I'm a 5/10 Fish.

Recently I've been keeping a fish list. I've been finding awful players, and I've been sitting on there tables hoping that they'll spew money to me. Well on Thursday night, there was this fish on 3/6nl that decided to chase his losses in 5/10, and since I was sorta on a semi-heater before this, I decided to go up as well. I closed up a lot of my other tables, and decided to just 3-4 table 5/10nl. I promised myself that if I got outplayed or started losing a lot of money, I'd have a 3 buyin stop loss, and stop playing. Below are some of my hands.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638798
Here is one of the pots, I knew that he was bluffing here. This guy was so donkishly aggro that my hand was hovering over the call button to snap call. Here I'm a 85/15 favorite.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638804
Here I cold called in the small blind because the sb is a super donk who had been 3 betting and 4 betting in 80% of pots. So I knew he was going to squeeze.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638826
A cooler.

Well I knew that I was going to quit, but I rationalized that it was all bad luck, and that I was still +EV on my tables since there were so much fish. Well, I then lost some more money to this 45/35 fish that was the one 3/4 betting every other pot. Just to set this up, let me show you a couple of his hands.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638841
He puts it in with 200bb with QJo. This was after everybody knew that he was just a complete donk.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638853
I don't even know what to say.

Here are some of my hands against him.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638874
I'm folding TT never. Too bad I lose a coin flip.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638880
This hand, I'm sort of on the fence. Here after he raised my cbet, I was unsure about either CC or just going with the hand. If I reraised, I was comitting myself to the pot, and I had to decide whether or not I was going with the hand. If I cold called, I could potentially get him to bluff again on the turn, however, if an overcard came I would be in a really hard spot, because he could have some hand like K7, Q7, K2, or any hands that he's reraising here with air could have overcards in his range. I already decided that he didn't have any PP higher than mine because 100% of the time, he would have repopped me preflop. So I decided to try and take it down there, or hope he gets it all in with a pair of 77s, there are also a lot of straight draws that are in his range. One problem perhaps is that there is no flush draw possible, so he's semi-bluffing a lot less here. But he was a super donk, so at the time I was more than happy getting it in.

Even after all this, I still decided to stay on the table. I rationalized to myself that eventually things will turn around. I should realize that when I think like this, I'm obviously not playing my A game. I then get into a lot of sick pots where people turn two pair on me on the turn or the river, or I call with trips with a weak kicker while the other person has the higher kicker or has the boat. Though, I think that in a lot of these pots, I should have been able to find a fold. They were against regulars, and I know that they weren't bluffing. But I resorted to thinking, "ehhh, I have trips, I'm not sure what you have, I call." This is just horrible, horrible play on my part, especially at 5/10nl.
I then try a lot of stupid bluffs and people call me down pretty light. I didn't take into account me image at the table. I should have remembered something that Green Plastic always preaches. He says that when you're losing a lot of money on the table, you should be willing to try even less moves because you don't get as much respect on the table and people expect you to be bluffing. Which is 100% true. Here are a couple bluffs that I tried, that may have worked in other situations, but obviously not then.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1638984
Here, the more I think about it, the more I dislike his call. I don't know though. He may have thought that since he induced the bluff, he has to call, but I don't know. I called the flop bet with the intention of bluffing later. So after he checks the turn, I discounted any ace from his range, because I've been playing it like a draw, because he should protect his hand, and should try to extract value from any K. So I bet trying to push him off any PP like QQ, JJ, and so on. But he calls, and then the flush hits on the river. After he checks again, I decided that since I did play it like a flush draw, I might as well represent the flush. So I bet again. Obviously he calls.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1639010
Here I don't know. Does this really look like a bluff? I'm not sure about this. I guess because he check/calls all THREE streets, he's probably going to call more than not. This may have been a stupid bluff to pull. I just felt that he was weak, and that's why I bluffed, especially on the river. Now that I think about it, the river was probably a bad spot to try and pull a bluff. I've heard a couple people say that you shouldn't really be pulling bluffs when you're timing down because people give you less credit. I never really believed that, because people may be multi-tabling, but perhaps this was one of those times where he calls because I had to think a long time about this. I guess it makes sense now. I need to keep this in mind.

But since I lost 10 buyins in 5/10nl, I've been putting in an insane amount of hands to try and make up for my spew. I have made back $5,000 and at least I'm up for the month again. But this was probably the worst time for me to have a spew off downswing. Whenever I go on a massive downswing, I just can't think of anything else, but pulling myself out of my swing. I feel so bad and stupid that I'm consumed with the feeling of grinding to pull myself out of my swing. I've played for about 34 hours including my downswing on Thursday. I was going to study and go out with my buddies this weekend, but accomplished none of that because of my stupid shot. I have an exam on Tuesday that is going to be very very hard. Hopefully I don't fail my class because of my retardedness. But below is my stats for my poker sessions and my EV graph for all pots that went to showdown.



At my worst, I was running about $10,000 under expectation. Right now, I'm still about $6,500 under expectation. Although I felt pretty gross after my $5/10 debacle, I really feel that I've learnt a bunch in that brief foray. Since I was only 2-4 tabling, and I haven't done this in a while, I was picking up on a lot of things. I've felt that my game has really improved and I feel a lot better about my hand reading abilities. Because of this, I'm much much more comfortable now in $3/6 as well. I feel quite confident about my $3/6nl game and I'm actually looking forward to taking another shot at $5/10nl. Hopefully this time, though, I won't tilt, and I will have better results. Lets face it, I am results orientated.