Leave the table, moron!

When I'm playing, I'm often also thinking about what I've learned that session and what I'll say about it in these posts. On Saturday, the tone of what I was going to write changed drastically about three times. First off, it was going to be something fairly positive, since I'd played a short session, made a round $1.50 in that short time, mainly due to the generosity of a nice Dutch player called g_niels who was very fond of raising and preflop and then letting me push him off the pot postflop. The only time he was brave enough to call some fairly hefty bets by myself, he ran right into a set of Aces. Since the flop was 4,A,A and he had K4, I'm not sure quite why he did that, but I was happy to bankrupt him. So with my modest but pleasantly rounded profit I was ready to log off. Insanity follows.

I was a couple of places away from the button, so I'd just see the next hand and then leave with a nice round profit. But then, disaster! Two people sat the hand out so I was forced to be big blind. Obviously I couldn't leave with $1.46, that would be madness! So, I played a few more hands, and was down to $1.06. With the blinds approaching I could see my hand for those two and if I didn't hit anything I'd have a nice round dollar. But no, I got I decent hand on the SB, and so called a bet, only to have to fold. So now I've got less than a dollar, and I can't leave the table with that pittance. So I play some more... and end up around $3 down.

Queue the next planned post, a sober reflection on the need to quit while ahead. Luckily, again going quite badly down managed to shake me up enough to get me to focus and build myself back up again. Most of the credit for ending up in profit, though, was down to one big hand, which I'm not printing because it's on a different computer to the one I'm writing this on.
I limped into the flop with 3s,4s, and saw Qs,6h,5s. So I had outs on a 2, a 7, or any Spade. A guy, Liatch, put in a small bet, which two of us called, and then another bet on the turn. I raised, seeing if I could push him off and he called and we went to river. The river was the Ace of Spades, giving me the flush. Liatch put in a reasonable bet, and I went all-in. He must have figured it for a bluff because he didn't hesitate to call me, and to give me a very nice pay-off. I was pretty quick to leave after that, with a $1.09 profit.

So, the third tone for this post: sober reflection on need to quit while ahead, and to fear the mentality I get into just before quitting, mixed with some positives on it being the first time I've gone all-in by my own choice and got the pay-off.


SUNDAY:
I took the 'quit while ahead' approach to heart today, playing for less than half an hour and leaving $2 ahead.

This month's total: -$4.88