One of the good guys I know on 2+2, Sparky (
he did the dog guest blog post and
writes for LifeFish), was saying how frustrated he was getting with poker. Apparently he is now down over 100buy-ins under EV lifetime. So for the non-poker players out there, that means that if he's played mostly NL400, he's made $40,000 less than he should have. That's a pretty huge number - probably around the 40th percentile of the ANNUAL household income in the US. So although I think of poker primarily as a game of skill, there's definitely some luck involved.
Part of playing poker for a living is dealing with those stretches where things just don't seem to go right. So here are my tips to deal with run-bad:
1) Vent. Preferably, this shouldn't involve anything expensive - like punching your 30" monitor. But whatever you need to do - punching bag, talking to friends, starting a thread on 2+2 where you'll get berated by the community, popping in that VHS of some fine equine luvin' ... whatever it takes. It's okay to be angry, frustrated, depressed, horny (eh hem),... whatever. It's like when you have to let one rip. If enough pressure builds up and you try and hold it in too long, your head will explode. It's true - New England Journal of Medicine, Issue 350.

2) Take some time off. Pro poker players have a higher threshhold than most for dealing with agonizing beats. But sometimes, you'll reach a point where the day-after-day of pummeling will wear on the best of us. Isn't it sweet that we're in a profession where you can take as much time off as you need? Nothing wrong with clearing your head and taking some time off to enjoy an activity that won't cause your blood pressure to go thru the roof.
3) Reasess. Now that you've cleared your head, here's the thing you probably didn't want to hear... You need to carefully examine whether *everything* was run-bad. (later post)