Break over

Well, that time off from poker felt good. I hadn't played in four days, which isn't that long, but it was enough time for me to get my head on straight and feel refreshed when I came back to the tables tonight, where I won nearly two buy-ins.

I thought a lot about what went wrong in the last few weeks. The primary problem was that I got bad cards and lost a lot of pots in which I was favored. But there several issues with my game that don't show up in hand histories or PokerTracker stats.

This bad run started with my $22,000 income tax bill, created and paid for almost entirely from my bankroll. Then I started pressing way too hard as I put in long sessions and woke up early in the morning to put in more hours. During that time, I was still winning, but all that play wore on me.

From there, I ran into Perfect Donkey and then suffered a ton of beats. I started every session with a good attitude, but it was never long before I was yelling at the computer screen over some horrible suckout.

Everyone has a breaking point, and I reached mine last Sunday, when I played heads-up games and called $500 turn bets with nothing but a flush draw and river all-ins with dominated top pair hands like QT. It was ugly. If there's any silver lining, it was that I could no longer blame anyone buy myself for the losses.

A few weeks ago, I complained to a photographer friend of mine about the downturn. He doesn't know much about poker, but he loves to hear about it, and I like talking about it.

"What are you learning from these losses?" he asked.

"Nothing," I told him, "Except how to deal with them."

That wasn't the right answer. I should have been learning when to quit.

With any luck, I'll now go on an insanely good run like I did the last time I took a few days off.