Away From The Game

Well, I haven’t been sitting at the felt for almost ten days now. This is definitely the longest period I have been away from the tables in almost 5 months. It is frustrating to say the least, but I blew through my bankroll and this is the penalty I must serve.

I guess it’s good for me since the next time I want to take a shot at the table, I will be humbled when I remember this experience. When I am tempted to play too many suited connectors, I will remember exactly what it is like to not play at all.

I know that worse things could obviously happen, but I think poker 24/7, and not being able to go and play at will is killing me. I am trying to make the best of my time off and the one major positives is that I will renew my fundamentals of the game and am going to try a new approach.

I think by deconstructing my game from the top down, I will inevitably make myself a better player, but the time away from the tables will undoubtedly be a regression. When I am able to return, it will probably take 2-3 sessions to get comfortable with the dynamics, especially considering one of my major strengths is “feeling” the game.

Either way, I look forward to my return, regardless of how long it takes, which at this point looks like it could be a while.

And It All Comes Crashing Down

Well, it was only a matter of time, but I’m on a three day cold streak that basically wiped out a good two weeks worth of profitable sessions.  Locking away small profits on short sessions, yet posting large losses on longer sessions.  This is a receipe for disaster I know and after almost a year of this shit, one would think I would know better.  I’m not sure how many times I can beat this dead horse before I throw in the towel. 

I have such a competitive nature and I think my ability not to humble myself has cost me more money in various poker rooms than any number of coolers ever could have.  I love playing the game at the 2/5 level, yet I find myself always back at 1/3 because of a bad run at 2/5 or a few misplayed hands.  Mistakes cost a lot more at the 2/5 level.  Two bad reads usually means two buy-ins lost.  However, when I drop down to 1/3, I always find myself having trouble readjusting my style of play.  For 1/3, it is easy to sit back and just play ABC poker and value bet the shit out of everything.  However, my comfort level in the game is usually not just ABC poker and it is why I’ve always found more profit and more comfort at the 2/5 table.

 I know it almost sounds counterintuitve, but the play is more predictable at 2/5.  It is much rarer to see someone playing 7-9 offsuit out of position to a big raise just because “it’s one of my favorite hands.”  Therefore, I can usually exploit the 2/5 level by opening up my normal starting range a bit.  However, 2/5 players are much more difficult to push off draws, as they usually are willing to go a few buy-ins deep and the swings therefore are much harder to swallow. 

Anyway, I now sit here like I have a million times, questioning whether I want to continue in this endeavor.  I love poker, I truly do, but I play for money only, and the thrill of winning is just a way of putting extra money in my bankroll.  A loss is extremely difficult for me to swallow, especially the large losses I have been sustaining.  It is rare to see me smile at the poker table, as it is much more serious than when I first learned the game.  I yearn for those days, as ignorance is bliss, but I just can’t readjust my mindset to that style anymore.  The game of poker has changed for me.  It once was an escape from normal life, yet now I feel it is life that is the escape from poker.  I never could have imagined that my poker game would have graduated to this level, but poker is so much more than just learning the game.  It is all the aspects that surround the game itself: tilt, patience, bankroll management, game selection.  Out of all of these, I am strong except for patience.  The lack of it causes me to open my range up too wide and end up trapping myself in the process. 

Lastly, I think once the money in the game became so important in relation to my life, it affected my play both negatively and positively.  The positive being that I began to lock away profits much more often, since I saw a winning session as simply that and I cared very little about being the pride of the room walking to the cage with multiple racks.  A profit was a profit and I could use it as such.  However, I think I began to walk away from games too soon when I had a crushing edge at the table.  The negative being that when I had a losing session, it became more than that for me.  It became a loss that I’m not so sure I could afford.  Granted, it was coming out of bankroll, but what if that went busto?  The failure of a dream?  I can honestly say I have gained so much knowledge of the game, and I’m playing at my best skill wise.  However, since I began to try to play to pay for more than just mere fun money, the intangibles have gotten the best of me, causing me to make crucial mistakes at the worst of times.  I fucking hate you poker.  I truly do.  You are such a bittersweet pill to swallow.

Rivers Poker Room Opening – And My Bankroll Closing

Well poker, I still hate you. Even with having a casino less than 5 minutes from me, I am still finding the same leaks. Patience is my killer. Anyway, I had a great morning session (was there when the first hands were dealt) and when I went back to the casino at night they were jammed packed. All 24 tables filled with waiting lists 30+ long. The kicker was that there was actually a line of 20+ people waiting for the front podium just to sign up and get on the lists! This room is going to be crazy for sure for at least a couple months. However, tonight, I felt like I could get nothing right. I’ve been feeling this way for quite a while now. I’ve re-evaluated and although my game will be solid for the first hour or two, the patience leak begins to happen. All I can do now is move down in stakes to strictly 1/3 so that I can re-evaluate again and humble myself. I’m not sure the patience will be there though.

