Ummmm...Mike Caro is right.

I don't remember if I read it in his "Book of Tells" or one of his columns in CardPlayer or what, but somewhere I read an article by Mike Caro explaining that it was better for people to have a positive, friendly image at the table because then people are less likely to be gunning for you and also because you are probably not getting the floor wet by tapping the glass.

There was a hand last night that made me realize this first hand.  I frequently play at E and Ricky's Monday night game.  It's a great game and I've made money at it more than once, though I have taken some silly beats.  Anyways, I buy in for the max and after a few hours I have a couple hundred in profit.  By the wee hours of morning I'm sitting on ~$650.  I've been pretty proud of my play all night...made some big folds, made some successful moves at the right times, extracted value from my hands by getting called down to the river, won a decent sized pot with pocket fives on a flushed board against someone I knew was bluffing.  I was not as distracted as I usually am at that game, and the difference was noticeable.  There were a few hands that I screwed up, but none of the screw ups were very expensive or massive.  I had three big pocket pairs the whole night (AA, QQ, and JJ) and somehow won all of them, though my AA never saw a flop after my limp pop move got me heads up with Billy and he folded).

One of the dealers has jumped in the game because it was short.  He plays a really good game, but is very LAG, and he and I seem to be getting heads up a lot.  One time I have a big hand, but I fold because I KNOW I am beat.  Then there are a few hands after that where I really feel like he was pushing me around and I just couldn't pull the trigger.  And after those hands, he starts tapping my tank, trying to put me on tilt by making little comments about the hand after it was over. 

I didn't think I was on tilt at that point, but my judgment was definitely affected by feeling he had been pushing me around.  So we get four handed and I get A8 on the button.  I really don't remember how the hand went down because after it went down, I was feeling kinda extremely sheepish.  The flop came out AK6.  I do remember me raising and being re-raised and then just calling that re-raise on the flop.  There was a large bet on the turn where I realized I was probably in trouble, but the devil in the back of my head was saying: HEY YOU COULD BE AHEAD (eventhough there's probably no way I am with my pair of aces and a bad kicker).  STOP LETTING HIM PUSH YOU AROUND.  YOU HAVE HIM COVERED BY $100...WHO CARES IF YOU SHIP YOUR ENTIRE PROFIT AND $200 OF YOUR BUY-IN IN THIS HAND.  The devil overpowered the side of me that was saying: "Um more than half his stack is in the middle now...you better hope you have outs since for some dumb reason your ass fell in love with your raggedy ace and decided to put half of your stack in the middle too." 

An eight comes on the river and suddenly I am praying my two pair is good.  I don't think he flopped a set because I don't think he would have played the flop so strong.  I was really expecting him to turn over AK for top two and he tabled K6 and I didn't even see that that was also a flopped two pair at first because I was expecting to be even more crushed than 75/25.  Anyways, instead of going home stuck like I should have, I went home up $700+.  I am such a fish.

Morals of this story:
1) I am a fish at poker.
2) I suck at short-handed play and know it.  I know for a fact that in January it will be much easier for me to get my butt out of the chair when a game gets short.  I feel pretty good about my heads up game.  I can play well when I want to at a full or close to a full table.  I really need to work on my short play though.
3) When you are provoking someone, and you are a LAG player, they might suck out on you more often than they would on another player.  Yeah, you want fish like me to have their judgment impaired so you get paid, but you will probably get sucked out on more than your average player because people will talk themselves into believing you always have the bullshit...especially if they are gunning for you because you have been tapping at their glass.
4) Hey, even I can get lucky every once in awhile!

Seriously, that's not even that bad of a suck out relative to some things that I've seen, but it's the worst beat *I've* given anyone in quite some time...probably the worst one in more than a year (not counting times when I've mushed being short, though even then it's up there).