Discipline

I have been giving discipline a lot of thought. When I was a teacher, discipline was what you did to a student when he broke the rules. In the context of gambling it is not the same thing.

By discipline I mean control. You have to have the reigns on what your doing. You can't let the gambling spin you out of control. Maintaining control is the key to success.

When losing: Discipline comes into play because you are behind. Maybe you had a plan and the plan is not working. Undisciplined thinking in this situation makes you do something you weren't going to do. The urge to play "catch up" is great and you start making risky decisions. Usually, this results in a deeper hole than the one you are already in. Never, has risky, come from behind behavior worked for me. My advice in this situation: get up, leave a loser, chalk up your losses.

When winning: Discipline here is in maintaining the winning position. My new mantra is: Once ahead, stay ahead, and leave a winner. If it's more about the gambling than the winning, then just back off a significant amount until you "have your fun". Then leave. The temptation when winning is this: Pressing your bet because it's "their money" and going for the big hit. This is reckless because the "big hit" can't be forced. It happens when it happens, and you can't control the timing of it. If pressing seems like a good idea and you want to do it, go on. But don't forget the mantra.

I guess sometimes I need someone to pull out that paddle I used to use 20 years ago when a student acted up in my class and had to be "disciplined". But you know what, the blog helps me stay focused and disciplined because I am smart and I know the right thing to do. It's just not always easy.