Never play when sick

I left Las Vegas and drove home to California. The lack of sleep and jet-lag then caught up with me and I was sick with flu for almost 2 weeks.

The great thing about online poker is you can play from home even when you are sick. In my case this just made me sick at poker. I played about 20 small tournaments and a few big tournaments while having the flu and was just terrible.

To be fair I was also reading Sklanskys "Tournament Poker for Advanced Players" and trying some of the techniques suggested in the book. Arguably this is similar to when you start taking golf lessons and change your swing. Your game eventually should get better but initially you play terrible as you adjust.

I also read a book by Anthony Holden called "Bigger Deal". This is the story of his year chasing poker tournaments around the world ending with the WSOP in Las Vegas. He goes through many of the same emotions as I have gone through so it was quite therapeutic to know I am not the only one. These emotions range from "I am crap", "Why do I bother", "Why is everyone else so much better than me", "Maybe I am just not good enough to play this game", "Will I even get better" to elation when winning a smaller tournament or parting a lessor player with a chunk of his money.

I played 5 online tournaments the day after finishing the "Bigger Deal" book and after feeling 80% recovered from the flu and cashed in 4 of them. This lifted my spirits immensely after the terrible run I had been on. Maybe I should just never play when I am sick. I had also had my best nights sleep in 2 weeks so maybe I played better because I was well rested. This is my new motto - "Don't play poker when you are tired and never play when sick".