Who is a major reason for my recent woes at the tables. Some people may already know who he is, but out of respect for him; I will refrain from posting his name in a public place to not kill any action he may receive from someone else.

But this specific player really has me double guessing non-stop. At first, and on the surface he seemed liked the biggest donkey. But the more I play him, and the more I lose, there seems to be some method to his madness.

Yes, this player has run extremely good against me. And yes, I have gone on tilt on a number of occasions against this player (his play is really tilt-inducing). But this is not all, he is just flat out out-playing me right now.

I have never played a player that seemed to just absolutely own me as this one person. It has really just left me dumbfounded. I have started to dive into some of the numbers or possible reasons for some of the things this player does. If he is doing what I suspect, there actually is evidence that he could be gaining quite a bit of equity in certain situations. However, there are a number of other things that he does that just couldn’t show profit in the long run. That is assuming I am not missing something.

This person isn’t just beating me, but he seems to be up against the field of “regulars”. It is times like this that I learn the most though. I need to refine my approach and come back swinging. I am not going down without a fight!!

Because I am on full-blown TILT!!!!!!!!!!  I should have seen it coming from my post I wrote earlier today, but nope.

Though I am up on the month of October still somehow.  Ever since the end of July, I have been running WAY below normal.  Admittedly, I will have a session or two here and there that makes me think that all is good.  But I just have not been on the right side of variance recently.

I have been tightening up for the most part of the last 2 months.  But tonight, I decided to take a different approach.  Play aggressive, and try to balance out my hands.  The only problem was that much of the “actual” hands never came so I was playing mostly my “other end” of my range for the whole night.  Yea, I was picking up more pots, but I was getting crushed by people outdrawing me left and right.  Not to mention that when I actually did have a hand, it seemed to be 2nd best way more than normal.

Tonight was my attempt to blow off some steam.  It cost too.  I ended up playing mostly 3-4 handed 15/30 and just could not get anything going.  The crazy thing is, I have been getting a high number of stand pat hands, but that is about it.  Whenever I have your average winning hand, I am getting out drawn.  Or I am already way behind.  It is as though people are playing from a different deck.

I just don’t understand what has been happening to me over the past couple of months.

To make things worst, I took a ton of my steam HU against another good player.  I incorporating an uber-aggressive strategy.  But just like I mentioned before, I just wasn’t getting enough good hands to even out my ranges properly.  I know what hands need to played to certain extent to even out your good hands, so I was playing in a way that assumes you would get enough good hands over time.  Well, that just didn’t happen.  So I looked like an absolute idiot.

Anyway, I ended up dropping way more than I should have.  (-$2,539) I hope I got it out of my system.

But hey I did say I was gonna try to keep positive, right?  I got a ton of FPPs tonight!

Amount to 60k: $27,977.30

I sent a email to PokerStars to remove the doomswitch, and this is how they replied:

Greetings from PokerStars.

As much as it might be a convenient explanation for when you receive a bad beat, there is no such thing as a “doomswitch”. It is simply a fanciful term invented by players, who in the early days of online poker, were seeking to explain away their poor results by blaming factors other than the natural randomness that occurs in the game.

PokerStars has no control over who wins and loses at our tables, and we cannot determine how your hole cards, the flop, turn and river are going to be dealt. We just deal the cards and the rest is up to the players in the game. We are sorry to hear about your bad beats, but please understand this has nothing to do with PokerStars or our shuffle.

Our software produces a shuffle that is completely random, which favors no player over any other. The methods we use ensure complete randomization of the cards, and complete unpredictability of the cards to come. You can see the description of these methods at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/features/security/

We arranged for the largest consulting firm specializing in software security and quality, Cigital, to review PokerStars’ shuffle.  Their investigation found the shuffling be fair and random. You may read about their analysis at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/rng/

If you are a real money player, we encourage you to review your own hand histories and to perform your own analysis. We have dealt over 45 billion hands and freely give real money hand histories any time someone requests them. If you want, we can send you a copy of every single real money hand history that you have played.

*Every* proper investigation of our shuffle has found the same thing: That our cards are randomly shuffled. Many who have conducted such studies have posted their findings to the Internet. You can find two of them here:

http://bit.ly/de932a

http://bit.ly/9ORjbu

We hope this information helps you to understand that PokerStars’ games are fair. We value all of our players, and take the integrity of our site very seriously.

I guess now I just have to cope with the fact that I suck at the pokers.

Yes, I may be making some bad plays here and there, but even when I am winning….I make a bad play here or there.  No one is perfect.  But I don’t really feel I am playing on tilt.

I just got finished playing HU against my “arch nemesis”.  The same player that has been crushing me left and right for the past few weeks.

I was playing 3 handed with this guy first, where I dropped 600.  Majority of it all thanks to this guy outdrawing me left and right.

Then, back to the HU, I decided to almost have a little fun with the outdraws that were bound to come.  I started counting how many times he outdrew me, compared to how many I outdrew him.

At the end of the day, he outdrew me 5 times.  I outdrew him once, and that was in a pot where he limped in from the SB.  So the only time I outdrew him was for a small pot.  Plus, and not to mention, the fact that he seems to be starting with better hands than me over and over again.

This is the same crap that has been happening to me now for coming up on 2 months.  I just don’t understand it one bit.

I lost to this guy 600 dollars within 9 minutes.  With me being behind the majority of the time pre, then when I am ahead, he outdraws me.

To cap it off, I thought I might have outdrawn him once for a decent pot when my AA improved to AA99, nope as his draw 1 ended up making a Ks over fullhouse.  Whether he has trips or 2 pair will not be known.

If I can run as good as I am running bad, I will make over 40k in 2 months.   Just about right, for me to make it to 60k before the deadline.  SO STARS, TIME TO REVERSE THE DOOMSWITCH.

/rant

Well unlike last night where it was alot of ups and downs, tonight was just a constant in one direction.  That direction was down, straight down.  I dropped $2,741.50 tonight in a matter of less than 3 hours of playing time.

I am completely shell shocked.  I have had nights pretty close to this bad before, but I think this takes the cake.

All of the loss came pretty much at the hands of one player.  We were playing HU 15/30.  My opponent really had me on the ropes.  In fact, this specific player has had me on the ropes for the last few nights.  At first I thought this guy was a huge fish because of his unorthodox play.  But the more I study some of his plays, the more I think they may have merit and might even be a superior style of play than what I am accustomed to.

I don’t know if he is doing this on purpose, or just getting lucky as this specific player is also running unbelievably good as well.  But his play has my attention now, and as I study the math behind some of his play; it has opened my eyes to a whole different style of play that might just work great.

But see, the thing is….there is such a fine line between a donk getting lucky and a brilliant player exploiting his opponent as much as possible, and if one is running extremely well at the same time….it can be hard to figure out which one your opponent really is.

But one thing is for sure, I am the donk right now.  I am learning from my mistakes though, and I will make it out of this 1 and half month rut eventually.  I just hope it won’t be too late as my goal is seeming more and more out of reach each day.

Amount to 60K: $17,044.50

I lost $164 tonight, but I actually am not upset about it…..if you can believe it.

I had some pretty reough beats, but I was starting to get some decent hands at times as well.

Plus, I have done some studying on my game, which is what I often do during bad times like this.  Picked up a couple small things that I have been meaning to work on for a while now, just never got around to it.  I am excited to see if I can use it to my benefit.

So oh well, a loss.  Keeping my head up tonight.  Excited for the week ahead.  I feel good.  Win or lose.

Amount to 60k: $16,101.18

Even if I drop below pace (which I haven’t yet), I can always make a comeback…..right?