The Poker, It Hates Me

On the bright side, I'm running abnormally well on the casino bonus side of things, as far as the degenerate challenge goes. So no complaints there.

Poker, though, continues to kick me in the nads. I've pretty much solely been grinding on a B2B bonus at PointPoker, with some play at a few Cryptos mixed in, now that it's a new month and their monthly bonuses are available again.

I was cruising along on the poker front at PointPoker, playing lots of Soko and 7 Card Stud when I could find games, and grinding out some hands at 100 NL. Safe, slow, and methodical. Steady as she goes. I was about 90% done with the WR for the bonus and was 200 euros up, which I was more than happy with, as I'd deposited on the site when they were offering their old juicy bonus of 600 euros.

Feeling a little jiggy, I added a fifth 200 NL 6 max table and bought in for the maximum. Cue ominous music of doom. (And this is the first mistake, for you kids scoring at home. I was very much in bonus grind mode and should have stayed in it. I didn't want or need to drop 200 euros due to the whimsy of cards. I didn't really want to gamble, yet I opened up the table because I could, because I was ahead.)

It became apparent quickly that the table was pretty wild and wooly. If you haven't played a B2B site, well, they can be pretty high variance, as you can encounter absolute maniacs at times. Or drunks. Or drunk maniacs.

Normal preflop raises were in the 10-20 euro range, with 2-3 players usually seeing the flop with all sorts of cards. I don't play a hand for forever until hey, nice, AA. One of the crazies raises to 20, another calls, I make it 60, folds back to original crazy, who min-raises. Second crazy folds. I shove all-in and crazy insta-calls with Q2o. And proceeds to flop a 2 and turn a Q and IGNH.

Reload. I can't say I was happy but I wasn't really tilty. I should have just quit, though, as I really didn't want to be involved in this sort of game, giving my whole goal with just playing to grind out the bonus at relatively low-risk tables, at non-HE games.

Literally two hands later I get it all-in pre-flop with the same crazy when I have KK. This time, of course, he has AA and IGNH.

Reload. (Yeah, I know. I knew then, too.)

This time my reload lasted a little longer, 15 minutes or so. One raise pre-flop to 15, two callers, and I complete from the BB with QdKd. Flop comes 10d Jd 4c. There's assorted raises and re-raises and three of us end up with all our money in the middle and J4h takes down a ginormous pot when none of my 182 outs appear.

Reload.

Three hands later I get it all-in preflop with AA and can't beat 88, who not only flops an 8 but rivers quads, just to rub it in.

Which is how I managed to dump 800 euros in about half an hour, before finally having the good sense to log off and turn off the computing box.

(And yeah, this really happened, and isn't some belated sort of April Fool's joke.)

So now I'm looking at about a 200 euro loss, when I finally summon the will to finish off the bonus, which has taken forever to grind out. Plus I don't even get the bonus for twenty days or so, as it's paid out 30 days after signup. Joy.

But the point isn't to whine about bad beats or somehow justify my play. They happen. Except for pushing the QdKd hand a little hard, I happily make all the above decisions again, every time. Shit happens.

The moral of the story, though, is that I had no business playing 200 NL to begin with, given my goals. I'd been enjoying playing Soko and 7 Card Stud and feeling good about the whole switch to playing new games, grinding out bonuses. All was going well. With emphasis on "was".

I need to fight the urge to lapse a bit in concentration, fight the urge to gamble. That's what left me unhappy with poker to begin with, the feeling that I was gambling with uncomfortably large sums and assuming too much exposure to risk. Limiting that exposure and trying new games left me feeling pretty happy. Right up to the point where I go and jack with what was working and get smacked down.

So yeah. Hard to complain too much as I'm running well on other fronts, but it's obviously a little disappointing to make nearly all of the profit so far on the casino side, and lose money on the poker front. Not much to do about it but soldier on, though.