Out but not down

When I last posted about my real-money online gambling experiment, I had parlayed $20 into $57 and was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

Then I ran into a nasty losing streak, finishing in the money only once in the next 11 tournaments. After an encouraging upward trend of little spikes, the line graph in my spreadsheet—which I may have been too optimistic in labelling "Cumulative Poker Earnings"—is now flatlining at zero. It looks like a heart monitor on someone who has just died.

Yep, I busted out. My $37 in cumulative poker earnings skipped town and took my faithless $20 stake with it.

Let me emphasize: this was not bad luck. In all but one (or maybe two) of those 10 losses, I was cleanly outplayed by skilled and ruthless opponents. But hey, it was worth the 20 bucks just to learn a few things from them—like how easy it is to beat me.