Thats better!

Had a long hard think after last night's performance. Spoke to a few friends who play much higher stakes (nl1000 & nl2000) and asked what they do during bad patches. Obviously Their downswings may involve many thousands, while mine involved a measily $100. However, what they had to say really helped. One mate in particular sent me some of his stats of when he was running bad and it really put things in perspective:

basically they told me that no matter what level i play, there will always be downswings. Its not uncommon to lose 10 buy ins on a bad downswing. The key is to not go completely mad and tilt away more than you have to. The secret to being successful with poker in the long term is to remain honest with yourself. Even though i wasn't playing awfully, i could tell i was steaming. This caused me to play overly aggressive on hands where i should have been either folding or using pot control.

Today i left poker alone all day until this evening, where i decided to play some sensible nl15. The poker gods must have felt the need to reward me, getting me all in with aces on a flop of 37 Q against one opponent with Kings and the other with tens. For what seems like the first time in ages my aces prevailed and i managed to take down the $45 pot.

This combined with some nl15 hu has seen my roll bounce back to $299.