[raistlinx]

The hard part is dealing with the psychological. I moved to NL (came back rather) because the limit games sucked. I started at NL10 and did OK, yeah I made a few bad stack offs when I started again but considering the much higher rake my win rate was pretty good. But then I move up to NL25 and the "variance" kicks in. Down 8 bi in 3400 hands. All of it was bad beats except for 1/2 a buy in. So I drop back down, win a bit at NL10 and move back up. I get up 4 bi just by winning small pots and then boom... down 6 more buy ins. This time it was partly tilting with stuff like weak flushes that I maybe could have gotten away from if I was a better player, AK in a rr pot with TPTK (K) and the 1/2 stack pushes (he had AA)... etc, etc... but what set me on tilt was yet another flopped top two pair or set (this time it was top two pair) being up against a flopped straight, then getting ai with the best hand and the guy hitting his two outer. Of course the problem now is the psychological part, everytime I am raised I feel I am beat. Everytime I get a hand I wonder how it will go bad.

The big problem I am finding adjusting to these NL games is how bad the players are. It seems that everytime I am out of a hand the donks are going nuts calling down or raising with weak hands then suddenly I get in a hand with them and they show up with the goods having slowplayed some monster hand, or draw out along the way. I haven't been able to adjust to this, especially after "wanting" to win so much after the bad beats. Maybe I'm just unlucky at Full Tilt, I've won on the other two sites I've played but have not been able to win consistently on FT at all. Bad beat after bad beat after... ad nauseum. But I don't really believe any site is rigged, or that they have a "doom switch" so I keep playing and losing. Interestingly it is always when the games are "good" that I lose... not sure why that is.

The problem for me is making a nice salary in the professional world means that playing this NL10 crap is starting to be a waste of my time. Sure I'd like to get better and move up some levels, I've read just about every book there is on poker and analyzed tons of hands, but I'm just not good enough at NL to not let the constant bad luck (and I'm talking statistically very bad) send me on tilt and lose more.