lmao Nation - take spare pants.

Trueform - you wait - the 1st time you sit at a proper table (i.e. strangers) - trust me, you wait and see - you play like an idiot for a while. You forget everything you have learned and are 100% distracted by what's going on around you. You'll be trying to focus one second, but the next you'll be thinking , "is it me next? did he raise? god they are throwing all the chips in the middle - how can they tell what's what?! - feck! - I'm gonna have to ask if it's me to call now, they all chucked in so fast I lost track..., Shit these chips don't look like much! - I've only got 8 chips!. God, I just folded because it was 4 of my 8 chips, but wait, they are only 25's - doh!!" etc etc etc. Through all this you end up not playing your normal game. I folded everything at 1st - seemed easiest :-p

I'm a very confident person but I was plently distracted, and still am some. There is a magic tension at a table of strangers all paying cold cash and all after each other's money. I got into my stride and played a proper game once I was at the final table. We had a dealer then, and previously I'd found self dealing to be a total disctraction. I wanted to watch the players and evaluate my cards, but over a third of my time I was shaffling cards, cutting decks, or dealing. Any spare time was spent trying to evaluate people's chip stacks or pull off a good chip twirl (disaster! sticking to chip shuffle)

Only when It got down to about 5 of us I stopped dead in my tracks and thought, "Wait a sec!! you are the chip leader by a large margin, stop dicking about and start playing big stack poker" - at that point I played just like I do online and the rest was easy.

Praying next time I go (will be my 4th time) I'm more relaxed again.