The last couple weeks have been pretty wild. I took a week-and-a-half vacation and read multiple Poker Books, including Sklansky's "Theory and Practice" and Harrington's workbook, a.k.a. "Harrington on Hold 'em vol 3". Good stuff. And then equipped with all that knowledge, I hopped online - and promptly got my ass PWNED all over the place.

Not the desired result.

To my credit, the litany of bad beats and bad situations I've been involved in over the last few days has been breathtaking. This of course is going to sound really, really familiar, but indulge me for a minute. These are all no limit hands:

- Pocket jacks vs. pocket queens on an all undercard board, after I raised pre-flop and he smooth-called. You can image how well that went. I didn't get stacked but it wasn't great.

- Pocket queens vs. pocket kings on an all undercard board where I hit a four-card flush, that he also ended up having. It took me to the turn to realize he had a bigger pair, and then I hit my flush and paid off another value bet from him that I probably should have just folded. Of course I'd already dumped in $6, what's another $6? Grumble grumble.

- Pocket kings vs. pocket aces. Our old friend, our regular visitor. Fuck you, old friend.

- Pocket aces vs. pocket jacks. All in pre-flop and the idiot hit a four-card flush that I did not hit.

- Flopped trips in a blind war and found out I was up against trips with the next better kicker (a jack vs. my ten).

- Flopped the nut straight with AJ on a KQT board against pocket kings, all in on the turn, board paired on the river.

- Flopped a set vs. someone that flopped a straight, board didn't pair.

- In a pot limit Omaha game: a guy was raising literally every hand pre-flop and potting the flop no matter what, so I re-raised him big pre-flop with AKKJ and then put the rest in on a queen-high, scattershot flop. He called with QJxx and the happy little queen came down on the river to bail him out. (Of course he had some other outs with his two straggler low cards, but that's not the point- it HAD to be that damn queen that came down.)

etc. etc. etc.

After this onslaught I felt like I needed a cooling off period with limited financial risk involved, so I played some cheap sit-n-goes. At one point I played three of them at once and went out like a chump on these hands:

- KK vs. A6, all in pre-flop, he flopped two pair and rivered a boat.

- KK vs. AJ, all in pre-flop, he hit his ace.

- Ah4h vs. QQ (in heads up play); I hit my ace and a flush draw on the flop, but he hit trip queens and they held up.

--

Finally, having blown through a scary number of buy-ins, I decided I needed a game where I could just grind out a small win and get some of my confidence back. Anything would do. So I turned to Party's .50/1.00 limit game.

Boy, was that a good decision. I haven't made back anything like all the money I lost in the last few horrifying sessions, but I'm going to get there soon, I think. My plan for now is just to multi-table the low limit games and grind my money back. A few days of bleeding the limit chumps on Party should be easy enough. I find those games to be soft in the most predictable way: most players are tight and play ABC limit poker, so you mostly avoid them except when you have a very solid hand; but at least 2 or 3 players at each table are bad enough that they always pay you off. I love it. During my first session of three-tabling that game, I had very few good starting hands and hit only a handful of flops, and still managed a small win. The next session, I got normal cards and made more than a buy-in in less than an hour. So I'm looking forward to playing some more of this. The only problem is that limit, to me, is a real grind - a game that gets boring quickly unless I'm playing very high stakes against better players. Against the usual weak-tights it's not an interesting game at all. But right now I'd rather win and be bored than keep losing "exciting" hands like the ones detailed above.