my nemesis

I have acquired a nemesis in our weekly game, and I'm not quite sure why.

In our third "season" a new guy joined...and in the first two games he attended, I won. Since then, he has made it his mission to bust me. He told me last night that when he busted me out of the first game of season 4, it "made his season" and he didn't care if he won a game. Weird, right?

I think I've been nothing but nice. But maybe that's my problem as a woman....I care if he "likes" me. So lame.

Last night my nemesis got the best of me. I get AQo in under the gun and raise to 30 (3xBB). Folded around to nemesis in SB who raises to 100. BB folds, I flat call (should have reraised I think). Then the flop comes A, K, 5, w/2 hearts (can't remember which were the hearts....but I have no heart). Nemesis pushes All-in. I have him covered, but calling and losing will leave me with little more than 200 chips left.

I hemmed and hawwed and then totally fucked my game up by folding. I was going through hands in my head....does he have AA, KK, AK, A5? I convinced myself he had one of those hands and was pushing all in so that I would call and he would bust me. I played scared. So stupid! I should have realized that if he had such a strong hand and wanted to bust me, he wouldn't play the hand so fast.

Calling and winning would have set me up nicely to play my normal, aggressive game. Instead, I played weakly, didn't have any chips to play with when the blinds got higher, and eventually lost a race to leave the tourney 10th out of 19th. Wah Wah.

Hopefully that'll teach me not to see so many freaking monsters under the bed.

I also realized that I've been playing a lot more "fun" and "jokey" at the table. And I've been losing a lot more. A connection? Maybe. I'm going to go back to being SeriousTart at my next game to see if it makes a difference...