Money Money Money - You Gotta Respect It!

So, I've been running up against a cold deck for about 2 years now. However, ealier this year I started to come out if it. Thank Goodness.  But there's something that I learned that I think may have been the key to coming out of the black cloud.

You know when you play no limit texas holdem you can be dealing with lots of money. Even at the low limits! One day I played $1-$2 blinds and left with over $1500.  That's a lot of money.  And usually playing at $2-$5 blinds it's common to have $1000 sitting right there on the table in front of you at any given moment. So here's what I learned. You become complacent... complacent to money.  When you have a thousand, two thousand dollars right there in front of you and there's probably ten thousand dollars on the table in play at any given moment, it's pretty easy to get a little "lost".

I learned a few years ago that you have to play without fear. You can't "need" the money or you'll play scared. But now I'm learning that you can't disrespect the money either. There's a fine line to tow here... an almost invisible line between being fearless and respecting that money.  What I have learned this year is to respect the money. And since I've learned that lesson, I've been winning. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Example: A few months ago, I won a tournament in Kinder. I told you about it. My goal was to cash $2000 in that tournament. People were wanting to chop earlier, but I held out and met my goal before I agreed to a chop. What I didn't tell you is the "self-talk" I did during the tournament. In fact, this is probably when I had this little "revelation". I told myself, "You have to respect the money." What that meant is that I can't go around without regard or respect for money because it will all slip through my fingers if I do. "Respect the money." That's what I told myself. And it kept me in line. And I met my goal in that tournament.

Example 2: Since I've been winning it's been easy, right? Wrong. Last night I bought into the $2-$5 game for $400.  Within an hour I had $1200 in front of me.  And then it started to slip away. My stack dwindled down to about $500 and I said to myself, "Respect the money." That paradigm shift enabled me to leave the game last night with $1200.  You see what I realized there is that when you can win or lose A THOUSAND DOLLARS in an hour, you start to get complacent... again. (Of course it also helped that I picked up pocket 5's again and flopped a set again, for the third time in the past two weeks!)

So I have to check myself. Am I becoming complacent? Am I the donkey at the table? Am I making good decisions? What is driving me to make the decisions that I make? That last question requires more insight than I think most players make about themselves.

"A thousand dollars," I said to myself last night, "is more money than some people make in a whole week, and certainly more money that most people make in a day and here I've obtained it in an hour."  One hour! One Thousand Dollars! You know how I know when I'm starting to disrespect the money? When I say it's only a hundred dollars or it's only a thousand dollars... as if that's a drop in the bucket!

Well, I'm no millionaire and a thousand dollars is still a very real and very large amount of money to be passing through my hands in an hour's time. So for me, I have to remember to "respect the money" or it won't respect me.