Poker & Life – Part I

Well, I didn’t have a great day at Wheeling late last week, but that is to be expected and I take it in stride.  Like many things in life, a hit to the poker bankroll can also be made back in the next go round.  Thinking about that though made me reflect upon the analogies between poker and “real life.”  I will be the millionth person to do this type of presentation, but that does not deter me.  Just as it doesn’t deter most writers from writing about anything that has been repeated ad nauseum. 

Let’s first just talk about a poker player’s bankroll.  Here, a good player will have a set amount which they can play out of and try to “build” by continual winning poker.  If times are good, the bankroll may be dipped into by “real life”  or “RL” as I will continue to call it.  However, when times are not so good, maybe RL will have to contribute to the bankroll.  Since poker bankrolls and RL are so intertwined, it is difficult to form a credible analogy between the two.  Much more can be said about bankrolls and how they can affect life and vice versa, but that should be saved for a later article discussing interplay as opposed to drawing comparisons. 

Let’s look at it from a 2+2 perspective; those of you who do not even know what 2+2 I am talking about (not 4), please do yourself a favor and google “2+2 poker forums,” get a good 30 days of degenerate reading and then come back.  Anyway, those of you who are familiar with the forums will know that there are two forums that compare the Brags, Beats, and Variance of poker to life and vice versa.  I make it sound simple whereas it is much more complex, albeit on the nerdy-degenerate side. 

Brags in poker:  Mostly every poker player will listen to a few stories from a fellow player about a recent win said player had.  The listener gains entertainment from the story and gains positive reinforcement that he/she too will embrace the same success quite soon.  However, the slight hint of jealousy still creeps into the heart of the listener.  The braggart themselves will love retelling the story of how they got three bet while they were holding the absolute nuts.  It reinforces their existence in the world of poker.  This is quite similar to hearing about brags in RL, where you listen to a co-worker’s/friend’s story about the recent escapades they had over the weekend.  Maybe you too will share in the story-telling and all will have a good time. 

Beats:  Every poker player has a bad beat story.  No poker player wants to hear another’s bad beat story but everyone wants to tell one.  Just hearing the story reminds the listener of a bad beat they also took and one which they do not wish to be reminded of.  The mere mention of the two letter phrase may strike paralysis in the listener.  All the while, the speaker just wishes to be heard and know that he/she is not crazy and someone sympathizes/empathize with their problems.  They want someone else to “feel” their pain.  This is an extremely close analogy between poker and real life.  Everyone in RL has a sad story they want to tell and nobody wants to really hear it due to the fact that they will be reminded of their own bad beats that they have put behind them.  Just like in poker, RL individuals will allow you to tell a bad beat story every once in a while, but if you have one all the time, they are just going to label you a loser. 

Variance:  The real mother fucker (pardon me) of both life and poker.  Variance, the donkey who just spiked the gutshot on the river to crack your set/two pair for a couple benjamins.  This is most prevalent in poker, as it is the constant unseen force which ultimately holds your fate.  You can play your cards right, play the person right, but the variance can still damn you in the end.  This is what I think is the best analogy when poker is compared to RL.  In real life, most people refer to variance as “luck” or “fate.”  Although it is unseen, it is always there.  Mathematically, it is explainable, but sometimes the chances of it happening are so confounding, it defies explanation. 

In life, just like poker, the winners learn to reduce the amount of variance by taking accepted pathways.  The probability of ending up a loser when you become a doctor is much rarer than say, a bathroom attendant.   The analogy does appear to end there though, because the things that we experience in life we have much more control of, right?  In reality though, we all know non-smokers who have lung cancer, non-drinkers who have liver cancer, and perfectly safe children that are kidnapped in their homes.  The variance of life is sometime explainable also, no matter how much you caution against it. 

For these above reasons, I believe poker players may have a different take of life, but in reality, they may see life as a game, no different from the ones they play when the sit down at the felt.  We jokingly call those who become too absorbed in this poker lifestyle the “degens,” but is that really all they are?  Do we call a workaholic a “degen” in RL?  Maybe, but more likely he/she will be rewarded with a good job and professional accomplishments.  They just learned how to reduce the variance enough and put in enough time in their sample size to achieve a statistical graph that seemingly never stops going up.  Where am I going with this all?  To be honest, I am not sure yet, that is why this entry is labeled Part I.  Look for future installments anytime I feel like having an analogical rant.