Flushing away my profits

The past few days have been brutal.

My experience at the new levels have had some growing pains. The players at 50NL are much more aggressive and more donkish. But that doesn’t excuse my play at these levels.

It took me literally 3 sessions at 50NL to wipe out my last 3 months of profits playing at 25NL. Granted I wasn’t multi-tabling at 25NL like I’m doing now at 50NL. So that has had an effect I think. So when I add it all up, I’m basically starting over again.

Perhaps it’s variance, perhaps it’s me not playing optimally because of BR restrictions, most likely it’s both.

The killer hands though are the ones that I have no control over. For example, I lost $70 when my set of Kings loses to a gut shot straight that the donk hit on the river. He was super aggressive and I thought I had him when he attempted to check raise me on the flop all-in. He had A/Q suited but hit runner runner for the straight. That sucked…but that’s not even the worst of it.

I re-load and later on I have K/Q diamonds. Again I’m tangled in a pot with the guy who hit his gut shot against me. He’s aggressive pre-flop of course and I call in position because I have the odds to do so. I flop a flush. I think I’m in business. He goes all-in. I call. He’s got A/Q with the A diamonds. He’s got 7 outs. Which would make me around a 2-1 favorite in this hand, if it holds up. That’s a big if. A diamond falls on the river and I’m down another buy in.

Ok I should stop here and just take my lumps but I go on a little tilt and play some more (this is the worse thing to do, playing poker for the sake of just playing and trying to win back your losses). So I reload. Big Mistake.

I build my last buy-in to about $75 when again I get hit by the Fulltilt variance. Again I have K/Q suited on the button. I raise and get one caller. The flop comes and i have top pair with a flush draw. The BB bets out and I raise. He goes all-in. I call. He has K/8. Laughable. I’m way ahead. I have him outkicked and I have the flush draw with two cards to come. The turn is a brick and all I need to do is dodge an 8.

River is an 8. What the hell did I do to Fulltilt to deserve this kind of treatment?

I had him covered though so I still had money. At this point I’m thinking I should definitely shut down and call it a night. Of course Fulltilt probably senses this and hands me JJ for my last hand. I think to myself I should just probably fold this and be done with poker for the night. But how can I fold JJ? I get a shove from a shortie and I’m the only caller. He has A/10 suited and of course I double him up.

So what’s the moral of this story? Well I did what I promised myself not to do which is play more when I’m behind. Don’t let emotion get the best of me and more importantly, it’s one long game and these things happen to everyone…it’s just too bad it happened to me all in one night.

Oh well time to rebuild again…..