I hate losing!!!! - anyone with me?

[Blarg]

Agreed. If anybody is going to take my money, I want it to be idiots only.

One thing losing to someone with really weird or stupid play does, too, is give me something to make valuable and precise notes on. If I look at my Pokertracker stats on him, I may get further confirmation that he's someone I should consider for a fish or maniac list or even put on my buddy list. At any rate, I start watching him more carefully for confirmation that his play is consistently really loose or strange or incorrect, and before you know it I may have found that there is someone who I can shamelessly follow around for days or weeks and make money off of. (Though I try not to show up every possible time at the table of a "buddy" -- I don't want them to start noticing how often I'm around and get jumpy about it.)

Losing a hand or a bunch of hands to someone is never fun, but sometimes it cues you in to a valuable resource you will make a lot of money on over time, so there's reason to take a positive attitude about it if you can.

I try to think that if there's one guy I want happy on the table, it's the idiot. I'd rather he took someone else's money than mine to get him happy, but I definitely want him happy and want him to keep playing. Playing long enough that I get my money back many, many times over, or he bleeds money into another fish who can dump cash on me. I LIKE that his bad moves get reinforced by winning sometimes, even though I wouldn't mind if he got his cash off someone else but me.