peterbirks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peterbirks) wrote2006-05-14 01:12 am
peterbirks) wrote2006-05-14 01:12 am
Entry tags:
This is how it feels to be lonely
Yes, if in doubt, put the Inspiral Carpets on the CD player.
It's been a bad bad run since Wednesday. One flaw that I have when playing at these levels is that if I am stuck and it is a good game (i.e., the opposition is weak), then I play too long. Usually I get some of my money back, but I also have a life, and I shouldn't waste seven hours of my Saturday nights sitting in a game just because it is good. I should live a life as well. This is bad for work-life balance.
Nearly all of this bad run is down to variance, which can be far worse in loose fishy games. And, of course, it (the variance) chooses to arrive just as I decide to move up in stakes (ain't it always the way?) so an awful lot of hard work gets wiped out in a very short time.
Notwithstanding that, the games remain weak and I only have to stay calm and, eventually, things will come right.
I think that this is one of the reasons that I play less live poker. At least when things like this happen and (let's take one example here) your two opponents, with AQ and QT against your AK on a board of KQ54 and a pot of $120, hit the case queen on the river, then you can scream abuse at the screen (and, somehow, refrain from typing into the chat box "you fucking morons!" which is, of course, what you want to type) while typing "nice one" into the chat box.
I've kicked a few chairs in the past couple of days, I can tell you.
As Iggy wrote just this week, a bad run at poker is a dark and lonely place. I'm not sure if being married or having a girlfriend would be any help, since doubtless they want to hear your bad beat stories even less than the barman does. You just have to cope with it the best ways you can.
Amazingly, I'm not that downbeat about it at the moment, the second that I get up from the table. I just wish that I had the courage to walk away from the game even though it is good. The problem is, good $5-$10 games don't grow on trees. In a way, you are a prisoner of your own higher stakes. As Terrence Chan said a couple of weeks ago, every minute that you are not playing, the money is flowing from weaker players to stronger players (well, that's the theory). When the weaker players are luck-boxing their way into flush after flush, you feel even more obliged to remain at the table, thus fucking up your sleep patterns and shitting you off when it comes to other poker players, whom you basically come to hate with a passion.
There's a player at $2-$4 on Virgin called Shouka, a cheating Danish cunt (as in, deliberate all-in expert) who probably scrapes an existence two-tabling. Anyway, Shouka hates other poker players even more than I do, and he is a poor enough player to put this into the text box, abusing any fish who happens to get anything more than a 10-outer on him. Every time I see his name, I say to myself, please lord, don't let me become like him, a kind of Gollum guarding his $2-$4 ring tables, hating them and loving them at the same time.
In a way, I felt a bit like that at the $5-$10 table tonight (there was only one running). Social player after social player came with a short stack, lost it to someone else, and went. Then some other social player sat down and slaughtered me hand after hand. These things happen. You have to shrug your shoulders. But what you shouldn't do is stay later than you otherwise would. It's not a matter of "trying to get even"; I don't think like that. As Caro wrote, "you already ARE even". No, it's a matter of being down and knowing that you have a positive EV in the game. If I had been a couple of hundred up I would have called it a night at about eleven and done what I should have done anyway -- gone to bed. But because I was four hundred or so down, I carried on. OK, I got back to $300 down for the night. Big deal. I became a slave to the good game, something which I swore I would stop doing. I should rule poker, not the other way round.
This, then, is another of the problems of $5-$10, beyond the necessary desensitization. Even if I can shrug off the losses (and I seem to be coping with the last four days of horrors on currencies, the stockmarkets and poker with remarkable equanimity when you consider what a long way into four figures the combined losses are) I find the game taking me over again; something which I had all but eliminated at $2-$4. So, we have another task. Not just desensitization, but also a kind of indifference is necessary. My life MUST come first, not my poker.
About three years ago I played my first $3-$6, moving up from the heady heights of $2-$4. One Saturday I two-tabled on Paradise from 8am to 2am, finishing up about $5 to the good. I swore that I would never ever do anything like that again. I felt that I had utterly wasted a valuable day of my life, moving 24 hours closer to death without taking my eyes from computer monitor. Because, and herein lies part of the problem, when you are not winning at poker, it isn't very enjoyable. In fact, it's a grinding slog. Luckily, it isn't my living, so I can, and indeed I should, stop myself playing anything approaching a marathon session that tires me out, leaves me grouchy, and wastes my weekend.
But, well, for the last two nights, that is exactly what I have done. And, until I can make $5-$10 an irelevant stake level in my head, it's probably what I will carry on doing.
