Howl of pain

This won’t be a terribly clever entry; just a howl of pain and annoyance and frustration and self-recrimination.

Basically, I lost more than $400 over the last 48 hours.

I was not well at the weekend. Starting Saturday night I began to have an aching back and exhaustion. I cut my weekend with my girl short on Sunday morning, and slept til mid afternoon. At that point, fuzzy headed and tired, I sat to play poker. What a doofus.

I lost quite a lot. Although I did flop top full house against quads – ouch! – I did not play well. I also got tetchy and emotional about what was, at that stage, a perfectly manageable loss. The kind of loss that comes along once in a while, and perhaps even stops me getting too carried away with my own game.

I should not have gone back later, and lost more. During that second session I was certainly on mini-tilt, although when I look back the major part of the loss was suffered against one opponent who is usually a donator. On this occasion he had a bit of a stack and was betting very frequently. I flopped a series of strong hands with which I decided to trap him, only to see him have – or hit – the nuts every single time. I’ve not had a string of second-best hands in a long time.

Oh well. Bedtime. I already knew I would probably be off work on Monday, when I would put some hours in and play carefully and with focus…

Well, the day started like that. I only had small goals – small but obtainable – and since there were no appealing PLO games I just played some $5 headsup matches. I actually won nine in a row of them, without ever getting particularly lucky!

Oh for the day to have ended there. Instead I ran out of patience and played 6-max PLO. This is not a game I have ever excelled at. I make a lot of my money in PLO by playing better starting hands, by hitting nut flush over weaker flush and so on, against weak players who let me draw and are scared to call my larger bets. At 6-max, in general, you don’t get those opponents. I got killed, although in hindsight (again) it could have been little worse than break-even if I had not made a couple of stupid mistakes.

Both mistakes were similar, chucking all my chips in against irritatingly aggressive opponents – and they turned out to have the goods.

And now, with the distance of time, I realise that those two mistakes accounted for a huge proportion of my Monday losses.

In the evening I went back and played $1/$2 five card stud, which is a game where I am showing a remarkable win rate thus far, plus more $5 heads-up. Stud yielded $32 in just over two hours, but I lost four of five heads-up matches (one to a guy who I had all-in twice with KQ versus KJ only to see him river a Jack).

So, when all is said and done, I am quite devastated. $400 should not be a truly damaging setback, but because I have been happily drawing on my bankroll for a while (I am in an ocean of debt, remember?) it actually leaves me short-rolled enough to be leery of playing PLO.

More importantly, to me, I was just about to pay for a week’s holiday out of my bankroll, and I have just spunked more than that amount of money in two tired, ill, tilty sessions. I can hardly describe how good it was going to feel to pay for an entire holiday from a couple of months’ poker winnings at 25c/50c blinds! I have thrown away that enormous psychological boost; just tossed it away like an idiot.

Why, why, why didn’t I withdraw the dough before I even sat down on Sunday? Why did I play badly? Why didn’t I at least get lucky, even just once, on any of the hands that I misplayed?

Sigh.

Most depressing of all, I think I was simply playing against a lot of better PLO players on both Sunday and Monday. At 25c and 50c blinds!

I truly thought I was starting to know the game well and play it well. But with two, three, four players in the game prepared to bet frequently, prepared to put you to the test – I failed. It is food for thought. I think the daytime lineup is stronger than the evening crowd, certainly. And I have to accept that I am nowhere near as good as I had started to think.

I am going to play five card stud for a while, unless I see some really weak PLO lineups.

Game selection!

Postscript: I have to stay reasonably positive. I have still turned the $66 dregs of a bankroll into $800 in three months of low-limit poker. I have to learn from the mistake of playing tired and ill - and going back for more! - so that something positive comes out of this fiasco.