Money is a powerful thing. Surprisingly, fake money is a pretty darn powerful thing too. And even though I know that I’m playing cards with fake money I still let myself get rattled when I make dumb mistakes or other players make dumb mistakes and win when they shouldn’t.

So I’m playing poker against a bunch of raising-on-nothing morons and I’m playing tight. Sure, it’s not real money but there is no reason to be stupid about it. I win a few hands and I’m feeling pretty good when things just all go to shit.

After being dealt a few fair hands thing just turn cold. Now, this isn’t an uncommon thing to happen, card will go cold from time to time. After I lose a few hands to mediocre cards I start to think about taking my (fake) winnings and moving on. But it just eats me up inside to move on when I’m losing. I feel like I should be able to leave the table a winner!

I bet into some hands that I have an okay chance at…and I lose. I bet into some more hands — these are some iffy cards — and I lose. Now I’m sitting at my desk telling myself, “Okay, I’m not going to go on tilt…I’m not. I’m just going to play one more hand and then I’ll leave…”

I think it was somewhere after my tenth hand from when I said I would leave that I actually was booted out of the table with no money. I went all in (a paltry 40 chips) on a King Four (off suit no less) figuring a Hail Mary play was my only option. Mary wasn’t on my side.

As I sit and think back on the game I realize that I could have walked about from the table about 700 chips up. I could have walked away even when I lost my 700 chip winnings. I realized I could have done a lot of things, but I ultimately did what bad poker players everywhere do…I let my greed and my fear of losing cloud my mind and I let myself make irrational decisions.

I figure that the word “could” is one that is bandied about quite a bit by players after going on tilt. There are a lot of things that could have happened, but what did happen was that I made some dumb decisions…