Listen, I'm the first guy at the table to flip out. I'm sorry, I can't help it. My tirade will be a few paragraphs long,of course, and it usually goes something like this:

"Omg omggggggggggg. how bad are you? BAD how do you make a living? i'm serious. is your IQ sub 80? dear god, you had nothing on the flop. you're sooo bad. HEEEEEHAWWWWW hEEEHAWWW. let me go lay some hay for you. i'll clean your hooves later. buddy, just quit now, because I am going to OWN your soul. I OWN YOU. I OWWNNN YOU!!!"

Inappropriate, I know, but sometimes it can work out, because that same guy usually wants to bust you, really bad, and with a mediocre hand, to really get you going. A few hands later, the same donk who runner runnered me, raised fairly large on the button. I looked down at AA, and re-raised to make him think that I was still steaming and trying to take the pot off of him. He raised all-in and I called. BINGO. I had no clue what he had, and I was waiting for the "muck, you lost" button to pop up. And it did just that. It turns out that our donk put his money in with KQ. The flop came 10 9 4, blank on the turn, and j on the river, giving him the nuts. I showed him my Aces, of course, and flipped out, this time putting a hole through my wall. Oh well, it will come out of my security deposit, right? I needed to cool off, so I made some instant pudding and cracked open a beer.

But what does this tell me? It tells me that I'm playing too high to be comfortable with losing a buy-in. If you can't laugh off a beat, you're playing too high. If you can't get up from the computer without being outwardly angry, move down a level. Of course, I am one of those people who simply does not like to lose, so losing a buy-in, even if I can afford it, is probably going to anger me, because bad play is just that, bad play. However, these bad plays make YOU money in the long run, so learn to love them.

I cracked open my beer, turned on the "Requiem for a Dream" soundtrack, and closed my eyes. I asked myself, "Why do I love poker so much?" And I thought. And it hurt, but I realized why I love poker. Nothing else, not even a beautiful woman, gets my heart going like poker. Nothing.