Downturns, but no sympathy

With downturns, as much as we sometimes feel like sharing our frustration with others, the truth is that nobody cares. With our own downturns, unless we are part of a team or partnership, we are completely alone. The reasons change depending on who's listening to your tale of woe:

1. Professional gamblers: Have most likely been through what you're going through before and probably conditioned themselves to do so without complaining, so don't have any sympathy for those who do. They have also developed an intolerance to bad beat stories due to the sheer amount of them they've had to listen to over the years.

2. Recreational gamblers: Will sincerely believe that you should have "quit while you were ahead" and will therefore not have any sympathy.

3. Degenerates: Are in the process of re-mortgaging their homes to put together their next bankroll after wikipedia-ing "martingale.” They have their own problems, so no sympathy here either.

4. Non-gamblers: Will vary in their responses but you're not going to get empathy because they don't understand what you're going through at all.

And to top this all off, in the rare occurrences that you do get any sympathy, it doesn't really make you feel any better at all (at least in my experience). I don't care who you are, how experienced you are or how high you play: It is my belief that everyone has a breaking point where they're going to start tilting. The only people who are going to successfully get through these times are those with a constructive inner-monologue, such as, "Are my results more than three standard deviations away from expectation? If so, I need to re-evaluate my game. I'll go home and do a bunch of drills on Casino Verite because it will rebuild my confidence. I'll scour Green Chip, re-read some books and improve any part of my game that I feel has potential leaks. I'll blow off some steam with exercise and take a bit of time to sleep properly and relax. After I've done all of that, even if my downturn continues, I'm going to feel better because this downturn is part of an organic process which every long term winner MUST go through."