people who haven't read ISF's excellent post on this subject, read it.
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ic.php?t=53415

btw, this is long.

now, i never thought i was good or anything. but going on an upswing did screw around with my head a little.

i went back to review my losing hands thoroughly tonight, and it's quite obvious what my problem was. fancy play syndrome.

"i'm so fuggin good, i just won shitloads of monies. i'm gonna put a move on this guy with nothing because i know i'm so much better than him and he's just going to fold."

"ok, so he just raised me. pffff, he's trying to out-level me. screw that, all in, what now?? muahahaha"

"phuck! he did have the nuts!"

joking aside, that's basically what happened. filtering for stars only, i played pretty damn solid. when i got stacked, i was sucked out on, or coolered (AA vs KK etc). in fact, every hand over 80bb was either a cooler or bad beat. albeit i was on a heater here, i never made dumb mistakes.

fast forward a bit and now i'm playing on party. for some reason i thought i should be making moves on weaker players. how the hell does that make ANY sense!? if anything, i should play even MORE standard against bad players.

and here's when my "downswing" occurred. filtered for party only, i see countless hands where i lost when i put way too much money in. outrageous bluffs, outrageous "value" bets (which get called by the nuts), outrageous calls (which get shown the nuts). albeit some of these hands were "standard" according to some people (for instance, stacking off with AK when we hit, which i still don't think is all that +EV).

moral of the story? don't get fancy, ever.