Brutal day yesterday

Yesterday was among the most brutal days of my life, 2000 hands of pure torture in which I dropped a disgusting $1,566 over two sessions. Some examples of how it was lost.

Idiot limp-calls from EP with K9s, flops the second nuts against my set of queens. Sick but it happens.

Set vs. TPTK. This is a tough one to get away from, but I probably should have. Not much he can show up with after that raise but a set. At the same time, I fail to understand why he pushes this dry board with such a strong hand. I gave him atrocious set mining odds in any case.

QQ turned big bluff, fails. Opponent is a good reg and I had him on AK when he called the flop bet. I really don't like his call of the all-in here. I show up with this sort of bluff maybe 5% of the time, and my hand screams AA-KK. At best, most of the time, I think he's praying for a chop, but it's a hard hand to get away from, and maybe he realized I was getting frustrated and figured the hand was set up for FE. He used up a lot of his time bank making the call and I was convinced he was folding.

Ugly 3-card race hand. Opponent is a reg that is a bit of an FPS donk and his 3bet range from the blinds here is massive. I'm tempted to 4bet AIPF, as I feel he's going the distance with 88-TT and AJ a ton here, but my committing 4bet pre is fine too. Flop bet is mandatory; if I check he pushes me off with a ton of worse hands on the turn, from 88-TT and QK. Unlucky.

Ugly AA vs. KK hand. Opponent was good and very aggressive and so it's hard to contemplate getting away from this one. I didn't expect a smooth-call with KK and felt he was on AK the whole time. In my defense in stacking off, I'm pretty damn sure he stacks off to me with the exact same action if the board is, say, Q high. His smooth-call on the flop was probably made with the intent of getting it in. Maybe I bet/fold the turn and don't lose it all, and there's some frustration setting in, but it's hard to imagine. This hand tilted me hard and I immediately left all of my tables after an $1,100 loss, but then lost $500 more later in a night session.

This one is just fucking disgusting. C-bet turned semibluff turned pure bluff, figuring him for a naked As or maybe some pair. The thought that he would call off his stack with AQo on this board, with no spade, totally blew my mind. I'm pretty sure the note I made on this opponent after this hand was "DNB DNB DNB DNB DNB DNB DNB". Ironically I would have abandoned the bluff had a spade come, which was the only way I was taking this hand down.

Preflop call with 5Jo is standard, right?. Double-dominated hand catches a miracle flop. I stacked off eagerly here, figuring I'm facing 66-TT against this player a ton in this position, and there just wasn't much beating me. Except for 5Jo, obviously.

Standard to stack off with bottom pair and a 3-high one-card flush draw, right?. This villain put the superfish in "superfish" and thankfully gave all this and more back in later hands. He literally could not be pushed off of any pair, and I had some sick valuetown hands later. Unfortunately that means suckouts, too.

Here's one of my valuetown hands. Against the average player I'd be scared shitless when he called that turn bet, particularly deep-stacked. Here I was praying for a call. Chances are pretty good he had 96o.

Here's another one. Ordinarily that river value bet would be different. Interestingly, the player on my left kept insulting the guy and hurling racial slurs about. Interestingly enough, he was every bit as bad a player as this other guy.

Anyway, you get the idea. Those were the big, major hands, and the problem is that there are no hands where I'm stacking people to offset them. I couldn't catch a break, and while there are definitely some marginal spots, and a couple of hands I probably should have gotten away from, my play wasn't THAT terrible.

Nevertheless this is a pretty serious blow to my bankroll, and while I'm only down $500 for the month with it, and I'm still technically rolled for NL200, I think I'm going to step down to NL100 to get some of my confidence back.

I'm also taking the rest of the weekend off, with the exception of the Iron Man freeroll, and the FTOPS #9 event that I won entrance to with a satellite (hey, a good cash there could make me completely forget this loss). I just feel a bit shell-shocked and wouldn't be playing my A game. Days like this are rougher than I imagined, but I'll stick through them.