Tell me why I don't like losses?

I don’t like losing but I actually find it much easier to write about losses than wins: writing about wins sounds too much like bragging. Also, I find that the review of losses is very useful, helping me deal with them from an emotional standpoint as well as help prevent me from making similar mistakes in the future. As much as I realise these things happen, I thought it would be good for me to spend a little time putting down my thoughts on paper, as well as review where the money went.

After a good day on Monday where I won about $450 I ran into a downturn. Tuesday’s losses wiped out Monday’s gains and I lost a further $850+ on Wednesday.

It started to go wrong when I continued playing on a table where 4 of the other 5 players were tight and aggressive. I had been raising a lot of pots and taking most of the ones I raised without a fight. Obviously these are only small pots and the problem here is that these opponents don’t call pre-flop: they re-raise mostly and so you are forced to either fold or put a decent chunk in with a marginal hand at best. Instead of leaving the table and looking for looser opponents I continued playing. TAGs generally play by formula: by which I mean they don’t make major adjustments for how their opponents are playing. If they re-raise your button raise from the big blind they don’t have A9, they likely have a 10,10+ or AQ+.

One of the TAGs in early position raised to $14 and I re-raised on his left to $42 with JJ. He then re-raised to $125 and I managed to convince myself that he had opened up his 4-betting range to combat my loose-aggressive play. Despite the fact that I had been raising a lot, JJ was the best hand I had seen for a while and I decided that I wasn’t going to fold it. I went all-in for $406 and he snap-called with KK. The now-obvious problem here was that he had not adjusted to the way I was playing and so I should have easily folded my hand. Then I should have left the table, as not only was it not a good set-up, but after folding to a 4-bet my image would then have been that of a bully who cant stand up to being pushed back.

That was the only major poor play on Tuesday but there were a couple of other smaller ones and no good ones of any value.

Wednesday was much worse:

Again I was on a table with mostly TAGs, and so was raising a lot of pots, winning most uncontested. I raised in middle position with K9 and was called on the button by one of the slightly looser TAGs. I bet the 10-high flop, to ‘prevent the flush draw from getting a free card’. Then I checked the Q on the turn which completed the flush. The button checked behind and I decided to fire on the river, another Q, for $64. This bet made no sense at all. If I had the flush or a Queen surely I would have bet something on the turn. He sniffed out the bluff and called with A10.

Even worse was to follow. I raised with K8s in late position and was re-raised from the big blind by a TAG. I had mostly folded when re-raised, something that had started to happen more and more, so maybe the others were starting to react to my constant raising. This time I decided to call and make a move on the flop. The flop came 422 and he bet out for $60 (about 2/3) of the pot, and I went all-in for $190. He couldn’t call quick enough with KK, leaving me drawing almost dead.

Fifteen minutes later on another table, the same TAG raised to $16 in early position and I re-popped him from the big blind with KK. I lead out on the Q-high flop and he raised me all-in, which I happily called for just over $200 total. He had AA: nice hand, again.

After a break I came back to the tables later on, and my first hand of major consequence came after I had aggressively more than doubled my starting stack to $432 without showing down a hand. I raised in early position to $16 and was re-raised to $48 by yet another TAG. This time I just called, looking for a non-Ace flop to commit; this despite the very real possibility that he held the Aces. I check-raised all-in on the 965 flop and he was happy to call with AA.

By this time I was starting to get a bit annoyed. I looked back at my stats and noted that I had ran KK into AA only 5 times previously in about 7 months of play, only for it to happen twice on the same day. On the plus side, I had held AA against KK five times so far since I started maintaining this blog, so you just have to accept it as one of those things.

I managed to actually get a couple of decent wins under my belt and was starting to feel a bit more confident. After all, my losses weren’t huge despite the KK v AA occurrences and some other ropey decision-making. However, the evening session ended on a sour note.

I had had a brief scuffle with another loose aggressive player and had got the better of him so far. Then I re-raised him with K9 and he called with what turned out to be J9. I flopped pretty good, with KT7 and made a near-pot-sized bet which he called. Then when a Q hit the turn I set him all-in for slightly more than the pot, figuring that even if he hit a gutshot I didn’t mind as I had made him pay substantially for it. Obviously, as it turns out he had a double-belly-buster so his post-flop play was fine.

There was just time for one more bad play, as low stacked ($144) I decided that 88 was good enough to go to the felt, following a pre-flop raise and 2 callers, with a board showing QT4,Q. My opponent held JT and decided correctly that I was playing badly enough to put my money in with a hand he could beat.

That was the last straw and I decided that I would have to call it a day there. A poor day it has to be said.

So, after three days, I have managed to lose over $800 this week. Although not a disaster I am a bit annoyed that I have made some plays that I knew (or felt) were probably wrong at the time that I made them. This didn’t stop me from making these plays, which shows a poor discipline.

Having said all this, there are some positives.

I had a great week last week when most of my decisions turned out well. Obviously there is an element of regression to the mean here. By that I mean that if my bluff-raises were correct 90% of the time, last week I got away with all of them but this week I got caught a few times, resulting in an over-all success rate of 90%: still pretty good.

My radar is working OK, but I need to learn to trust it a bit more. I sensed I was up against big hands a number of times: notably the JJ v KK, the K8s v KK, the 2nd KK v AA. I think I could have folded the JJ and definitely should have given up on the K8 hand. As for the KK v AA, that’s just bad luck, end of story.

There were a couple of times I out-played the TAGs and won decent pots with nothing. One time I called with a straight draw on an Ace-high flop with flush potential. When the flush card came on the turn I raised the TAGs weak lead bet and followed through to make him fold the river.

Despite losing I still enjoyed the challenge of the last couple of days and feel as though the review process has helped me improve my knowledge of self as well as my opponent- and situation-reading skills. Also, I shouldn’t really grumble as I have managed to maintain a win rate of over $50 per hour since May 29 2007.

Here’s hoping that the cards are a bit nicer to me in the coming days. Although, the bottom line is this: whatever you get dealt, you need to play those cards and that situation to the best of your ability. Only then can you hope to be a winner.