Something all poker players know but that rarely gets spoken about is how different sessions feel during and after them. A poker player will know how another poker player feels yet show the same graph to an “outsider” and you will see wildly different responses. The most obvious example is when you have a session where you are winning, winning, winning and then right at the end — when you are closing down tables — you drop 80% of your winnings and are up only a small amount. It feels horrible but show it to anyone else and they’ll look at the $ figure and be like “wow, you won $180, that’s awesome!” insta-tilt.

The same thing can be said for tournaments when you min-cash or worse yet (though ironically better monetarily) bubble the final table. You win money but feel like crap. I’m not going to be talking about those situations (at least not in this post — I have mental plans to make an entry The Anatomy of a Bad Session of PLO one of these days — probably after I have such a day). In this post I am talking about the anatomy of a good session of PLO. This is by no means the only type of winning session and each session has it’s own individual anatomy (for example: the infamous “down a lot the entire session only to win a tiny amount right at the very end” that feels AMAZING [perhaps even better than this session where I won big], but I digress).  Here are two graphs; the first is the session straight up and the second has the graph segmented into color-coded parts with my commentary below on what goes through a poker player’s mind during each section.

Red

- “Oh fml, it’s going to be one of those days again.”

Blue

Well at least I’m playing good and my AIEV line is going in the right direction.. just gotta keep grinding away and it’ll turn around.”

Yellow

“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD”

Orange

*regains composure”
- “Okay looks like the pots are sliding my way now.. but.. why is my AIEV going down so much?? I must be playing bad.. I should stop.. but.. I is winning.. *shrugs and continues playing*”

Brown

*YAWN*

Pink

OK, now I am definitely playing bad, I’m losing, and I should stop playing. Just one more minute..

Green

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

Yellow

Oh crap I lost a pot QUIT SESSION NOW TO END ON HIGH NOTE *close tables frantically*

Post-Session Feelings