It started off going so well last night, but then things seemed to all come down at once. I was playing in the Mansion $50 rebuy and because I'm not rolled for these but they are a free entry, I just play tight for the rebuy period and hope to double up, then get to work after the break not taking the add on. Anyway, goal achieved at the break sort of and I was on 3.9k, the average was around 4.8k prior to the add on. After the break I got a bit busy and was playing pretty good even if I do say so myself and managed to get in the pay out spaces and on around 12.5k, which at the time was just above average - good going.

Then in the BB I find myself holding TT. There's a preflop raises to 1000 (Blinds 200/400 so nothing special), all folds to me and I make the call. 1000 has been the standard raise for a while and seems to be taking down pots uncontested. Flop came 9 5 3. It's at this point the whole position thing has sunk in. The pots at around 2.9k, so I make a bet of 2.5k into it. The raiser flat calls. Turn brings an 8. What the hell do I do here? Checking would be the sensible thing, but I decide my tens are still good and push my stack into the middle. The other guy has no hesitation calling with his pocket aces and knocks me out and I've lost two hours of solid play because I insisted playing an average hand out of position.

At the same time I was playing two cash games to try and qualify for next weeks promo. In one game I was $10 up, the other $10 down - after two hours play! I'd been down a bit but got things back until one of the idiot short stacks joined our table with $10 and decided to just push every hand. On the third one, I had AK and decided that I had to be good so I made the $12.75 call (he was first to act, blinds 0.25/0.50) folds to another guy who had been quite aggressive when there had been other raises into the pot who pushes too for another $34 to me! So the pot is around $75 and it's going to cost me another $34 to get in. Rightly or wrongly, I figured that I was getting 2/1 and that it was worth the call. Anyway, idiot shortstack has KJo, matey has QQ and there's me with the AK. Sadly the flop came with a King and a Queen on it and I lost the pot. At the same time on the other table, I lost a bit more with another average hand.

I'm not quite sure what happened in that short ten minute period, but it all went wrong. I'm certainly not a good cash player though. I don't really have the nerve for it and I'm only doing it for the promotion.

It wasn't all bad though, I decided to give casino bonus whoring a go and made a $200 deposit on Victor Chandler and played blackjack for an hour. It started off OK and I managed to get from $200 to $240 pretty easy but then things started the other way and I lost half my starting stack. I carried on and in the end made a slight profit of $3.50 (wooo, get the champagne out!) which isn't great, but I qualified for £50 bonus and I should also get £25 in Rpoints bonus making a nice profit of about £75 for an hours nervous work. I'm not really sure I have the constitution for this either, but it seemed to go well last night and if I get the bonus out, I'll be a happy punter and may try another one. I understand things can go wrong, but it seems fairly easy to make (and lose) money.