I gotta rant here, even if this is hardly the appropriate place/nobody will know what I'm talking about. I've learned a decent amount about poker and I feel it would be a reasonable small source of income, if I had a decent amount to start with. Problem is, I can only play micro stakes now, and people are so f**king stupid that there's basically no skill involved. As it stands, I have lost a significant amount online, nothing dangerous, but it pisses me off when I'm losing it to people who are just idiots, even if I have, obviously, made a lot of mistakes.
Opponent opens, I call, nobody else to the flop. He bets on the flop, I raise with straight draw, he reraises very small, I feel kind of uncomfortable but have to call. Check-check on the turn which fills a flush. Ace on the river, he checks and I shove all in as a slight overbet bluff. He calls with pocket 4s - note that every single card on the board is higher than a 4. I guess a thinking person could put me on the kind of hand I had (a missed straight draw, just queen high), and think that I would just check down my hands with showdown value, and bluff with nothing, but it seems far more likely that he's just a f**king moron who can't let any kind of pair go. I dunno. Tbh I typed out this paragraph a while ago and having had time to relax (not a big amount of money lost at all, just annoying psychologically), I guess my line is a bit suspect and theirs does make some sense. But again, at such small stakes, when so many people will do blatantly ridiculous things, I find it hard to give anyone credit. I guess if I had a flush draw, I would often play it in a very similar way, checking on the turn for disguise, and going for max value on the river, so at least I can say I'm somewhat balanced, and I'm making it difficult for him in this spot.
Funny thing is I've gone into bigger stakes games online before and just crushed them, because people actually think, and they care about the amount they're losing, and they actually care about the hand you might have, not just the hand they have. It's not a ridiculous unpredictable free-for-all.