Last night I realized something. Usually when I have a bad session, it’s related to going on tilt for a bit. I know I shouldn’t do it and I always try to prevent it, but sometimes I just don’t see it coming until after I’ve lost everything I sat down at the table with. Afterwards it’s easy to look back and say, “Nick, you dumbass! Don’t let it get to you when someone hits their hand on the river.”

Most people see getting beat by the odds as a bad beat, but as I read more of SSH, I realize they aren’t bad beats at all. Most of the time it’s my bad play on the flop or turn that gives someone the correct odds to draw to their hand. I should be taking advantage of the same situations when other players make these mistakes. Coming to the reality that the poker gods are not against you is a big step in overcoming tilt. It’s definitely a hole in my game that I’m trying to work on. SSH is changing the way I think about poker.

After cooling off from the losing session, I sat down at another table and played some good solid poker for an hour and a half, winning back most of what I had lost. I love Party Poker. You will too, so sign up now! For some reason I thought Party‘s tables would be looser pre-flop. So far playing .50/1, the tables have averaged about 40-45% of players seeing the flop. I expected the numbers to be in the 60s or higher. They’re plently loose after the flop though.

As I use Poker Tracker more I’m finding out how powerful it really is. After loading the beta version last night I was able to configure the software to load hand histories on the fly while I was playing. I then was able to open a mock poker table window, which imported stats on everyone I was playing against. In real time I was able to tell how often a player saw the flop, how often they raised pre-flop, and about 8 other stats. The $55 it costs to register the software is worth it’s weight in gold!