Money is an indispensabletool for a poker player. When you run out you can no longer play. Somehow it seems though, when it comes to swings and managing money, knowing ‘what’ to do with the money and knowing ‘how’ to do it are two very separate things. Here we’ll focus on the ‘how’.
It was the summer of 2008, and I was on a heater. A massive heater. I won, spent and lived as if it would continue forever. It’s funny how something as trivial as a card game can make one feel invincible.
Poker though has a way of humbling us. Many dollars later, I learned a painful, expensive lesson: winning is never as good as losing is bad. (…and this a 
tweetable ) Practically speaking, the more money you have the less you should worry about earning, and the more you should focus on defending.
It took me over a year to recover. I moved down dramatically in stakes (and ego) and did the only thing I could: grind. I focused on skills like how to manage money, assess risk and developed rules for deciding what limits to play or when to take shots. Here’s what I learned.
