I thought I’d try 4NL for a bit. I’m still not sure whether I want to risk $10 buy-ins for 10NL as I haven’t played enough to know if I’ve really developed some kind of competence at poker or not.

Unfortunately it didn’t go too well. I think I was my own worst enemy though – the first few tables I met a huge amount of aggression with preflop 3betting going on all over the place. I then stupidly adjusted my play and started calling down what I thought were light bets, and also 3betting light a bit myself. Of course, while they were 3betting light, it still didn’t go to well for me;

I then ran into some tables which had calling stations, which was pretty bad after getting all aggro on the previous tables. In one hand I ran into my old enemy of not recognising straight draws being hit;

The hand was going well until the river, and then I aggro’d myself into a big loss

I gradually settled down, and began to see that 4NL wasn’t much different from 2NL. That’s not to say it wasn’t different, it definitely was. 3Betting doesn’t really exist at 2NL, and it clearly does at 4NL. Plus most players have a VP$IP of less than 30, so people have clearly sorted out their starting ranges.

So I decided that I should push on and try and recoup my losses for the session. At that point I was down 2 buy-ins ($10), and it looked do-able to get it all back.

It turned into a 1000 hand marathon, taking me about 4 hours and I still didn’t get it all back. Towards the end I was just thinking ok, down 1 buy-in is acceptable, let’s just get to that point. Every time I stacked someone, I crashed out on another table. I just couldn’t get my won$ amount to shift up, although at least it wasn’t going down either;

Today sucked so bad I’m not even going to show a graph

I logged in and all the 2NL tables were full. So I opened a couple of 4NL tables, which I figured wouldn’t be much different.

The first table I ended up with a pain in the arse TAG two places to my left. His stats ran at around 18/16, and the first few times I raised from the blind he reraised me. Protecting the blinds or strong hand, who knows, but either way he was ruining my btn position. So I moved off that table.

The next two tables were pretty similar – mostly 35/5 type players, loose-ish and passive. But also on each table was a total loose maniac. VP$IP’s of about 60% with PFR of 0 or so. Yet postflop they went mad and chucked huge amounts on the flop and turn, usually making everyone cave in. On the times they were taken to showdown they did show bad starting hands, yet usually had hit a draw!

Aren’t those opponents supposed to be easy? Wait for a strong hand and take them for everything? Didn’t seem to be happening though.

My hands sucked. In the whole session I had a high pair hole cards about 3 times (a TT, JJ and a KK). The Jacks got blown away by KK, the TT lost to a straight (I played it dumb anyway though), and the KK’s were folded to

My final hands were equally dismal – the best was three 6′s, which ended up a split pot as the 6′s were on the board and we both had A kickers.

So the combination of hitting no hands, plus higher stakes, plus against players who were crap yet still didn’t play as they were supposed to (fold you bastards!), I’ve blown away everything I’ve gained in the last 1000 hands (ok, not big in monetary terms, or even number of hands compared to other people, but that’s like a whole week’s work at the rate I play).

The combination of my new starting hands chart and crap hands gave me stats of about 22/18 though. Silver lining? I’d rather have the money…