So last night was one of those nights where no matter what I seemed to do, I kept making bad decisions. You know the ones...the ones where you hit the call button and the second you do you call yourself an idiot. Not a results based reaction, just the realization that you completely misinterpretted his betting pattern and you know you are beat before the cards turn. Just plain playing bad poker.

From time to time I will have a night like this and I'm just curious what others do to keep this from happening. My reaction the last few times has to been to just walk away. It sucks because I am stewing all night long, but it has definately saved me some cash. Any tricks for tighening the game up while sitting there? Are we all human and sometimes we are just off?

What steps do people take when they are ready to come back to the table to refocus?

Think about what's really important in your life. If your answer is "poker", get a life. If it's not, immerse yourself in the real things: family, friends, booze (jk), movies, books, whatever. Then when you realize your priorities, it's time to play some more.

Yup, been there, done that, Yahkin.

I find it happens for me more often when I'm just overly excited to sit down and play, and not taking enough time to carefully think about the correct mind set before playing. This then tends to lead to looser starting hands, chasing too many draws, and genrally just making bad decisions on a big river over-bet when you know you were just outdrawn with a board that screams an opponent made their draw.

I have recently taken the time to clear my mind before I start. I like to review hands from my previous session. Did I make good decisions? Why? Should I have been in that hand to begin with? I review both winning and losing hands, but tend to focus on the losses and really attempt to tear apart my decision making.

Something else to consider....... tilt. Most of us are probably not overly honest with ourselves with our "frame of mind" from time to time. Reviewing hands can help identify moments we are on tilt when we may not have realized we were. It's tough to accept we are beat sometimes, it's even tougher to admit it when a few hands earlier we suffered a big loss and try to reason that there's no way the same guy (or someone else) has just outdrawn our big hand again.

So, imo, a cool, clear mind, is definitely effective.

YES.

Just think the three P's.

pot gives you the patience to play position.

Do anything that calms down that excited energy to just get playing and lets you focus more. Sometimes I have a sandwich and a glass of milk and it settles me in so to speak. Sounds silly, but it really does.