Hey

Just lost three games and going to invoke my stop loss rule now as I don't think I'd play +ev in any future matches tonight. Really frustrating, as every opponent seemed really bad. A 3 buy-in downswing is nothing but I kind of played like a dickhead; not many mistakes, but three crucial ones when it mattered. I think I play the worst in the 20-40 bb stack size period. First match villain was just raising almost every time I put a bet in. Overbets too, so I just had enough and at about 1200 chips I decided to make a stand with A3o and ran into QQ. I was about 30BB deep at this stage and against someone who'd reraised so often I considered my hand to have decent equity. If I'd continued to blind off I'd have ended up making a stand much shorter with almost no equity left in the game anyway. Sigh, so first idiot beats me. Second player was a little better but seemed recklessly aggressive - but I was totally card dead in this game and limp reraise shoved A7s as he'd been attacking my limps pretty often. I thought he'd have a range of broadways most of the time and equity be good but got snap called by AT and bricked. Now, I think I could have actually folded this hand as villain had committed himself with the raise. But I felt his range was wide enough that my equity was ok against a calling range. Last game I was doing ok against a pretty straightforward player but called down three streets with top pair (paired board) despite villain betting large each time and my instincts telling me I was crushed - he obv had trips. I think I'll learn a valuable lesson from this game actually, so might not all be bad. Facing this type of decision on the flop my thought process was "I can't fold top pair top kicker on this board surely?" - but I'd had earlier reads that villain's betting sizes were polarised based on the strength of hand. Thinking back on his bet timing too was a pretty big giveaway. I don't mind calling one street, but on the second the danger signs should have flashed. I felt on the turn that I needed to either call two streets or fold. And in hindsight based on all the information it was an easy fold.
Where do I go from here?
Well, one of my biggest strengths is that after I've played so horribly I tend to work some more on my game. So that's where I'll start. Day off tomorrow, I'll try and get a good nights sleep and get up and watch three or four videos and print off some stuff and play again tomorrow afternoon. I feel that these $10 games are going to be a real challenge. Here's to putting in some hours and coming back and pwning :) cheeers and GL!