If at First You Don't Succeed …

Everything was going so well …

Your New Year's resolutions were well thought out, and for three weeks you diligently put them into practice. You stopped playing marginal hands out of position, you stopped defending so many blinds, and you worked hard to improve your hand-reading skills by bearing down and paying attention to pots in which you weren't involved. After a few sessions, you began to marvel at how well you could read cards and players when your own finances and emotions weren't at risk, and before long you were able to bring the same dispassionate approach to pots in which your chips were in play.

In eight visits to the cardroom, you were unbeaten with seven wins – and the trip that didn't show up in the box score was noteworthy, too, for that was the night you executed an act of control you'd never managed before. After an hour's drive to the casino, you arrived to find not a single game to your liking, and eager as you were to extend your string of wins, when your name was called to a game with no upside, you passed and went to dinner. After a pleasant meal, you returned to the cardroom to find nothing had changed – at which point you hit the door and headed for home.

You spent the ride reflecting on your newfound approach, and wisely decided that your accomplishments shouldn't be undervalued because of the modesty of your recent wins. So what if your 50 hours of new, improved $10-$20 hold'em had netted "only" $600? It wasn't a big bet an hour, but very little in these sessions had gone your way. Your good cards were few and far between, you hit very few flops, and you took more than your share of key situational beats. The important thing was that through it all, you maintained your equilibrium and managed to grind out a profit from sessions that a month ago almost certainly would have produced a net loss. Boy oh boy, just wait until the ice melts and the deck heats you up – what a year you're going to have with your new, improved game!

Yup, life's good.

And now here you are, a mere two days later, 36 hours into your longest session in years, and you're stuck $1,600 for the day(s). You're glued to your chair without a clue as to what hit you, and all you can think of is the injustice of a world in which one monstrously unlucky session cancels out seven disciplined, hard-fought wins. Did I say "cancels out"? Heck, you're a dime in the hole, pal! Your 7-1 record may still lead the division, but who gives a fig when it's recorded in red ink? The question now is: What on earth happened?

Well, one thing that happened is that you fudged on your most important resolution. Whereas you'd originally resolved to play your best game even when (especially when!) the going got tough, in the despair of your current session, that pledge somehow got amended to: I'll play tough even if things don't go my way, unless of course I've already been doing that for seven long sessions – in which case all bets are off because, gee whiz, shouldn't things have turned around for me by now? Unfortunately, that revised version turned out to be not nearly as cost-effective as the original.

Another thing that happened is that you got incredibly unlucky. Oh, I'll grant you that – you got hit by a truck, especially in the hand that started your downward spin. That was downright supernatural. There you were in the big blind with 10-9 in a raised pot that featured nine callers from the table, six from the parking lot, a French poodle that wandered over from baccarat, and the Jamaican bobsled team – and a flop of 10-10-9. If that wasn't sweet enough, things got even more magically delicious when a maniac bet out, you raised, and the French poodle got married to J-7. An inside-straight draw against your made full house – how sweet can life be? Unfortunately, not sweet enough, because the turn and river came runner-runner jacks, and the poodle was stacking the chips. Talk about gut shots – to the body! While you staggered to your corner and the referee gave you a standing eight count, the next two hands featured set over set, with you on the wrong end of both. Ouch! That shouldn't happen to a dog, except maybe poodles that suck out on my friends.

I still had faith, though, at this point, that you could hang tough. After all, it's 2002, and this is the new, improved you, right? The alarms went off big-time, however, when I walked in the cardroom the next morning to find you bleary-eyed, in the same clothes, and blurting out in anguish: "Ooh – listen to this! With J-8 on the button, I flop top two, only to get rivered by a three-outer! And then, on the next hand, I've got 5-3 and flop a wheel, and get murdered with a runner-runner flush … "

Wait a minute, timeout, hold everything! J-8?

"Well, if I can't win with good cards … "

Stop! Don't even say it! And what's with the 5-3?

"But it was suited … "

Oh, my, my, my. This is a sad story – we're less than a month into the new year, and your resolutions are already lying in a ditch. And the troubling thing is, you've been here before, haven't you? Sure you have. You've strung together winning streaks in the past, and then turned manageable losses into catastrophes because you refused to accept the idea of any loss at all. And you've exercised discipline plenty of times before – but when things got supertough and you needed that discipline more than ever, you abandoned it by the side of the road. Oh, you've done it all: gotten glued to your chair, wallowed in pain, and obliterated the good work of several sessions in a single emotional night – all the things you're doing right now, you've done time and time again. And you know what? It's OK. Seriously – it's OK.

Well, I mean, it's not OK in the sense that you can keep doing it. You can't. The proverbial definition of futility (or is it insanity?) is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And it's a different result we're after. But it's OK in the sense that it's in the past, and the fact that you once again broke your resolutions, reverted to bad habits, and tilted off three racks doesn't have to define you. It doesn't sentence you to a lifetime of the same. You can stop this nonsense once and for all – now, here, today. So what if it's the fourth of February, or the sixth, or the ninth? Do you really think everybody exorcises their demons on Jan. 1? Baloney. People don't shake their bad habits by the calendar; they shake them when they're sick to death of them, and have finally had enough.

So, give yourself a break and take a mulligan on this one. You're not a lost cause, you're just someone who needed to learn a particular lesson a bunch of times before it finally sank in. Now it has. If you call for a tow now, you can still get those resolutions hauled out of the ditch. They made good sense on Jan. 1, and they make good sense today. Put them into play again, and 11 months from now you'll be spending New Year's Day counting your dough, instead of picking up the pieces from a year's worth of broken resolve.