Profits are gone

Well, Feb has turned bad after a decent enough start to the month. So far it's gone like this. Day 1 was pretty unlucky, having big favourites get done and a couple hold on, down not much overall. Day 2 I felt I played a bit worse, but didn't have any bad luck really, up around $160 over the 2 days. Day 3 was pretty rotten, things went bad, and caused me to tilt a bit. I had passed a bonus $50 and still ended up down over $300, but missing a lot of all in equity I was due. Day 4 was more of the same, losing every imaginable cooler and suckout I could imagine. I finished down a further $600. Day 5 saw me swinging like nothing else, being up then down, then down more, then back to even, etc etc, to be down about $100 overall. Net result is close to $1000 down for the month, which is unfortunate.

So what happened? Well, it's a combination of things, but basically, I put a lot of blame on Day 4 or Thursday night. I had played pretty well until a huge suckout on Wednesday (KK vs JJ all in on turn, river J) and played a bit bad, and long after that. By Thursday I was a little jaded, quite tired and ready for a mental break. Rather than do this, I played a lot of poker, and in fact grinded some NL200, and NL100 HU, both of which are above my level, not a great idea when tired and not playing well. I don't think I played really terrible, but I got myself into more spots than I needed to, and found myself not playing my A game, yet playing good players, which is not a good mix.

Looking over the big losers, there is little I can effectively do with some of them. I mean there are the fold PF or fold flops here or there, but most situations play themselves out and see me winning money in the long term. I definitely didn't play each hand optimally though, so still plenty of room for in game improvements, which is always good news.

The one dissapointing thing was seeing a lot more regs hanging around last week. You had to go on waiting lists to get the best tables, and while the fish were still around, it could turn into a TAG 3 bet fest amongst the others at the table, which might see 1 real fish, 1 tight weak player, and 3 TAG/LAGs. I wasn't playing optimally against the TAG's or LAG's, and found myself giving money over to these more competant players, often by trying to outplay them. It was worst on Monday, and felt like a real grind, so I'll see how it goes tonight. But overall, I think I have to accept things may be a little tougher in the next few weeks, and make sure I don't spew to the more straight forward TAG players.

The best thing was taking a break last night. I could have easily grinded, but instead took the night off, and really feel refreshed after also taking Saturday off. I feel as though I'm more mentally prepared for poker tonight, especially after getting some sleep also. I'm going to grind out a fairly solid night of play tonight, and all I can say is watch NL100 on OnGame, because I'm going to be doing everything right tonight, and only need marginally good cards to make me a decent profit tonight.