Why did my Reality Check fail?

[ZoeSeeker]

I usually check my hands during the day. I look at them, count the fingers, check the length, turn them over, count them again, check the length, then put them in front of me and look around the room to see if anything is unusual. This worked perfectly for my first two DILDs. Dream sign, look at hands, become lucid. Last night, instead of looking at my hands when my dream sign appeared, I tried to poke my finger through my other hand's palm. It didn't work, so I concluded I wasn't dreaming. Now, what bothers me is that I did the RC, thinking it was a dream, and when the RC failed, just naturally assumed I was awake. I would have thought the simple act of doing an RC would make you lucid since I have already noticed that something wasn't right. Apparently, and, now obviously, I was wrong. The other thing that bothers me is that I've been practicing the hand check for at least 3 weeks now. I just did the poke RC only once a few days ago. Why, after all that training, did I decide to switch to the poke RC instead of doing the hand check RC? The next question is what is the most reliable RC? I picked hand check because it's easy. I guess nose pinch is next... Thanks!