Secrets of the Amateurs

Well not really. But I have been tilting more than I should lately (which is at all). What tilts me is when I know on some level that my opponent has a big hand but go ahead and call (or even worse raise) anyway with some bogus justification about "not being exploited" because I have a decent hand too. The fact is that when some random on a Euro network makes a play in a certain pattern (I'm not going to say what these patterns are for obvious reasons :)), he's not carrying out a super-subtle double bluff, he just has it. A year ago I would just pay him off, go "ZOMG, cooler" and forget about it. Now I have been putting a lot of volume in (especially this month) I can see it happening but I can't find the discipline to fold. So I swear at the other guy (verbally not in the chat box) for being such a donk when I'm actually angry at myself.

What I need to do is find it in myself to say "Thanks for letting me know you have a monster when you get all the money if you play it normally - fold". If someone really is making these plays without the goods then it doesn't take long for this to become obvious - often before you've even got involved with them yourself. It's definitely best to give them credit the first time and make a note. I think it was Goldfinger who said "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action". Not a bad metric to use.

Anyway, until I can master the tilt-tasticness I'm going to cut down to 6 tables. Pruning out the three tables I know I have lowest expectation in anyway doesn't cost much. I'm also going to try to avoid the type of game that I know tilts me more, including heads up tournaments and super satellites. I don't play a lot of supers but I did try an Irish Open satellite on Boyle last night which I managed to bubble. I still picked up E2100 so it wasn't all bad but I was really kicking myself afterwards because at least twice I had a big enough stack to switch off, go to bed and still win the seat for sure. Once again I found myself railing at the other players (at the time) when I only had myself to blame really. Still, maybe if I kicked myself as hard all the times I donk out of a regular tournament when someone is shouting "big hand ! I have a big hand here !" at the top of their voice I might stop doing that too.

Despite all that I'm $10K up this month ($40K in $50K out). $40K is great volume in basically three weeks, as it happens that's about it for February as I'm very busy this week and then off on holiday for a week from Saturday, but it's all good.

Update : Chopped on Full Tilt for $14K so yeah, that seemed to work :)