[toots]

I don't recall his post saying it explicitly, but it otherwise seems to indicate that he lost it playing NL.

I just love how everyone's so anxious to jump into the deep end of the pool before even learning to tread water.

Is the guy a bad player? Does he have money management holes? Don't know.

But, I do know that even a mediocre to poor player would take a while to lose 1200BB playing limit. Heck, you'd either have to play a lot, or play like a total maniac, but even as a maniac, you're going to play so aggressively that you'll win pots on that alone.

Losing 1200BB at NL seems like something that could easily be accomplished in a rather short period of time, even when you're not playing too horribly. Heck, you could even convince me that it's possible to do it even if you're a good player on a bad streak.

But, NL is the fad right now, so everyone wants to jump in it before they've even really learned how to play the game. An awful lot of people concoct an awful lot of reasons why they should be playing NL instead of limit ("So they'll respect my betting/raising/etc" or "because I can win more money faster"), yet are surprised at how quickly money can evaporate when things are going poorly.

Then again, if this guy really did lose 1200BB playing limit... man, that really sucks.

Just some thoughts: Even the top players who live off cash games play limit. In fact (and correct me if I'm wrong), but the biggest money cash games in history have been limit games. Even the top players go broke every once in a while - even the ones we presume to have good money management skills. No one is so good that they can always beat the game or won't have losing streaks.

Perhaps instead of engaging in a debate over whether this guy was a good or bad player, or whether he does or doesn't have money management problems, we could just try to learn from this. I mean, often, the point of declaring a losing player to be a poor player or poor money manager is just to reassure ourselves that the boogey man isn't really out there. "Oh, that sort of thing can't really happen; he's just a poor player. (I feel safe from the boogey man again.)"