Especially since I'm now nearly a grand behind my schedule for the year, so I have to play more if I want to catch up. Fuck it.
++++++++++
I forgot that the FA Cup Final was on today. I slept for two hours this afternoon (because I stayed up playing until 2am last night in TWO "good" $5-$10 games) and woke up with just 15 minutes to go in the game. I idly watched it until the final penalty, reading the papers at the same time. That's about all I've done today apart from play poker and clean up the house. I haven't been outside except to buy the newspapers. I didn't go outside yesterday either, except to go to Tesco's. Oh, I tell a lie. I did. I took the car to be mended. But it's hardly what could be called a life, is it.
++++++++++
Because there was only one decent game on Virgin, I fired up a 12c-25c ($25 max buy-in) table at No Limit and played Chris Ferguson style with a $5 stake. I all-inned with JJ from the small blind, eliciting folds from the BB and two limpers. Then I got to see a flop for free from the BB and flopped a straight. I all-inned and got called by TPTK, thus doubling through to $10.60, at which point I left (50 hands played). About half an hour later I sat down with $5 again at another 12c-25c table. This time my all-in with AA from under the gun got no callers, and my AKs all-in was called by JJ. The JJ won. I rebought and ended up leaving that game with a $5.09. Gain for the two hours played, 69 cents. Nominal bankroll for No limit games, $50.69. If it ever gets up to $100, I shall move up to $50 max buy ins and I shall sit down with $10, adopting roughly similar tactics.
On the plus side, at least it's relaxing and fun, which I suppose is what poker is meant to be and what it was for me in a long and distant past, rather than the hard work it feels like today as I strive to beat last year's win and look for ways to increase my profits to a level that will pay for a car, a new house and the conversion of this one.
Whatever happened to the times when all that I wanted my winnings to do was to pay for my holiday?
____________________
It's been a bad bad run since Wednesday. One flaw that I have when playing at these levels is that if I am stuck and it is a good game (i.e., the opposition is weak), then I play too long. Usually I get some of my money back, but I also have a life, and I shouldn't waste seven hours of my Saturday nights sitting in a game just because it is good. I should live a life as well. This is bad for work-life balance.
Nearly all of this bad run is down to variance, which can be far worse in loose fishy games. And, of course, it (the variance) chooses to arrive just as I decide to move up in stakes (ain't it always the way?) so an awful lot of hard work gets wiped out in a very short time.
Notwithstanding that, the games remain weak and I only have to stay calm and, eventually, things will come right.
I think that this is one of the reasons that I play less live poker. At least when things like this happen and (let's take one example here) your two opponents, with AQ and QT against your AK on a board of KQ54 and a pot of $120, hit the case queen on the river, then you can scream abuse at the screen (and, somehow, refrain from typing into the chat box "you fucking morons!" which is, of course, what you want to type) while typing "nice one" into the chat box.
I've kicked a few chairs in the past couple of days, I can tell you.
As Iggy wrote just this week, a bad run at poker is a dark and lonely place. I'm not sure if being married or having a girlfriend would be any help, since doubtless they want to hear your bad beat stories even less than the barman does. You just have to cope with it the best ways you can.
Amazingly, I'm not that downbeat about it at the moment, the second that I get up from the table. I just wish that I had the courage to walk away from the game even though it is good. The problem is, good $5-$10 games don't grow on trees. In a way, you are a prisoner of your own higher stakes. As Terrence Chan said a couple of weeks ago, every minute that you are not playing, the money is flowing from weaker players to stronger players (well, that's the theory). When the weaker players are luck-boxing their way into flush after flush, you feel even more obliged to remain at the table, thus fucking up your sleep patterns and shitting you off when it comes to other poker players, whom you basically come to hate with a passion.
There's a player at $2-$4 on Virgin called Shouka, a cheating Danish cunt (as in, deliberate all-in expert) who probably scrapes an existence two-tabling. Anyway, Shouka hates other poker players even more than I do, and he is a poor enough player to put this into the text box, abusing any fish who happens to get anything more than a 10-outer on him. Every time I see his name, I say to myself, please lord, don't let me become like him, a kind of Gollum guarding his $2-$4 ring tables, hating them and loving them at the same time.
