Reality check

I'm still up at twenty to one, even though I would prefer to be in bed. The reason for this is that my fucking site takes about two hours to get hand histories up, and I simply have to look back at how badly I played and ran during tonight's two and a half hour sit.

I'm somewhat stunned by losing almost $200 in two and a half hours. I probably shouldn't be, because pot limit omaha is constantly described as featuring massive swings - but somehow I seem to avoid those swings, perhaps because I mostly play people who don't force you to make difficult decisions on big bets nearly as often as they should. So tonight was probably bound to happen sooner or later, but it still hurts.

I am getting over it fairly quickly, though, even though this one session has decimated my proud hourly rate in one fell swoop (just proves I need more hours to have a clue about my expectation). I know I will most likely keep winning about two out of three sessions, and will bounce back. The worst thing about this session was the timing, coming the day I had reluctantly withdrawn a fairly hefty chunk of bankroll in order to pay off another debt.

No, the worst thing was that I certainly contributed to my own downfall in parts. I got a little tilty after going behind early on, mainly because I had taken a number of middling-to-bad beats. I threw off some dollars for sure, including $40 on a weak flopped straight draw which I know I would normally have thrown away with only a tiny twinge of regret.

I played like a sucker, basically. I also lost a couple of big pots that I could easily have won, even if I was going slightly uphill. I don't go uphill in a hand often, and it feels like I never get there when I do.

But enough self-pity. My site is finally giving up the information, so I'm writing it all down and will feed the numbers into twodimes tomorrow and see how bad one or two of my plays were. Or weren't.

Oh, all of this provided a reality check after I had played almost faultlessly for two hours on Monday afternoon and won $87. There could hardly be a bigger difference between the way I played just thirty hours apart.