Poker is a fast game of many beats and brags, lost and won pots. We anchor in life and are often fooled by false expectations made out of highs and sometimes lows. The WSOP winner wont go back to his hotel room and calculate how much above ev he ran, the succesful CEO will not see to the failure of 10 unknows and England will continue to claim themselves as the world's number 1 football nation.

The WSOP champ taking down $8 million will consider a net worth of $7 million a year later a loss while the 2 times WPT winner will look at his net worth of $3 million as a win.

The WSOP winner will in fact be happier if he'd won $3.5 x 2 instead of the $8 million.

The anchor shifts with your results, but rarely enough.

Win/hour or Win/hands are too abstract for most people to grasp. There might be a few losing players trained enough to percieve themselves as losers, but they will most probably lose interest unless they go on to lose only half as much the month after. What the main drive among the big number of players that still fight their losses are is probably individual, but its not the knowledge of losing $5/hour or an ROI of -55%, its probably pictured in some other way.

If I were a losing player or a player that viewed myself as a winner but never won I would turn to psychology rather than to Math or Poker litterature. Tilt is born out of misconceptions and false assumptions, these cannot be adjusted by anyone but yourself. If the anger is still there after following a bankroll formula, you should probably seek for help elsewhere.

Poor guy went a year and a half with an unanswered question, I had to help my fellow forumite out

it may be obvious to lose, but maybe not in his lifetime :P variance doesnt have to kick in in his lifetime. it could be thousands of years from now. no vacuum