I lost a little over a grand tonight. First time for that. Just under 3 buy-ins at $400 NL.

I'm going to type for a while as I try to process this.

Yes I made some bad plays. Early on I was positive the guy didn't have the hand he had (that is, he had AQ on a QxxQx board). A little later a guy was even worse than I thought he could be: He raised preflop and then made a tiny continuation bet on a dangerous board where I had draws, I figured my big draw was plenty to raise with and he couldn't call ... but of course he had TPTK and yes he could call ... and I missed of course. He had AQ again actually.

I got check-minimum raised a couple of times after I CB'd some flops. I let them go since I didn't have much. Not sure what that meant, either time.

I mostly avoided tangling with the good players at the table. I exploited some weaknesses, like one guy who raised too much preflop, I 3-bet him a couple of times and he folded. Nothing special but it's not like I played scared money.

I caught a set in a raised pot and didn't get paid much. Did he fold an overpair or just some random crap? Meh.

Three times I preflop raised in position with decent hands, got shoved all-in by short stacks, and each time they had big pairs that held.

Umm, what else? I can't seem to remember the middle to semi-late parts of the evening when I went down $400 to down $800. How did that happen? Probably a little bit at a time. Maybe I was on semi-tilt and not playing well. Chasing too much?

Then the last straw was ... in a blind battle I raised with two baby spades. Flop KQQ with two spades. Check, bet, call. Turn . Check, check. River blanks off. I checked the turn because I smelled a big hand, but when he checked it to me again on the river I figured I was good and he was scared of those spades but might pay off with a bare queen, he checkraised big, I knew he had the goods but I called anyway, and he flipped the royal flush.



I won more than $1000 in a session two different times this month. I'm still way up for my time at the $400s. In fact, this is still my best month ever in terms of dollars won. (And last month was my best month until this month.) But my brain just can't handle tonight. I don't know if I'll sleep at all.

Meh I suck at hangling big money downswings. I knew that, and now I've had one I really know it.

Maybe I need to redefine this as "not a big downswing"? It's only 3 buy-ins, I've had worse than that of course. But I'm really thinking I should drop back down to the $200s for a while.

Thanks for listening. Any helpful thoughts from anybody out there?

God I saw so many horrible plays tonight. None of them earned me any money though. I hope to see a bunch of these guys again....

Here's one memorable hand against a guy I knew was a moron who CBs too small. He raises to 3x in EP preflop, I am the only caller out of the BB with JT. Flop is AK9 so I have a gutshot. I minimum bet, he minimum raises , I call. (I had a feeling he was dumb enough to do that.) Turn is an 8 so I have the oesd. I minimum bet, he calls. River blanks off and I check/fold, he can't resist showing his brilliantly played AQ. I had 3 Q outs to take a huge pot off of him, maybe even take his stack ... he had $500 to start the hand and I covered. Bleah.

I mean, come on, how am I losing money with people like that at the table? And he wasn't the only one. A whole bunch of morons were out there tonight.