like starting over
Went home thinking I should try $1/$2 limit yesterday. I don’t play limit that much, but I was eager for a new challenge. Couldn’t get started there, so I switched over to my standard $50NL. I had a few opponents call continuation bets with beaten hands, only to hit on the turn or river, and stick me for a bet on the end.
Well, your hero fights donk play with donk play. I loosened up considerably, didn’t back down when I was beaten, pushed all in when I knew any hand but an overpair would fold (overpairs… funny, they call), ignored reasonable bets from reasonable players… ahh, anyone else would describe it as tilt. I had never gone through anything like it in my short playing career. Actually, I had a lot of these runs right before I got "good": just trying to make something happen, pushing edges that didn’t exist.
Home audience, I donked off almost a quarter of my bankroll: maybe $150 all told. I told myself that everything I have online right now is house money (which is true), that I’m only back about a week’s progress (also true), and that with my tremendous upswing lately, I was way overdue for a dose of variance. It didn’t feel much better.
Then I moved from Party to Full Tilt, and picked up three or four nice pots, almost doubling up. For some reason, that bought back all my self-confidence. With your own swings, it’s important to have a short memory.