Quote Originally Posted by Robb
Chainsaw Massacre
I ran bad, then compounded it by donky-donk spewing. I coughed up so many chips I hit my stop loss, and I'm back at NL10.
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To put it in context, most of my spewing is due to aggression in the wrong spots. Not folding when I know I'm beaten. I get impatient and shove over the top against a fishy villain. Problem is, the fish was playing like he had some cards finally. And I knew it. And spewed. And then wanted to go throw up. And I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing it for me, 'cuz I suck at poker and have the gashed bankroll to prove it! But these are some things I realized I was doing wrong.
Wow!

This is all so eerily familiar. I'm about 2-3 weeks behind you on all this.

I also recently took a short lived shot at 25nl recently. Short lived due to a couple beats and lots of spew. Just a day or two ago I was thinking about how poorly I'd done recently and suddenly I realized that I'd been going too far with bluffs and mediocre hands against players who could only have had me beat.

I had a couple things contribute to me hitting this over-aggro rut. First, I'd been running very well over the last few weeks, over 10ptbb/100, closer to 20ptbb/100 for a good stretch of that (and yes I was fully aware that I was running well. This wasn't a case of me turning a corner). I got my BR to my alltime high. I'm actually rolled for 25nl (though on the small end) instead of just taking a one buyin shot above my head like I'd done in the past. Then I go get back into a home game I play somewhat regularly where we all know each other so well that "outplaying" each other becomes a much MUCH larger part of the game than my online FR games...and I made a killing there too. I can outplay people...who needs cards? Winning poker is aggressive poker...maybe I'll just crank it up and win more!!

It took my worst downswing in a couple months before I realized what I was doing, and it's exactly what you are talking about here...uncontrolled aggression.

I took some time away from my cash game (and only played a couple tourney's) to allow time for me to...i dunno...reset myself and get back to focusing on winning poker more than aggressive poker.

I think part of my problem is that I somehow got away from focusing on their true hand ranges and thought I could get away with taking down pots because "most likely, he doesn't have a hand this time." FAIL!!

Posts like these, where someone explains what I've been going through (and better than I could explain it to myself), are ones that really remind me why I love this place. They remind me that this is all part of the learning process and that I'm not the only dumbass to get stuck in stupid ruts like these.