In my last session, a recently "banned from my work casino" player seemingly got it into his weirdo mind that I was his enemy on the table. I actually had never had any issues with the guy when I had dealt to him in the past. Although when he finally had his incident where he got himself banned, I had just relieved the dealer that was present during the cartoonishly hilarious situation, so maybe he associates me with the aftermath of his atrocious decision making.

I had played with him (briefly) earlier in the week, and both times I certainly saw a different side of him than when I had dealt to him, but nothing like this... Apart from the absurdly consistent bad runouts I was experiencing, if he had the opportunity to gamble with me he never backed down. Just between he and I we were all-in with; JJ vs Q9, 77 vs Q8, TT vs 33 vs KQ, all pre-flop... plus ATo vs A3ss (chasing a flush), and a few other flop all-in's that I'm missing the explicit details with my recoleccion (it was a 17 hour session in a 29 hour day). All of those went to him (or the third party), and whenever I'd get run down otherwise, he'd be celebrating my opponent for their good work.

Last week during a shorter handed overnight game there was another player threatening to beat me up outside. His threats were veiled as him being a bit drunk and probably just him joking around, and even if he was entirely serious it didn't concern me since there's no probable opportunity for someone to fight with me. He was a very spewey player, and he had chips left to spew so I was just being unresponsive to his attempts to generate an emotional reaction from me.

I don't ever want to discourage these kinds of morons from spraying money in my direction, though I'd like to be able to identify what I am doing well, what I'm doing wrong(?), and what I should or shouldn't be doing that's likely to have an impact on the other people in/observing the game.

I've always been conscious about having a positive image when playing poker. Obviously you're going to run into people who you're not going to want to be friends with, as well as people who are simply unpleasant to share an environment with. Beyond wanting to have people generally prefer to have me around, I believe that my working in the industry in this city brings a pretty significant responsibility to how I conduct myself to other players whom I might initially have a more competitive response.

Disc-ipline!

I have no significant plans of ditching holding down a job to just grind playing all the time, but I have dispensed the frame of mind of "my bankroll can be smaller because I have a job." Now this monkey isn't going to be over committing my roll no matter how much of an edge I've got on a table. I will always be able to play.

It's been a week or so since adjusting my perspective and initial strategy. It's been pretty straightforward so far. No straddles, no speculative hands.

I was super frustrated the other day after a bad run-out set me back a few buys after several hours of very solid play, though today I'm already in my second session and I ran up ten buy ins in one hot-hour and I'm riding the happy wave!

Ravenous

I've been repeatedly redlined over the last six weeks every time I've set chips on the felts. Yesterday was exceptionally frustrating as I hadn't played in close to three weeks, I can't even remember the last time I took that long a break... But that doesn't matter. Math is the language of nature, and nature doesn't give the slightest shred of a fuck about your story. I'm not playing the short game, I'm committed to the long one.

In reflection, I regret nothing. I will not look for further validation, and I will not look for someone to hear another sad story so that I may feel better. I have never been a better poker player than I am currently, and my competitive drive is as hungry as it's ever been. I will make sacrifices away from the game, so that I can later enjoy the rewards that come with commitment to discipline.