In which our intrepid hero is frozen in his tracks by a nonstandard preflop line...

Okay, so I just played this hand. Villain is pretty nitty, something like 13/11 over the few hands I've seen him play so far, but I don't think that's really helpful at all. What the fuck am I supposed to make of this min3bet and then flatcall of my 4bet? The fact that villain is even capable of playing this weird min3bet/call line preflop makes me question the usefulness of logic and reason in trying to formulate the best play against him. Does he do this with AK and AQ often enough in addition to his 99-QQ to justify openshoving AK for less than pot on any flop? As usual, I have no idea. I have no idea if I played this right, I have no idea if ranged villain correctly, I have no idea how villain plays various parts of his range, and I have no idea how even to begin to figure out any of these things.

NL100 Progress

$49.45 / $1,000.00

NL100 Update

Made a few big hands and got paid off and also blundered a few times and paid other people off but the former happened a little more often than the latter and I'm up to $169.00 at NL100. I'm running pretty good but not really even enjoying it because I feel like I'm just luckboxing my wins and getting outplayed in my losses and these are fucking kiddie stakes anyway.

I'm still feeling really psychologically unstable and reacting really strongly and emotionally to every lost pot, which is really out of character for me. For example, as this was happening, my inner monologue was something like "okay, late position open and flat, I can probably squeeze here. Great, the original raiser folded, I'm definitely taking this down...wait, what the fuck is the guy who flatted on the button doing calling? Ugh whatever, this clown folds to my cbet on any flop almost always...WHAT THE FUCK is he doing calling me on this flop? His line makes no fucking sense. What the fuck is this? I have ace high, I have to check/fold but GOD I wish I there was some way I could fucking punish this fucker. Fucking dammit, what the fuck could he possibly have there? A set? Two pair? A fucking straight? Does he have an underpair that I can make him fold by firing again on the turn? Is he exploiting the shit out of me with pure air? What the fuck is this? I have no fucking clue what's going on here. What the fuck? No idea what's in his range here but my equity against is probably pretty bad so I guess have to fucking fold here. What the fuck? Fuck! FUCK!"

This is really out of character for me. I used to pride myself on my zen-like ability to absorb beats and just grind away with a placid aplomb. But recently I've been experiencing really powerful frustration and aggravation seemingly ever session. And, in a perverse negative-feedback-loop kind of way, the fact that I'm tilting is further tilting me because it makes me feel worse about myself because I've lost the ability not to tilt.

NL100 Progress

$169.00 / $1,000.00

Welcome Back to NL100

I found some amazing fish this morning and stacked him and ended up $160ish in the black - 16% of the way there, hell yes, let's go. But just now I sat at a couple of Rush tables for happy hour and this happened and then this happened and it made me feel pretty bad. But whatever, just coolers. I think I played them fine.

I've been noticing that recently I've been teetering on the precipice of doing something that I almost never do, which is tilt at the tables to such an extent that it affects my play. I think of myself as being pretty solid when it comes to keeping my feelings of despondency from interfering with my play, but after those two hands happened, right as I was beginning to feel some hope that maybe I was going to be able to string together a few winning sessions after the downswing of my life, I actually felt a physical sensation, a sort of smoldering discomfort in my upper abdomen, and I came pretty close to falling apart.

Even when (I think) I'm playing well, I just can't manage to win. I understand intellectually that the nature of poker is that frequently you can do everything right and still lose, but I've just been losing for so long and I feel so dejected and hopeless that I can't use that intellectual understand to salve the frustration of cooler after cooler. I feel like a little kid being punished for doing something that nobody explained to him was wrong.

NL100 Progress

$5.25 / $1000.00

Strategic Retreat

Well, I crashed through my stoploss for 1/2 and, like a good little boy, I've moved down to NL100 to lick my wounds. After I make 10 buyins at this level, I'll try to move back up. It's pretty miserable to look back and see that at the beginning of the year, I was up $3,000, and that in the intervening time I've somehow managed to bleed it all back, then go on another hot streak and win another $2,000 and then lose that all back too.

Moving down sucks a fat smegma-encrusted dick for the following reasons:

1. My reward for stacking someone is only $100, half as much as it is at 1/2.
2. The standard preflop raise sizes and pot sizes are tiny compared to what I'm used to at 1/2, making me feel like I'm playing kiddy stakes.
3. Rakeback accumulates and bonus clears at half the rate it did at 1/2. (Incidentally, Full Tilt finally credited my account with the rest of my deposit bonus and I've started working on clearing it.) Additionally, Iron Man is twice as hard to clear every day.
4. Even if I run good, it's going to take for fucking ever to dig myself out of this hole with my upside potential cut in half and I feel like it's going to be a fucking eternity before I claw back up to the stakes where I feel I belong.

