Keep that sucker going down.

Wow, really crappy night. I've now lost my last 4 sessions at NL10, which is pretty disgraceful. The problem last night, bluffs were backfiring. I also rarely ran into any decent hands, and was constantly losing pots where I flopped really bad.

I'm obviously trying a bit too hard to convince people I have a hand. Out of the 7 biggest losses last night, 6 were bluffs or 2nd pair hands, and one I called down a semi-bluff shove on the river and he hit a 2 outer on the river after getting the money in. I have plenty of ideas behind my bluffs, and I think they are OK, maybe just a little too advanced for NL10. And I'm not looking down on NL10 players at all when I say that, I'm just thinking players will fold 2nd pair to 2 bets, and that's the read I get sometimes. So I bet again, he shoves. Bad read. I Bet again he calls again with 2nd pair/weak top pair, good hand read, but bad read that he'd fold. I bet again he folds, good reads all around, but not happening as often as the calls/raises were last night.

The winning pots were much smaller in general, with a flopped straight and open ended straight flush draw against a set, and two top pair hands that I got a little extra value from by not betting the flop. I also got a full pot in good only to be sucked out on, but that's fine.

The one thing I have to focus on is not playing too many weak ace/king hands, and instead substitute in more drawy hands when betting in position. For example, if I raise A4o from the button, what value am I looking to get. If I get action on a flop of AT6r I'm probably not in good shape. If I don't hit the flop I have to decide to bluff or not, depending on villain/board. So if I'm not happy when I flop top pair, and I have to bluff other boards, why not bet more 65s hands and fold A4o? Same example, board comes down At6r, I'm still not happy if I get action there, but now I can easily fold. But if the board comes down 743 I can make a lot of money, of if it's A65, I can also make quite a lot if he has a decent ace which he wouldn't 3 bet. The trick is to not spew pre flop too much, and I'm finding weaker aces or kings are just not playing well post flop when I'm called.

So overall, I ran pretty nasty last night, and finished down about $19. I looked at Iron Man to see I was merely a few points from the 50 I need to keep bronze ticking over, so I booted up a $23 HU SNG. I nailed this SNG. Every move I made worked out perfectly, and I won a lot of pots, to get him down to 650 chips, when he opened shoved. I had KQo and called without much hesitation, and he showed K5, which rivered a 5 to keep him alive, in fact nearly even in chips. He then went on a big run, and I managed to keep from losing it, won an all in as big favourite, and worked him back down to 800 chips. Again I get it in good and he wins an all in, and has me in trouble again. Finally I get it in with a coin flip with TT vs AJ and he wins it. Very frustrating, so I fired up another table. I played OK here, but again lost a pot where he rivered his draw, lost another big one where I had a huge combo draw, and again thought ATs was good enough for my last few chips only to be up against AJ. I was down $46 more for the night. Tilt? Yes. Not because I felt I'd played badly or wasn't confident I could win the next one, more because now I was in a mode of chasing my losses. I played very well for 2 more games, and won them both to almost break even, and contemplated playing another before deciding my run was good enough and stopped, down just the rake of $4. This was very lucky, because if I'd lost the 3rd, I would have been down $69 on top of the $19 from earlier, and my bankroll is far too fragile to take big hits like that right now, especially when I'm struggling enough to book a win at NL10.

Well, it all seems kind of average right now. I guess I'll have one more night tonight to have a crack at getting something going, but if it's another negative night, I'll most likely be taking a couple of days break from the grinding, it's just not going well right now. I'll keep on forum posting and reading too. I'll set an unrealistic goal to be posting enough each week to hit 500 posts by the end of the year, and I'm happy for most of that to be in the micro forums. I'm still confident my game is good enough to crush NL10 for a significant amount and move up to NL25 soon, but I'm aware that these downswings can take time to recover from, and I'm still realistically 10BI's away from my goal of $500 bankroll, which seems like a huge heist right now. Hopefully I can find some donks in the next few days and win a lot off of them.