So I had another down night... -$300 over I dunno 1000 hands or something. I'm getting very frustrated with myself, as I find myself making poor plays and then getting sucked out on. I had 1 2-outer, 1 3-outer, 1 4-outer and 2 5-outers in various sized pots ranging from $75ish to $500ish. Add to that some donk plays like trying to bluff some guy who tricked me by slowplaying AA preflop (and of course, no one can get away from AA postflop after they slowplayed preflop!!!111oneone Right?!?!?!!111eleven).

So what am I feeling right now...primarily disappointment.

Disappointment in myself for playing poorly and allowing the suckouts to affect me mentally and my personal life. Not so much that I'm ready to jump off a cliff for losing a grand after just moving up in stakes, but more just finding myself truly annoyed and bothered by self imposed criticism. Losing myself in the cards and my play, and allowing a combination of how I play and the results I get to be a reflection of my self worth. That's pretty sad stuff when a leisure activity becomes something that induces feelings of stupidity. Seriously, WTF. Snap out of it already. Of course, anyone that knows me at all is well aware that I consider poker much more than a leisure activity. Hell, I actually had pipe dreams of this game becoming a significant part of my yearly income...maybe even allowing me to get a leg up on retirement someday...

Disappointment in the "poker gods" for my piss poor luck of late and Worthlessness for failing (over the last 17k hands or so) at something that I thought I was good at, Stubornness for not moving back down to the $200s yet...I'm sure there are some others. This is quite a learning experience about who I am and what sort of competitor this has made me. I've been trying to find ways to teach myself lessons... but I also fail miserably. For example, I broke the cardinal rule on Sunday while playing online... I berated a fish. The background of the hand was that he raised on the button and I flopped top set on an 7 4 5 board. It happened he raised PF with QT for the flopped flush... my set still has 35% equity in this spot, I got all in on the flop and managed to hit a 4 on the turn for the boat. He went off at his horrible luck and made a comment about my play, and I lost it. I made snyde comments such as "oh yeah how could I possibly want to get all in with top set against a preflop raiser. how dare I get all in with at worst 35% equity. At this point, he started arguing with me about how much equity I had on the flop...etc. Basically I fell into the trap idiots fall into... not only did I let my bad run affect me to the point that I was on edge in general, but I allowed a far worse player's opinion actually affect me...as if what he says makes any difference at all. The old Aaron would have simply typed in "yeah, I sure got lucky that time, sorry bud things will turn around for you". The new, running like shit Aaron, went on the above tirade. I think that says something about the person I've become through this poor run. If you want to look at the positive, I guess you could say that it's good that I at least recognize that I was being a douche bag...of course, that recognition doesn't change the fact that I was being a douche bag...

So what am I going to do to solve all this? Well first of all I'm going to certainly revert back to "old Aaron" and stop myself from saying anything except friendly remarks to the fish at my table...anything else is inexcusable. Secondly, I'm already in talks with BobboFitos (well respected 2+2'er) to do some poker coaching...I'd like to get his insight and fix some mistakes that I've been making as well as learn how to better approach the game from a person who is a winner at small-high stakes online NL...Hopefully that will start up this week. For a long time I've wanted to find someone who I really felt like had a significant knowledge edge compared to me, and become their friend...I had an opportunity at this with an internet pro I met via 2+2 in KC... unfortunately for whatever reason, we didn't really hit it off or he wasn't too interested in gaining a new friend. He is still, IMO, one of the best thinkers on 2+2 and I always search out his posts. It's too bad something couldn't have spawned there. Until some poker pro wants to take me under their wing, I'll have to settle for BobboFitos' rent-a-friend at $75 per hour.

Maybe I'll try limit myself to playing 2 tables at once instead of 4, and concentrate hard on every single play. this would probably do me some good anyway, even if it would take longer to get unstuck... I need to keep in mind that it's not a race, and even if I'm losing, it's money lost that was already won...it's not like I'm going hungry or anything...of course the feelings of failure is what stings so much worse than the money.