Fear and Loathing at the Micros

Just finished my session for the evening and told myself I would not look at my graph whilst playing. But I did. Wished I hadn't. I have a serious tilt issue. It is this:

If I lose a buy in at 2NL without winning one, I find it so difficult to get unstuck. It tilts me. Just knowing it's so damn difficult to win 1 Buy in. And it shouldn't be, right?

The games are either so tight you cannot get action or so loose, that 3 betting AA pre flop and getting called I am literally looking at the flop and trying to work out from the flop what the villain has flatted with. Whether if I c-bet it is gonna be profitable. OK that might not be entirely true but sometimes it really feels like that. So I try and try to make sure I just wait for those hands that will double me up once I am stuck, do not force it. The hand that will get me back to even. Then when it comes and you get sucked out on or a bad beat, it is impossible not to feel cheated. Feeling cheated leads to anger. Anger leads to irrationally. Irrationality leads to tilt. 

So before I know I have lost 3.5 BI's at 2NL. Which is HUGE! That is massive amount of buy in's to lose at 2NL. I am sitting there thinking to myself I am not going to be able to get to even now. Not unless I go on a heater or grind all night. So I turned the computer off and went to bed. Oh yea - course I did.

I stopped for 5 mins and I asked myself is this is what it was like at 5NL? Did every player that limped pre and called your raise, never fold to a c bet? Was a c-bet at 5NL the same as putting in your blind like it feels it is at 2NL? I was mad, but I felt calm at this point in terms of knowing how to play the proper poker I had been learning at 2NL. I wanted to see. I said to myself open some 5NL tables but play properly, don't do it if your tilting and just see how the game plays.

Does it play differently. Well I thought it did and I think it might. I might be wrong, time will tell, but I have played nearly 240K hands at 5NL and from the ultra small sample size I had tonight, I remembered that players will fold a flop, don't call a 3bet with 6Tos (all the time). 

If you look at the graphs, I think you can see me tilting at the end when playing 2NL. I think you can see me not tilting whilst playing 5NL. I might have ran well, I might have ran a little under -ev but this proves to me I played good poker.  But I didn't play anything but my new game I have developed at 2NL. And it worked. 

So what does this tell me? Well, it tells me I have some major tilt issues playing 2NL. I was shouting to my comuter "Why is every fucking player limping all the time!" It just felt like I was playing limit hold' em. I need to find a way to address. Perhaps less tables (I play 5 at the moment, perhaps 4 or 3 would help). I think it is time to turn off HEM. No more checking my graphs. Stop being graph orientated. It is not helping. 

I know I can beat 5NL, I have in the past and I liked the fact my "new" game worked nicely at 5NL tonight. But I still cannot beat or have not beat 2NL to the point where I feel ready to move up to 5NL. 

That is pretty honest statement. That is why wrtiting this blog is so cool. Cos it makes me an honest poker player, with the one person that really counts. Me. I hope this honesty will soon convert itself into $$$. At 2NL though. That is the goal. Wow - what a brutal goal.

We aare @33 BI's for 2NL.

Tonight's session at 2NL :(

Tonight's session at 5NL :)