Wow ....

... what a day. Results wise - worst day ever, I took a real beating. Almost seven buyins gone in 90 min or less.

Now that the inital shock has faded though - I think it was a positive experience in many ways. Basically - I've been posting some great results over the last month, my BR has grown substantially. As I think I have mentioned before, table selection has helped a lot, I've definitely been the beneficiary of a lot of loose fish donating cash. But along the way, I've picked up a few bad habits, and these hit home today.

I sat down at lunch while the kids were having a rest intending to play a 90 min session. I'd been datamining for hours on 16 tables, so I immediately started pulling up these tables and reviewing the players with PAHUD. Being Sunday here it was Sat night in the US - so almost every table I looked at was a gold mine, at least one 40+ VPIP player on every one. I start looking for the high VPIPs and passive players, and put my name down on about 6 tables - I do this so that I get a seat reasonably quickly. If you only waitlist at one or two the fish might leave or be stacked before you can sit down.

So what happens here is I get two tables almost straight away, and a third soon after. First mistake right here - I've been limiting myself to two tables at the moment to try and force myself to focus on players and betting patterns etc. But on all three there were immediate obvious targets - in other words all three games looked so good I stayed in all of them.

One I focused on in particular had a guy with about $150 in front, with 82 VPIP and fairly low agression - usually a sign that someone has hit a few hands but a prime target to hand it all back. I proceed to get AA fairly early, raise it up, villian calls. Flop is T T 5 rainbow. He check calls it all the way - I get all in on the river, and he shows T4o. I suspected he had the T once he called on the turn, and here is where I feel the risk is playing these sort of opps ... he could just have easily called the whole way with a 5, or maybe a hand like 77. With an 82 VPIP calling station, I'm not sure I can get away.

Anyway he then proceds to stack me three more times - once I think I made a tilty play, I called him all in with 6d5d on the flop with an A 2d 4d board - I had 12 good outs I think, turns out I was right, he jammed on the flop with 77. Obviously a lot of outs but still probably a bad call. Other two I turn a boat only for him to river a bigger one, and AA beat again by K7, rivered trips. KK got busted by rivered trip nines also on my other table - literally at the same time as my final AA hand.

Anyway - the point of all this is not to tell my bad beat / cooler stories. As I said at the start, I learned several lessons from this session which wiped out about 20% of my BR. Most importantly, I have been getting complacent playing these loose fish - while I think its definitely +EV, I had stopped giving these guys any credit for a good hand at all - I've been viewing 80 VPIP = donk who always will go too far with nothing, which is not a given. I need to continue to try and make some reads and evaluate. The TT flop with AA is a good example - my river bet may not have been the best play here ... maybe I could not have got away, but I needed to consider what he could be playing more carefully, not just jam it in there.

I also am falling victim to staying in the game longer than I probably should, becuase I think the fish will donk off his stack back to me. Maybe in some cirumstances this is valid, but today I think I got tilty and tried to chase. I still got it in with good hands, and maybe got unlucky, but again I think I wasnt playing my best game.

Final lesson, I am worrying too much about getting my daily hands in and not concentrating on whether or not I am "switched on to play". Last month I qualified Silver in the Iron Man promotion on Full Tilt - I am noticing that I am playing to make sure I get enough hands in rather than stopping when I feel my game slipping. This I have to stop.

So overall - results wise the day from hell, but I've managed to come away from it with a very postive feel - I re-learned some good lessons that I think will stand me in very good stead for the future. I'm also really happy that I am finding it increasingly easier to focus on these positives rather than dwelling on short term results - I'll credit a lot of that to my recent reading of Alan Schoonmaker's "Your Worst Poker Enemy" - perhaps I'll post about this more soon.