Anatomy of a losing session

Yesterday I spent about four hours playing NL $50 online. According to Poker Tracker the net result for the session was a loss of $29.64.

Being well rested and having made a nice profit from a short session on Friday, I was expecting to play well Sunday. However for whatever reason, I felt anxious throughout the session and I definitely played sub par.

I went through my hand histories this morning to analyse my errors. To make it easier to recognise any trends or recurring themes I lumped the different type of mistakes into categories. Ignoring small pots, here is a summary of the mistakes and their approximate frequency:

Calling bets/raises when likely dominated (6 times)
Ill advised late position steal attempts (5 times)
Limping (4 times)
Betting draws when out of position (3 times)
Reraising in dubious situations (2 times)
Calling with gutshot draw (2 times)

My biggest mistake was getting involved too often with hands that were likely to be dominated. I recall one hand where from the big blind I called several bets with Q-4 top pair to lose to my opponents Q-9. To make matters worse I was out-of-position.

The second category is preflop steal attempts. These were plays I made where either my table image was too loose to have a high enough expectation of succeeding, or else I failed to take into account the style of the players whose blinds I was raising.
The basic rule is: do not try light late position steal-raises when the blinds are either calling stations or aggressive. Save your steals for tight and meek opponents.
Postflop, I recall one bad move I made from the big blind in an unraised pot. I had 43o and decide to bet into a K-Q-8 two-flush flop against one opponent who has position on me. He calls and I have to check the turn.
Lesson: Do not try steals on coordinated high card flops, especially when out-of-position. Doesn't it sound so obvious when you put it like that!

Limping also cost me. I was limping far too much, especially from UTG. I limped in several times with KJ, and also with 76s type hands.

I bet too many draws from out of position and had to surrender the pot when they didn't come in.

Next up is dubious re-raises. I was OTB with KQo and reraised an opponent who had open raised from early position. On the flop he made a $1.50 bet into a $5.50 pot; I don't know what I was thinking but I called. I should either have folded or popped him there. He checks the turn and I check behind. He bets the river and I fold. Talk about weak play - even accepting that my preflop reraise was dubious, my opponent did show weakness on the flop and turn and I had two chances to take the pot but failed to pull the trigger.

Next, oh dear the old gutshot draw. Stupidly I called twice on the flop with gutshot draws, and neither time had I any evidence that my opponent would be the paying-off type in the unlikely event that I did hit. And even if I did hit, being out of position would have made getting paid off even more difficult.

Note to self: POSITION POSITION POSITION. From reviewing the hands I also noticed that many of the hands that ended up costing me money I played from out-of-position. A bad idea in case it needs re-emphasising.

The cost of the above mistakes was $36.55. If you subtract the actual session loss from that figure you get $6.91. In theory I would have WON $6.91 if I had made none of the mistakes listed above.

Above are specific, quantifiable mistakes. Less easier to quantify are mistakes such as playing on unprofitable tables. During yesterdays session, many of the tables at my poker room were quite tight. I like a table that has a high VP$IP but most of the tables were low VP$IP. I eventually found one or two slightly loose tables but unfortunately stayed too long after they had tightened up. I think it's important to continually monitor the tables you are playing and not to hesitate to leave if you feel they are becoming unprofitable.

The above are the typical kind of mistakes I make when I'm not playing well. When I'm running well I tend to make these types of mistake far less often. If I could just eliminate these mistakes from my game.....