Fed up

I'm about as even-tempered, take-it-in-stride a person as you're likely to meet. Still, I've always known that I have a breaking point, but I was never sure what it would take to get there.

Well, now I know.

Last night I finished up at the Stratosphere by being dealt the only big pocket pair I had seen all night: K-K. When I tell you that all the money went in pre-flop, you'll be able to guess that I was up against the only hand I did not want to see, and that it did not turn out well.

Tonight I played at Imperial Palace. I got into a hole early on, but then got moved to a new table where everything seemed to click just right, and within about ten minutes I was out of the hole and up about $50 on my $300 buy-in. I felt ready to carry the momentum on and score a nice, big, fat W for the record books.

The poker gods apparently had other plans. A series of three hands did me in. In the first, I flopped top two pair and lost to a flopped set. $100 down the drain. In the second, I was ahead all the way until he caught his gutshot straight draw on the river. Another $100 went bye-bye.

The third was the most brutal. I was in the cutoff and joined a bunch of limpers with my Ad-5d. The small blind raised to $12. I called along with a few others. This woman had been at my first table before it broke and we both moved to this second one, so I had been playing with her for roughly three hours and thought I had a good feel for her game.

The flop was a near-perfect one for me: 2c-3d-4d. I had a straight, the nut flush draw, and even a gutshot straight-flush draw.

The raiser bet $50. I thought she most likely had a big pair and was making this pot-sized bet to discourage others from drawing at the flush or somebody with a mediocre ace hitting a 5 for the wheel. It folded around to me. I thought that if she had a big pair other than aces, she might find a fold if I moved all in, since she had seen me show a string of pretty solid hands through the night. So I pulled out one of my rarely-used tools: the min-raise. I made it $100, hoping that she would find that irresistible. I guess she did, because she moved all in. I called, obviously. Our stacks were nearly equal, but it turned out that I had her covered by $12.

I showed my cards immediately. She did not. I don't remember what the turn was, but the river was a fairly harmless-looking black 4. But harmless it was not. At that point, she revealed her hole cards: 3-4. She had flopped two pair and rivered the boat.

I took my last $12 and left.

Two consecutive sessions ending up this way would be enough to annoy me for a little while, but I would ordinarily take a day off from playing, and by the next day be rarin' to go again. This is different. These are coming as just the latest in a series of such sessions, combining coolers and suckouts in a seemingly endless succession. March was my second-worst month ever, and April so far is ahead of even that pace. I've had four weeks in a row of net losses, and five of the last seven, and the two exceptions were both trivial positive amounts. It is, by far, my longest and deepest losing streak ever.

As far as I can tell, no more than about 20% of it is due to bad play on my part. Of course, it may be that I'm completely deluded about that, I completely suck at poker, and it is finally being made manifest. I don't think that's the case, but it's awfully hard to be objective about it. I can't tell that I'm playing any different than I did before.

But whatever the cause, it has finally gotten to me. I can't do it any more. I can't take it either financially or emotionally. I have tried playing tight, playing loose, playing passively, and playing aggressively, and it seems not to matter one little bit--the results are the same no matter what. The only way I can think of to stop the losing at this point is to stop playing. I don't know for how long. I'm not throwing in the towel forever, but I need a serious break to see if I can get my head clear and regain some modicum of desire to play again, which at the moment is utterly depleted.

I feel like Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke," in the boxing scene with George Kennedy. I've taken the punches, fallen down, and stood back up as many times as I'm capable of, and now all I can do is give in and collapse in a heap.

As a result, it's likely that I won't post much for a while, either. This has sapped my interest in writing about poker as much as my interest in playing it.

I'll keep playing at least a little bit online. For me, playing online is a completely different experience from my bread-and-butter live games. Also, I just received notice that I'm invited to participate in the "invitational" portion of the Full Tilt Poker "Battle of the Blogger Tournaments," an honor and opportunity too great to pass up. But as for live play, don't expect to see me at the tables anytime soon.

I can anticipate that many of you good people will be feeling an urge to click the "comment" button and send some encouraging words my way, or share your own tales of poker woe. I appreciate the good intentions, but please don't. This has fully brought out my anti-social, misanthropic inner self, and such messages would just tend to annoy me further. I really just want to be left alone.