ups and downs (mainly downs)

I played quite heavily this weekend, playing on both Friday evening and most of Saturday. Well, actually I'll revise that. I played poker on Saturday, on Friday I just sat in front of the computer and doled out money to anyone that asked.

I basically did everything it's possible to do wrong on Friday; I played with lots of distractions around (the window was open because it was warm and so the television was on ridiculously loud to drown out the noise of the city); I called big raises when I should have read from the board the danger I was in, twice I ran a Ace-high flush right into the jaws of a full house; when I did win it was for tiny amounts because I fluffed the betting; I allowed myself to get frustrated and into the mentality of 'winning my money back' with the consequence that I played on far past the point I was enjoying myself and just dribbled away further money.

So, pretty much an unqualified disaster, losing me $4.74 and putting me way down for July but more importantly erasing all of my previous profits and putting me in loss. It's only $0.64 down at the moment, but it's still a little disheartening.

Saturday I decided to try something different, and entered a couple of the Rookie Freerolls. It was my first time playing tournaments and it's very much a different game to the cash tables. I played three tourneys, each with just over a thousand entrants, placing 143rd, 743rd and 265th respectively. The relatively poor performance in the 2nd tourney came from being on a very aggressive table at the beginning. To survive it I really tightened up, but I didn't hit any 1st tier hands and so when I was moved to a new table full of big stackers I got flattened.
Although I placed lower in the 3rd tournament, I thought I played it very well. A couple of problems I've mentioned before is that I don't take notice of people's stack sizes when betting against them and that I'm far too reserved with betting when I'm ahead. With a tournament it's ALL about stack sizes and I felt it played well terrorising the small stacks and going all-in against big stacks when I had the nuts. I think I could've gone much further, but it was getting late and so I started playing like I didn't care if I got eliminated, which was true, and lucrative until I went all-in against someone with AA...

I'm hoping I'll be able to bring some of that back to the cash game tables, although I've got to be conscious that they're a very different game!

This month's total: -$4.34