakdown and go crazy and cry out loud but what am I going to be pissed about? what am I going to cry about? that I've lost money? NO! but the fact that I've again made this same mistake while I was so sure before that I would not do this ever again. I somehow made it back to be just down 6.5k from blackjack. Quiet a comeback yeah, but still extremely damaging to my bankroll. But I must say it could've been a lot worse. I, at one point, pondered if I should sit at a 50-100 game and try to win 1 buy in so I can get even, but my state of mind right then would certainly lead me to be down ANOTHER 10k if not more. Last hand of blackjack I doubled 11 against a dealer's face and said to myself if i lose this hand i'm going to stop, i hit 19 but dealer draws to 20....for 1k. so i lost, and i really really really wanted to win that money back and said ok fine 1 more hand. but at the point, I forced myself to stop and said to myself "you are lucky to win some back, leave now!"

so I stopped, but i lost 9k today. extremely extremely damaging to my bankroll. not to the busto scale, but 9k is a huge chunk of money to just blow away. needless to say I'm beyond pissed right now and frustrated, but I really have no one to blame but myself. I feel very ashamed to post this on a public blog but I do think that I need to be honest to myself and I guess shame myself as a punishment. I talked to Brendan K and offered my 1k I promised I would give him, but he turned it down being the nice guy he is. I was debating whether to be honest and tell him about it and ship him the 1k or not, but at the end I knew I need to be honest to myself and improve. I would've insta shipped the 1k to him if he insisted. I guess right now I'm going to value money much more than I did before. I think quickly winning so much money led me to de value money as a whole. It is said that if poker players treat money like money they cannot do well and they need to treat it as chips. Very true statement but I think you still need to have a certain value for money or else you start to spew like me....

Brendan K suggested a hard stop loss rule for the day and I think that's something I will start to implement. Before I always thought yeah whatever I'll decide if I am playing well or not at that moment but I think for now, I need to have a stop loss. The stop loss will be set at 5 buy ins which is 2k. No matter how many hands I've played, no many how I lost the 2k, and no matter if I'm playing the best poker of my life and the tables is full of the biggest fishes alive, I'm going to stop. Its a principle, a rule, and one that I will follow religiously from now on until I can become much more stable about accepting losses.

so today i'm writing this entry as an honest reflection of myself and also to apologize to everyone who has looked up to my poker game. I made a mistake and I know as an instructor, my actions will be followed by many. I assure you guys that this is one action that you do not want to follow. Learn from my mistake. I'm only human so I make mistakes sometimes but I'm not afraid to admit it. If for any reasons you feel like I'm no longer the instructor you guys are looking for, feel free to tell me that and I will refund your prepaid money (if you have any) immediately no questions asked. I just think that being a teacher/instructor, I cannot be showing bad examples and I did, and I sincerely apologize

don't worry about the 9k I lost, I can swallow it. but if you read this, please either give your harshest criticism or some nice words for encouragement. and maybe a viable punishment for my stupid brain