Money management

I have been playing poker for over two years now. I started in march 2005 so its two and a half years I guess. What I have noticed is that any smart person, who understands the strategical game theory would be a good poker player, he would (I like using he instead of he/she, I'm sorry girls please don't get offended) make all kinds of genius plays and any donkey-like hero calls and make a lot of money in the short term. So, I think that the short term success in poker (from 1 day to two months) is strongly related to the persons innate characteristics and abilities gained before that person starts playing poker. However, the real success in poker is the long term success and it requires self discipline and patience, and most importantly a great deal of money management skills. And I believe these three can be acquired through time, training and experience, in that sense, I believe anybody could make money off of poker but these three "skills" are much harder to acquire than anything else that would make you a good player and therefore, although theoretically long term success in poker is obtainable, I noticed only a few people can put this in practice.

I'd like to give an example of the evaluation of my own money management skills. I will not be talking about, at least not today, how I built my bankroll and how I came to this day where I have over 200K dollars of career winnings and over 60K of total bankroll. I would just like to give an example of daily money management/tilt control. Yes, to me, money management is the key to tilt control because a person would not go on big tilts as long as he has enough money and confidence. Anybody could be on tilt for an hour or even a day, but the most dangerous kind of tilt I experienced myself is the one that takes weeks even months and which would lead to the loss of most if not all of your bankroll. And this latter kind of tilt could only be avoided by having enough money in the bank for at least 6 months.

So, how do I manage my money and how do I control tilt? I hit the tables today and the 5/10NL games were pretty profitable. Just after playing about 500 hands I was up about 3.5K which is enormous for any player in the world. The players were so weak and I dominated all 4 tables I was playing in. Then I started being extra aggressive and tried to bluff a calling station out of his top pair weak kicker and he won a 1000 dollar pot off of me. This was the first sign of breakdown for me but I really did not want to leave the tables at that point. A few minutes later, after playing a couple of small pots, I raised with QT and the BB called and the flop came 45T with two diamonds. BB led into me 50 and I called. Then an ace fell of, at that point I was almost sure that I was beat but the pot bet of the BB made it pretty clear, however I talked myself into going all the way and I put the BB all in and he insta called with his top two pairs. The pot was 1700 dollars. I checked my cashier and I was still up about 2500 so even though I had just started playing and the tables were still really profitable, I left the tables and turned off the poker software. I don't think I will be playing on that site again today and thus I am up 3500 today. This is over my daily average so it is a pretty good result. I made a coupe of tilt plays but I didn't leave all my profit at the tables.

What if I were down after making the tilt plays? Of course I would still leave because that is the real self discipline. If you know you're on tilt and you are making plays you wouldn't make otherwise you should quit immediately. It doesn't matter whether you are up or down. Just leave and come back when you feel like you are ready to play your best game. Believe me it doesn't matter whether the players at the tables are strong or weak, as long as you play your best game, you will find a way to beat anybody...