This is a good thread. I like it. I want to add more. I don't recognize the names so let me say I went from $150 to about $30,000 in about 7 months with very little back peddling. Let me tell you how. I see a common theme of winning and then backing up - or losing it all.

Here's the answer for you in one sentence - When you do that you are playing for emotional reward, not monetary results.

If you already understand it then that sentence is enough, but if you already understand it then you wouldn't do it. So let me put some meat on the bones.

When we first start playing poker we do so because we like it, it makes us FEEL GOOD. As we get better we start playing smarter and winning money and realize that our decsions make us money, and we like that. So we play that way. But when we get bored, we aren't INTELLECTUALLY bored, we are EMOTIONALLY BORED. We want to FEEL GOOD. You stop playing poker for money and start playing to FEEL GOOD. And actually, for most players they were always playing to FEEL GOOD but it felt good for the first hour to play smart - BECAUSE THEY REMEMBER LAST TIME THEY TILTED OUT AND THEY DON'T WANT TO FEEL BAD LIKE THAT AGAIN. So they play smart.

But after a while the "i'm scared to feel bad" feeling is overtaken by "I want to feel good and this doesn't feel good enough fast enough, so I'm going to turn on my feel-gooder and start playing faster and looser than my skills allow. That will FEEL GOOD!" And they do it.

SOOOOO, the root problem isn't discipline, skill or boredom. The root problem is YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM. You have to make a decision about WHY YOU PLAY POKER. I don't mean you "think about it". I mean you make a LIFE CHANGING FUTURE DEFINING "I saw the light, come to Jesus" DECISION ABOUT WHY YOU PLAY POKER. Do you play to feel good (a perfectly good reason to play poker, not everyone has to win all the time)? Or do you play to MAKE MONEY?

If you Really, Literally play to make money, then you CLOCK IN, do your job and CLOCK OUT. If you play it to feel good then you get to do whatever you want. If winning maeks you feel good then that's a positive side effect. But it doesn't change your DECISION. And when you don't feel good you still do your JOB.

I hope that helps. You aren't losing because you're bored, you're losing because you never decided to play poker for money.