I don't know how different NL100 and 1/2 really are. I'm terrified that they aren't really that different at all and all of the things that I'm doing that caused me to lose at 1/2 will cause me to continue to lose at NL100. On the other hand, I'm also kind of terrified that they are different and that I'm only good enough to beat NL100 and I'm going to be stuck here taking unsuccessful shots for the rest of my pathetic poker career.

I've been feeling pretty lost when I've been trying to think about poker recently. I feel like I have all of the analytical tools and a solid framework within which to analyze situations, but somehow lack the experience or mental acuity to be able to make this analytical framework useful in practice. I know that if I can just examine villain's actions thus far and put him on a range of hands and figure my showdown and fold equity against his range and act to maximize my total expectation, I should win in the long run. But when I'm actually sitting at a table and I 3bet from the blinds and get flatted and cbet with missed overcards on a T84 flop and get flatted again, I have no idea what percent of villains range consists of 88, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ, J9, 97, 65, AT, A8, T8, 77, 66, 55, 44, etc. etc. etc. I don't know how many times he opens and flats a 3bet when he's holding these. Furthermore, I have no idea how often he folds any of these to a 2nd barrel or how often he shoves over with any of this when I fire more than half my stack on a blank turn.

Even when I'm sitting down after a session is over and looking at a hand and stoving ranges, I don't know how many hand combinations to include. And even when I eventually decide on some reasonable-seeming range, the equity result is totally nonobvious. I have no idea how I'm supposed to estimate these things with any degree of confidence in the 25 seconds I have at the table. I don't consider myself particularly bad at math, but I feel like I'm miles away from being able to do this. Is this something that comes with experience? Are some people just able to do it naturally? I have no idea how anyone does this, unless they're some sort of Phil Galfond-like savant. The seeming impossibility of doing this makes me think there must be some heuristic tricks or shortcuts to simplify this analysis, but what are they?

I feel like all good poker players are in on some sort of secret to which I'm not privy, and it might not even have anything to do with whatever arcane secrets Cole South uses to deduce villains ranges accurately and compute equities in his head. I wish I knew what good players know that I don't. I wish I knew even how to find out what they know and I don't.

I constantly hear stories about people who deposited $200 on PokerStars and ran it up to $20,000 in six months. Moving down right now is especially psychologically crushing because I feel like I was so close to achieving that sick dream. I went on a $3,000 tear right as I took a shot at 1/2 and I feel like I was on the cusp of achieving critical mass and going on a nuclear explosion for five figs and becoming the next rags-to-riches Poker Idol hero all-star. But I just can't seem to put it together - I just don't seem to have whatever it is those amazing players have. Hope I can find it at NL100!!! Fuck this whore earth.

I just played another 1,681-hand session and lost $573.15. Poker is going badly. The rest of my life is also a fucking mess. I hate everything and want to die.

Getting Owned All Over

Just played a two-hour session and played four hands that have me reeling in disgust and vicious self-doubt.

Hand #1

After villain bet and called my checkraise on the flop, I had him on exactly 99-QQ. So when the A falls on the turn I think it's perfect for me to shove for a little more than pot. Welp, villain shows up with the nuts. Seeya later, $316.

I have a lot of trouble playing the flop out of position in 3bet pots where I hold missed overcards. The fact that we are 150bb deep here makes it even harder to range villain accurately, and it turned out that he was indeed smart enough to widen his range to include implied odds hands like 6h4h. Since I thought his call preflop and bet/call on the flop meant a weak overpair, my thought was to use the deep stacks to my advantage to put a lot of pressure on him on the turn since I'd shown nothing but extreme strength in the entire hand up until that point. Unfortunately I neglected to take into account the possibility that he had some sort of implied odds hand that made the nuts.

Actually, in retrospect I don't think it's likely he has a set, since I think he tries to get it in on the flop with his sets because the board is suited and connected and my range potentially includes hands that have decent equity against a set. But even so, I think there's a pretty good chance that my line is just awful anyway. Basically, when I take my line, I'm counting on him (1) holding 99-QQ, (2) being willing to put me on a higher overpair or AK, and (3) being willing to fold to a shove when the A falls on the turn. I don't think all of these things conditions are satisfied very often. But honestly, I have no fucking clue. I feel like I know nothing about poker right now.

