Take it Easy

Hope the Holidays are going well for everyone. I'm one of those poor schlubs who is actually at work between Christmas and New Year's, mostly because work is dead during the time, so I leave the vacations to those with kids and such.

So I'm a tool. I tossed in a few hundred bucks at Pokerstars to take advantage of their deposit bonus - not the full $600, but more than I usually drop in at one time. I lost most of it in 3 days. Granted, since I started tracking my Stars deposits, I haven't even dropped a paycheque's worth of funds in there, but it still stings to lose quickly.

What really bothers me isn't so much that I lost the cash, but that it happened stupidly. I was actually up after a couple SnG cashes and a successful ring game, and was feeling good. So on Christmas day, after the family had left and I was full with turkey and wine, I jumped into another $1/2 NLHE cash game (remember kids, wine+poker = lose money). I lost most of my post on this:

Cowboys pre-flop, LP. Raise to 3x the BB ($6) one seat before me, and I re-raise to 9x ($18), he calls quickly. Flop comes 7T9 rainbow, he checks, I put out the pot-sized bet. He says "ding!" He re-raises and I think for a second and decide it's worth it for one more card. King on the turn and I have trips. Figuring he's either on a flush draw or overs, I check.. he re-raises me all-in and says "AK no good." I ask, "how about 2 Kings?" and call. He says, "nope" and shows the freaking J8h!! Nothing comes on the river and I'm looking at my chips next to me.

Now I'm on tilt. I don't go on heavy tilt, but this hand did it. Obviously I understand his play POST flop, but who the hell calls a re-raise pre-flop that's twice what your raise was when you have J8-suited? You like the 2:1 pot odds on a suited 2-gapper? Guess I should have believed the commentary after the flop. Stupid cowboys.

Anyway, I sat for a few minutes and the bought back in... and over the course of an hour or so, donked off another max-post. I was exhausted and playing simply out of stupidity and tilt. The next day I played a couple $11 Turbo SnG's out of boredom (after the WWdN 2nd chance), and realized I was STILL tilting. Didn't play the next couple days, and probably won't play tonight... I still need to calm down. Perhaps alcohol will help... it is the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems, right?