Nick is a cash game player, content creator and part of 888poker’s Stream Team. Each week he shares his thoughts and experiences as a player dedicated to the daily grind. This week, after a trip away, Nick comes back to Earth with a bump…
After a two week hiatus I am back in the saddle for poker and articles! Firstly, a huge thank you to Ian Simpson for taking care of my column while I’ve been away with two very interesting pieces. Make sure to check them out if you haven’t already!
I recently took two weeks off to go on holiday for the first time in nearly three years. Poker had been taking a heavy toll on me with a recent move up to the relatively heady heights of 100NL not being as smooth as I’d have liked, and with a jam-packed Twitch and YouTube schedule to boot. I’d also been on 11 different poker trips this year alone, and while I would never complain about getting to play poker in so many different places, I was definitely due some down-time.
I spent a week and a half in Bali before stopping off in Singapore on the way home. I managed a good mix of pure relaxation alongside plenty of activities, and barely thought about poker the entire time.
Turbulent times
What was not so relaxing was the plane home, which unfortunately coincided with the arrival of a major storm on UK shores. After a mere 14 hours, we were due for our descent but were informed that we would have to circle London until it was safe to land, due to adverse weather conditions. As our flight time pushed into a 16th hour, we were finally allowed to make our approach, and to call it turbulent would be an understatement.
In what is almost a perfect analogy for my 2024 poker graph, we bumped and bobbled our way down to the ground in a decidedly uncomfortable manner. Convinced that death was a near certainty, I started to rue that I’d never get the chance to turn around my fortunes on the tables. For the first time in a while, I was actually excited to play and find some sort of form again, but as our jumbo jet swerved and swayed onto the runway, all that seemed futile.
Miraculously (I realise I’m being somewhat dramatic), we began to stabilise and slowed down to a smattering of applause from those passengers who weren’t still reflecting on their near-death experience. It’s safe to say that if your plane lands to the sound of clapping, you’ve probably had a rough ride of it. It was a truly abrupt and horrendous way to bring the holiday to a grinding halt, but at least I was alive.
A new mentality
My improbable survival means that it is indeed back to the grind, but I will certainly be approaching it with somewhat of a new mentality, as far as I can manage it. As I said a few weeks ago, I wanted to use this trip as a line in the sand for my recent results and have a fresh start. When you’re getting beat up every time you sit down at the table, even the odd winning session can feel like a pointless dent in the arrears. Now that I’ve managed somewhat of a pseudo-reset, maybe that feeling will subside.
The only way to find out is to get back in the action and play some poker, and that’s exactly what I’ve done this week. I’m not sure what an immediate rollocking would have done for my self-esteem, but thankfully I don’t need to worry about that as I settled back into a solid 4 buy-in winning session. I made an uncharacteristic amount of sets and straights along the way, and while I certainly won’t be getting used to it, it definitely felt great.
The important thing is that when the inevitable tough sessions come around, I manage my attitude towards them a lot better than I was pre-holiday. I’m hoping that the time spent away will help me to do exactly that, and I’ll be sure to update you on my mentality over the coming weeks.
For now, despite dealing with a fair amount of jetlag, I’m feeling good and ready to tackle the game head on. I’m sincerely hoping that sentiment continues, but if my period of relaxation is unable to stave off my tilt indefinitely and I start to take some familiar hammerings, maybe I can try telling myself something else:
At least I’m not on that bloody plane.