Hand #2

Again, this is a situation where I'm out of position in a huge pot with missed overcards on the flop. When villain 3bets and calls my 4bet, I have him on 99-QQ and AK, and I feel like I can make him fold by shoving for a little more than pot on this flop and representing KK+. Of course he doesn't believe me and snaps me off with JJ. Seeya later, $219.

No idea what to do here. Check/fold? Bet half pot and fold to a shove getting 5:1? Massively overshove pre? How the hell am I supposed to play this?

Hand #3

Here I call pre because I think I'm getting good implied odds against an UTG raiser. I flop a 15-outer and I raise on the flop because I like to build a big pot to win when I hit and also lay claim to fold equity, both immediately and for later streets. I brick the turn but still have decent equity so I bet enough to let me shove on the river. Of course I brick the river too but my plan was to shove so I follow through and shove. Villain tanks and calls with 2 seconds left in his time bank and obviously he has AA. Seeya later, $203.

Again, I vastly overestimate my fold equity on this board. My range when I shove the river looks like a set or a missed draw and nobody will ever believe that I have a set. (And yet, somehow, it seems like nobody ever pays me off when I actually do have one either. Selective memory, I guess.)

No idea what I'm supposed to do here. Checking behind might be okay if I don't think I have any fold equity at all, which could easily be the case, but it gives him a free showdown and surrenders a big pot to his weak pairs that he could have kept. I could maybe make some tiny bet of 1/4 pot to fold out any missed draws that he might have and possibly scare off some of his weak pairs. That seems easily exploited by anyone good enough to see what it means and shove over it, but will people do that? I don't even know, and that's such a crippling problem. I have no idea how I'm supposed to play this hand and all of my analytical methods are coming up short because I don't know how villains play certain parts of their ranges or even what their ranges include.

Hand #4

Unlike the other hands, this is one where I at least have some idea of what my errors might be. On the flop, my options should be either flatting to keep the pot small with my medium-strength hand or raising more to deny odds to draws. On the turn, there is a very strong argument to be made for a fold. Bet/call on the flop and check/raise on the turn is just such a bizarre line and I'm so confused about what to do, but it seems like in general people only ever do shit like this with the nuts. But it's just so weird and I have no idea what it means and I have omg top pair so I call. I make two pair on the river and I justify calling again to myself by telling myself that I'm ahead of K3 and possibly some AK he would play like this and all of his bluffs. Obviously he shows up with 33 that he held onto on the flop and filled on the turn. Seeya later, $198.

Calling my raise on the flop with 33 seems terrible in general, but against me, it might not be bad overall because my inability to fold against his weird out-of-nowhere aggressive line on the turn and river after he gets there is laying him sick implied odds. Is he bluffing rarely enough that I should fold on the turn getting 3.5:1 or on the river with top two pair getting nearly 3:1?

I feel like I've just played so many massive pots recently without having any idea if I'm playing them right. I was up $2,000 at one point this month and now I've lost it all and I'm barely even for the month. I've crept back within four buyins of my 1/2 stoploss. I'm also massively stressed out over my situation trying to cash out out Cake and not knowing whether or not $6,600 has been stolen from me. My sleep schedule has been fucked recently and I've missed tons of class and my academic life is falling apart like it does every semester. And I just spent my 23rd consecutive Valentine's Day alone. I wish life would stop owning me.

How NOT to Bluff Checkraise the River

Just played this atrocity of a hand. River seems like a pretty obvious check/fold and even the flop is arguably a fold against this TAGgish villain with nit tendencies. But since I am a poker genius, I decide to turn top pair/top kicker into a bluff on the river. Villain valuebets enough to allow me to shove for more than the pot and I somehow convince myself that I can make him fold his AT, sets, and weak flushes if I do so. Obviously, I get snapped off by TT - seeya later, $322!

My thought process is absurd. Nobody is ever folding a set or a weak flush here. The only hands villains folds are the ones I'm already beating, and possibly AT, and there are very very few of those in his range (he maybe, MAYBE takes this line with an ace and the queen or jack of diamonds) compared to sets and flushes. I need to be making this play for value only, and only when I actually have the nuts. But obviously, the next time that happens, villain will fold and show the second nut flush.

I can't believe that after all this time, I still have this much trouble folding TPTK in the face of sustained aggression. You would think that after this much time, I'd have made some progress on this front, but it seems like I'm just discovered new and even more insane ways to avoid folding. I don't understand why it's so hard for me to just get away from these hands. I absolutely have to find some way to start doing so.