At first I thought I was just running bad.  My online poker account was getting pretty beaten up.  I was down $550 or so playing $1/$2 blind no limit games and $20-$50 no limit holdem sit-and-gos.  Nothing seemed to be going my way.  It had been a solid four weeks of losses.

So I did what I always recommend to others.  I took a look at my game.  I reached a startling conclusion.  I wasn’t running bad.  I was just playing bad!

All players, including winning players, run bad from time to time.  Sometimes you have great pot odds to make your call but your cards just don’t hit.  Sometimes you correctly raise to knock out your opponents and then someone (mistakenly) calls but manages to hit his miracle draw.

"Running bad” is just poker parlance for having a run of bad luck.  It’s the land of bad beats and bad cards.  There’s nothing you can do but ride it out while minimizing your losses.  And don’t fret too much.  It happens to all poker players from time to time -- even the professionals.

Recognizing the difference between running bad and playing bad is as difficult as it is important.  If you think that you’re just running bad, you’ll be unlikely to change your game.  In fact, for the most part, you shouldn’t.  You should make only the adjustments necessary to compensate for the change in your image that your long string of losses has produced.  But aside from that you should continue to do what you’ve been doing. The cards are at fault, not you.

But if you’re playing bad -- there's something wrong in your game you're overlooking -- you must change what you are doing or you will surely go broke.  Think of it as a leak in your game.  If you don’t fix it, no matter how cleverly you maneuver at the table, you will eventually sink.  Since you are causing your losses by playing badly, it is you who must fix them.

How can you tell the difference?  The results often look the same: Your bankroll is thinner.  You are feeling frustrated at the mounting losses.  And your opponents are sharpening their teeth as they wait to devour you.

No, the bottom line is often the worst place to look.  It often triggers our defense mechanisms -- which prop up our belief that our losses are the result of bad cards instead of bad play.  We must look more carefully at ourselves and how we are playing if we are to ferret out whether we are playing bad or just running bad.

So I took some of my own best advice and really looked at what I was doing.  Here’s what I discovered.

When I was playing live, I was being selective before the

DONT BE THE FISH. PLAY AT POKERROOM

In one hand in a $1/$2 blind, $200 maximum no limit game I held T-T preflop and raised to $10 from late position.  I got two callers: the small blind, who tended to be quite tight, and the player in the fourth seat who was very loose and passive.

The flop was 2c-5s-9s.  The first player paused a good while and then bet $6.  The second player folded.  I thought about the bet, realized that it was an underbet -- since the pot had over $30 in it.  I figured this was just an attempt to snag the pot; perhaps with two overcards.  I raised to $40.  He raised all in by about another $85 or so.  A desperation ploy, I figured, and I called.  He turned over 5-5 for trip 5s.  The Turn and the River were irrelevant and he took down a huge pot and my entire stack.

If you were being charitable you could say that I was appropriately aggressive but just got unlucky.  He could have been making a low-cost attempt to steal the pot with two overcards or a pair and big kicker.  His re-raise might be chalked up to a desperate attempt to scare me off -- that I was pot-committed to call.  Sure, sure.  But I already sized him up for a solid player; so I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss his $80 re-re-raise.  Had I been my typical, thoughtful self I would have recognized that this was either a highly irrational move or the sign that I was beaten.

But even if you charitably say that this incident doesn’t prove that I was off my game, how do you explain the following?

I played five sit-and-gos in a row.  They ranged from $20 to $50.  I didn’t finish in the money in any of them.  Throughout, I was impatient, wild, and inattentive.  On three occasions, though I wasn’t doing too badly, I madly flung my remaining chips into the pot in a desperate attempt to get my opponents to fold, after they had initiated the action.  No thought given to their playing style; no thought given to the numbers of outs I had; no thought given to anything.

I went back to the ring game.  I played a tight/aggressive game at first, sizing up my opponents.  

I didn’t stop to take a breath but immediately entered a $50 sit-n-go.  I played wildly and erratically, trying (though I wouldn’t admit it at the time) to just win a small tourney to regain some of the money I had lost playing in the ring game.  I threw my chips around -- succeeding at first to get others to fold, but then, with my chips all in the pot on a crazy bluff after someone had raised me, failed to bully my solid opponent, who beat me and knocked me out.

I didn’t stop.  I entered another one.  This time a $30 event.  Three tables (the others were all single tables).  I couldn’t stay focused.  I didn’t even bother sizing up the other players as we played, preferring to noodle around on the internet in between hands that I’d fold.  I was tight, to be sure, but totally detached from the game, determined to play only truly excellent hands.  I followed this script, but failed to capitalize on my excellent hands after the flop, not having made any reads on any of my opponents and being too eager to succeed in winning the few hands I played.  Here’s a typical example of that play.

Here’s the interesting thing to notice.  Every one of the hands, taken individually, might be chalked up to just a bad beat or an unlucky break.  AK suited against Queens?  Practically a coin toss.  Nothing to be upset over.  AA44 losing to AA55?  How was I to know I was behind?  Similarly so with all the other hands.  But what they reveal is a pattern -- a pattern of carelessness, recklessness, and thoughtlessness.