I’ve been running pretty terrible lately. Whenever I run bad, one thing I think is…. “Shit, when things were going really well, why didn’t i just say, ‘hold up, thing are going really well right now. why not just consolidate these gains?’” People never do that, they just push and push.

Here’s a major psychological difference b/w running good and running bad….
When you’re running good, you’re generally very in the moment. You’re entirely focused on the present and the future and you take very little time to reflect on your good fortune. This is a good thing to the extent that it makes it more likely that you will continue your run.
When you’re running bad, you’re focused on the past. You’re focused on your mistakes and your bad luck. You tend to look back at your path and note that changes in any number of initial conditions would have led to a more favorable outcome. All of this makes it more likely that you will make further mistakes and worsen your run.

Here’s one trade that blew up recently…
LKTJE.O CALL NETLOGIC MICROSYS $25 EXP 10/20/07 CALL NETLOGIC MICROSYS $25 EXP 10/20/07 -350 $9.701 +0.50 -$339,500.00 -$17,500.00
summary… when you write calls, you don’t want the stock to go up. i wrote a lot of calls and the stock went up huge, and these calls consitute just over half of my NETL position.

Looking at this past year, here’s the summary….
Jan/Feb/Mar. At one point, I lost 8 consec all-ins for more than 40k when I was an 80-20 fav or better when the money went in. Sometimes I’d be like 92-8. I played in very good games during this time and ran v v bad.
Apr. Good poker month.
May. Will go down as the best month in my poker life. Just silly.
June/July. Very good. Some big wins and only one huge loss. Did a bit better than breakeven in tournaments. Had a couple of big scores in the market as well.
Aug15-now. Ran terrible in both markets and poker.

Now in $ I’m right around where I was at the start of the main event.

BA