I can control if I play well, I cant control luck.  If I make the right decision, that is the result that should stimulate the virtual reward center in my brain, not the direction the chips are sent. It hasnt been as of late, but that is MY DOING and its up to ME to correct that (easier said than done, but that is the goal).

When a hand goes south on me, I notice I play differently afterwards.  This is a huge problem and I need to get control of it.  I am always going to encounter a hand that goes south, but if I revert to a B game (or worse) after that, I cant overcome that event and it will sink me.  Whether or not the reason is our play or luck, we still need to prepare for the next hand…  It can even go brutally worse than this…  When you have a bad RUN, it gets in your head.  You allow it to color your decisions and thus it changes your path (usually not for the better).  You need to be very self aware of this.  Unfortunately, our brains are not wired that way (.....i/Amygdala) & the ability to adjust to this situation is highly individualized.  Some people even make decisions differently when hungry vs. when fed.  So your efforts to deal with losing stimuli can range from a breeze to huculean. 

I am currently diving into a crapload of psychology and mental books to determine how best to reprogram my behavior at the table to be optimal.  But I am sure of one thing.  In the long run, do you want to be lucky or play well?  If you want to be lucky, your are setting yourself up for perpetual dissapointment.  If you want to be good, then simply explore if you played the hand as good as you are capable.  That is the only true measuring stick you have.

I am additionally adding a book on meditation to my reading list as I often can play a hand WAY BETTER after the fact than I do at the table, even shaking my head at what "table me" did.  I want to see if I can clear my head or perhaps even by using a method like in "checklist manifesto", get control of errant behavior in the moment.

There have been a lot of good posts already so I just want to throw out there that luck manifests itself in a lot of less obvious ways than getting sucked out on. Putting your money in good is not entirely a manifestation of skill, in fact it's very possible to play badly and get your money in good. If you get all in with KK against QQ for 20BBs, is that luck or skill? Do you deserve to win? Why? Did you play any less well if your opponent had AA instead of QQ? Just like it doesn't matter how the cards fall once the money is all in, there are a ton of situations in poker where it doesn't matter who's on which side of a cooler, because you're going to be on both sides many times over the course of your career and you don't make money from them in the long run. If you've never read Tommy Angelo before, now is a good time to start. Google his essay "Reciprocality" and then if it is at all appealing to you check out Elements of Poker.

Cheers for that mate, very interesting read!  I'll paste the link below incase you guys are interested.

.....procality/

Thanks for the tip NatSel about Jared's book.

I'm still reeling from a mistake I made last night.  I busted out in 9th place in a $5 3K guaranteed tournament at Carbon when I could've folded, had 20bbs left behind and a shot at winning.  I had all the information I needed to make the right play, I just didn't give it enough thought and frickin' tooled-out.  Still grumpy with myself, but I'm going to try and run it through the ICMizer to see how bad it was.  Going over my mistakes in detail is how I do my penance.  I force myself to understand my error in an attempt to come to terms with it and surprisingly enough it usally works pretty well.

Anyway, you seem like a good guy and I hope you work your way through this.  If there's anything I can do to help feel free to contact me.

I'd suggest that if a person can't deal with losing in a game that is mostly about losing, as is tournament poker, then they may want to look at other aspects of their life to find the emotional balance they need to continue.

There's no point in talking about variance if one's lifestyle choices are causing unhappiness. If that's what we're really talking about here then there are lots of things that one can do to change one's lifestyle but bemoaning misfortune is not one of them.

Nothing I said was mean-spirited, spirited perhaps, because I feel strongly about these things, but in no way malicious. That is seriously the best advice I can give and how I personally approach the game.

Poker is brutal. There's no way around suffering misfortune, mistakes, and disappointment. Sure, there are moments of elation, but for every such moment there are many more of anger, woe, frustration and misery. It's the nature of the beast.

I love its brutality. I love how it challenges me emotionally and intellectually. I love stepping into the ring and testing my mettle against the katana wielding sharks, the drooling troglodytes, the merdonks, and the sicko mofos who make my life hell.

As much as I love and hate the game, poker is ultimately just a small, dumb thing when compared to the things in life that truly matter. That's the most important thing to keep in mind. There are lots of ways to invest time and energy that are much more fulfilling than poker and no reason to play if it's just making you deeply miserable.

I maintain though that you are choosing to be miserable about something you can't change and strongly urge you to reconsider, broadly speaking, the way you think about luck and the role of variance in the game.

The emotional challenge is that when I lose due to a mistake, I always have the option to get smarter and try to make fewer mistakes. I can learn to not punish myself emotionally for behing human.

When I lose due to variance, it makes me feel helpless. I have no control over the turn and river, and that's what's so disheartening.

Intellectually I know it's madness to get stressed over the things I can't control. But emotionally I'm not there yet.

I guess it's back to basics - proper sleep, diet, exercises, good life experiences off the table, playing lower stakes where the pain of loss is less and probably playing smaller fields so I don't invest 6 hours before the suckout could all help.