.10/.25 NLH LH 14/5/07

Opening balance: $139.09 (Down $12 from yesterday after a failed sattelite to the 330K Gtd)

Buy in : $48
No. of hands : 98
Left with : $16.01

Closing balance : $107.10

Running total: -$138.84/369
-557ptbb/271

The first table I was on, I was winning handily after a time. I lost most of my first stack after bluffing back at the maniac the one time he really had a hand. I managed to work back from $24 to almost $48 and back to $41 before it broke up. Switched tables and the new one was not so friendly. Both were limp happy, but the second had way more aggression post-flop. Eventually I lost my stack overplaying top pair and getting hammered by a set.

And that's my problem. I can win a series of small and medium sized pots and then I lose it all on one big hand. I play too many hands. On a table like those I had today, I limp a lot behind other limpers, then can't extract my self or control the pot when I catch a small piece of the flop. I'm a bad player. I have taken a number of bad beats recently, but not so much that it justifies the huge losses I've sustained. Losing $300 dollars in less than a thousand hands of .25/.50 and .10/.25 is dreadful. And it hurts.

I remember when I started playing, about three and a half years ago, I thought I knew it all. I was a big fish in pool of even bigger fishes. After a few months, I learnt some things by myself and some other things from my friend Stef (basic position, hand selection, bet sizing etc.) and thought I was great. As it happened, I was better than the people I was playing with. Then I turned 18 and started playing online. For a while, I couldn't believe how unlucky I was. All these donks kept beating me!

From there, I gradually came to realise that I was losing because I was bad. I stopped playing for a few months, came back, lost some more. Finally, I went looking for help. I found Ptips and realised that I was virtually clueless. I learned, I got better, I started winning. Then the bubble burst. I lost more, and more, and more. Then I stopped for a while.

I picked it up again and started this blog. I decided to stop reloading, to try and play within my roll and to closely monitor my progress. And yet, here we are. I'm throwing money away, I'm spewing everywhere and I feel like shit.

Maybe I can't take the variance. I do have a fairly LAG style, which brings with it big swings. Even when I try to contain myself, I don't become TAG, I become loose-passive pre-flop and a bluffing machine post flop. I can't take the variance, I hate losing and I'm not well-off enough to pour money in.

As of now, I'm down another level. .05/.10 NLH LH. I still have ten buy-ins for that, but I'm thinking I should change my plans. If I am prone to big swings, it's possible I'll hit a big upswing soon. If I simply aim at an amount of money, I might move up before I'm ready. So instead of aiming at an amount of money, I'll aim to be above 7ptbb/100 after 15K hands. It'll take me a long time to grind my way up from here, but if I should manage to establish myself as a fundamental winner at this low level (which will come as a result of solid play) I'll relax the restrictions when moving back up to .25/.50.

And in the meantime, I'll study the fundamentals again. I'll go back to the beginning, refresh myself, try and learn from scratch. I'm smart, I love the game and I used to be a winner. I can do this!