When is enough that's enough?

If you're a poker player (or claim to play one on TV) you've felt those days when runner-runner full houses come in against your flopped nut flush. Then two hands later it happens again, raising your blood pressure to Level Orange alert, making you down a couple of beers like your frat brothers just loaded up the beer bong .

If you're a successful poker player, more often then not you are putting your money in with the best of it and making the other player gamble for those chips that are carefully cut into ten or twenty stack towers in front of your capped cards. But, what if there's an all-knowing power playing against you? The cashout curse is murmured in silent tones across the internet, as players on Full Tilt and PokerStars will grasp their e-wallets and bankrolls with care while asking for an allowance from their poker funds so they can buy Guitar Hero III (coming soon for the Wii too!!!).

Conspiracy! Many cry on countless poker forum boards, but as I witnessed first hand last night, it's the timing of the bad run of cards more then anything. I'm on pace for my first losing month in seven, but I still haven't stooped as low as to blame the specter of the cashout curse for my sudden roadblock of suckouts.

I'll smile that I put my money in good, and hope to see IHateMoney69 back at the tables soon to win those chips back. Just make it sooner then later, or the walls in the porch might not survive the next two outer that goes against me.