What the hell am I doing?

Is what I've been asking myself a lot lately. I've been booting up sessions and totally neglecting to actually pay attention to the actual games. No it's not the robot multitabling lack of attention, it's the what the hell am I doing playing this hand like a complete freaking idiot lack of attention. And the bad thing, I've been doing it over and over and over. Let me explain:

I've been sick. Really sick. Really sick to the point that I now look like a zombie, haven't left the house for several days and have been on a steady concoction of tylenol, advil and vodka for god knows how long.

And I think I've coughed up a lung last night.

So because I've been sick and stuck inside the house, I literally had nothing to do but sleep and play poker. And I've logged a ton of hours during this time - a ton of LOSING hours.

Let's go back to March. I had a half decent March other than the drunken tilt I went on (chronicled a few posts below). In fact, on the last day of March I was quite a few thousand away from my target and you know what? No problem - a few hours at the tables come April 1st I was over set goal. Nice. I am good. (Not really)

So, since I think I'm so good at this game, I decide to cashout a sizeable chunk of my roll...I have bills to pay and stripprs to buy. Besides, I'm good at poker.(No, I am not.)

The reason why I had a good March (other than playing lousy 1-2 for most of the month) was because I was "in the zone". It's not like I ran super well - I didn't, I was just in a great mental state pokerwise and I think I can attribute that to playing only about 30K hands the entire month, with the last 10k during the last couple of days. That's pretty much peanuts to any serious multitabler. For comparison, Threeup plays 30k hands in a week.

Now I'm not sure exactly how to maintain being "in the zone" (maybe I should take up meditation or something) but I know how to get out of the zone very quickly (yeah, big surprise).

Burnout - it's worse than tilt, baby. So what's burnout and how do you know you have it? Well, it's a weird state. It's when you hate poker with a passion and don't want to play it but do so anyway. It's when you have 5-6 tables open and can't help but browse some site or watch tv instead of paying attention to the action. It's when all your decisions are automatic, idiotic and without thought. You're not thinking about what you're doing, you're going through the motions and your motivation isn't to play your best possible game but to just "win a few grand and be done for the day."

It's a kind of emotionless and thoughtless state - which is why it differs from tilt. When you're on tilt, you're experiencing some sort of emotion from soemthing (a beat, a bad play on your part, whatever) but on burnout, you're watching numbers change on a screen and not caring.

It's what I've been going through lately. It's from playing lots of hours while I was sick and at the end of last month to meet expectations. I guess the fact that I was on a combination of meds and vodka didn't help either. I can't stand poker right now. In fact, to be honest, I don't enjoy it anymore and I haven't for a long time. The last time I can remember when I actually enjoyed playing was when I was playing strong, very creative opponents Heads up at higher stakes than my norm. It's been "just for the money" for so long now...no wonder I get burned out so quickly after playing only a few extra hours. Gone are the days where I could log 8 hours a day for a week and still want action on monday.

Over the past week, I've busted two of my accounts, and crippled another. It's a really good thing I got this cold or I could actually claim to win money at this game. God forbid.

FCUK Colds
FCUK Burnout
FCUK POker

P.s. Aba is the best NL player in the world right now. Step aside, Ivey. How sick is it that he was playing 400NL last year?