Lessons are expensive

I haven't posted in a few days, not for lack of things to write about, but more because I had been winning. Winning is great and all, but it makes for rather bland writing.

Win, win, win. I love consistently coming out on top, and I feel like I'm playing pretty damn well. But there's no conflict, no struggle, no pain in it. Tilt stories and Waffle-esque diatribes are so much more fun!

Fortunately for you, dear reader, I got smacked. Pretty hard. Ouch.

Christmas night was my career-worst session at the tables, in which I lost more than four buy-ins in about 800 hands, mostly against HORRIBLE players. Argh! They were soooo bad, and I couldn't seem to wrestle any money away from them.

I kept picturing them, drunk on egg nog and pissed off at their families in the late-night post-Christmas hours, pissing away their money to whoever applied the most pressure against their top pair, top kicker hand. I saw them sitting at their computers, dazed, trying to keep their eyes open as they sought one more pot to get even for the holiday. Or maybe some of them were rich kids, flush with new Christmas money that they were ready to blow off at the tables.

There was a lot of cash flying around, but not much of it came my way.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: three bad beats, two lost coin-flips and a tilt all-in bet against the nuts in a pear tree.

I knew a day like this had to come eventually. My fear is that my worries may have turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy. It goes something like this:

I win a lot at the virtual tables, and each successive win feels like less of a thrill than the one before. Eventually, I lose focus and drive because the pleasure of winning is diminished as the mental bar is raised for my average per-session expectation. Lacking emotions of satisfaction from poker, I subconsciously try to lose so that I can feel good when I win again.

These ideas somewhat coincide with theories that gamblers subconsciously want to lose to punish themselves, or that "gamblers want to lose all their money so they can reach a state of despair which, at the root of it all, was provoked by a past action that the gambler has not resolved."

Is it possible that I sabotaged myself at the tables last night? That after drinking my share of beers on Christmas night, I felt guilty on some level about my repeated winnings and played a style that favored all-in bets over folds and calls over reasonably priced information bets?

Of course it's possible. Why else would I be writing about it.

In times of doubt, the correct course is to analyze what went wrong. After I went through the hand histories in PokerTracker, I found there was only one hand where I made a clear and obvious error. I did tilt on that hand. I told myself I would take a stand with top pair and my gutshot. I blew off my stack based on my tired feelings of defiance and anger rather than careful consideration of the situation at hand.

Naturally, my passive opponent who had check-raised me had a set, and my donkitude was not rewarded with a suckout.

It was time for sleep, perhaps an hour after I should have quit.

I don't believe I'm a compulsive gambler who wants to kill himself slowly by blowing through my hard-earned winnings. I admit to mild feelings of guilt because of my recent success, and because I feel sorry for some of the fish who lose and reload, lose and reload, lose and reload until the rent money is gone.

Objectively, I know these emotions are destructive. While I hope to be able to empathize with my opponents' mind-set, I should remain vigilant that I don't become like them. The solution, as always, is focus and discipline. Sometimes I feel like a surly poker monk, resigned to a life of study and devotion.

Enough of that. I made one very bad play. It won't happen again.

I did a search of the Internet for my login name, smizmiatch, and found some hand histories from 2005 in which I got stacked. I played them terribly. Enjoy!

Dem Quads, Bitch.

I can't recommend playing two pair like this.