In a way, I felt a bit like that at the $5-$10 table tonight (there was only one running). Social player after social player came with a short stack, lost it to someone else, and went. Then some other social player sat down and slaughtered me hand after hand. These things happen. You have to shrug your shoulders. But what you shouldn't do is stay later than you otherwise would. It's not a matter of "trying to get even"; I don't think like that. As Caro wrote, "you already ARE even". No, it's a matter of being down and knowing that you have a positive EV in the game. If I had been a couple of hundred up I would have called it a night at about eleven and done what I should have done anyway -- gone to bed. But because I was four hundred or so down, I carried on. OK, I got back to $300 down for the night. Big deal. I became a slave to the good game, something which I swore I would stop doing. I should rule poker, not the other way round.
This, then, is another of the problems of $5-$10, beyond the necessary desensitization. Even if I can shrug off the losses (and I seem to be coping with the last four days of horrors on currencies, the stockmarkets and poker with remarkable equanimity when you consider what a long way into four figures the combined losses are) I find the game taking me over again; something which I had all but eliminated at $2-$4. So, we have another task. Not just desensitization, but also a kind of indifference is necessary. My life MUST come first, not my poker.
About three years ago I played my first $3-$6, moving up from the heady heights of $2-$4. One Saturday I two-tabled on Paradise from 8am to 2am, finishing up about $5 to the good. I swore that I would never ever do anything like that again. I felt that I had utterly wasted a valuable day of my life, moving 24 hours closer to death without taking my eyes from computer monitor. Because, and herein lies part of the problem, when you are not winning at poker, it isn't very enjoyable. In fact, it's a grinding slog. Luckily, it isn't my living, so I can, and indeed I should, stop myself playing anything approaching a marathon session that tires me out, leaves me grouchy, and wastes my weekend.
But, well, for the last two nights, that is exactly what I have done. And, until I can make $5-$10 an irelevant stake level in my head, it's probably what I will carry on doing.
Especially since I'm now nearly a grand behind my schedule for the year, so I have to play more if I want to catch up. Fuck it.
++++++++++
I forgot that the FA Cup Final was on today. I slept for two hours this afternoon (because I stayed up playing until 2am last night in TWO "good" $5-$10 games) and woke up with just 15 minutes to go in the game. I idly watched it until the final penalty, reading the papers at the same time. That's about all I've done today apart from play poker and clean up the house. I haven't been outside except to buy the newspapers. I didn't go outside yesterday either, except to go to Tesco's. Oh, I tell a lie. I did. I took the car to be mended. But it's hardly what could be called a life, is it.
++++++++++
Because there was only one decent game on Virgin, I fired up a 12c-25c ($25 max buy-in) table at No Limit and played Chris Ferguson style with a $5 stake. I all-inned with JJ from the small blind, eliciting folds from the BB and two limpers. Then I got to see a flop for free from the BB and flopped a straight. I all-inned and got called by TPTK, thus doubling through to $10.60, at which point I left (50 hands played). About half an hour later I sat down with $5 again at another 12c-25c table. This time my all-in with AA from under the gun got no callers, and my AKs all-in was called by JJ. The JJ won. I rebought and ended up leaving that game with a $5.09. Gain for the two hours played, 69 cents. Nominal bankroll for No limit games, $50.69. If it ever gets up to $100, I shall move up to $50 max buy ins and I shall sit down with $10, adopting roughly similar tactics.
On the plus side, at least it's relaxing and fun, which I suppose is what poker is meant to be and what it was for me in a long and distant past, rather than the hard work it feels like today as I strive to beat last year's win and look for ways to increase my profits to a level that will pay for a car, a new house and the conversion of this one.
Whatever happened to the times when all that I wanted my winnings to do was to pay for my holiday?
____________________
Re: Meta Game Again
I agree; the ability to stay in a good game is an incredibly significant part of making a profit. But at what opportunity cost? As you say, it's a metagame factor.
Suppose I am in a very good game. Where would you draw the line?
1) Staying up an hour later than usual because I don't have to be up early in the morning.
2) Staying up an hour later than usual even though I do have to be up early in the morning.
3) Not doing the house-cleaning (or some other necessary but unenjoyable task) because the game is good.
4) Missing an appointment (or some other necessary, but enjoyable, albeit non-remunaritive, task) because the game is good.
5) Standing up the girlfriend.
I think that everyone has their own line to draw and everyone has an opinion on where the line should be drawn (and, as can be seen above, we don't necessarily follow our own principles!). I would hesitate to say that someone has "got it wrong" because they play for a set four hours a day and then leave, even if the game is good. However, I would most definitely say that they had got it wrong if they left when they were a certain amount ahead, even if the game was good. In that sense, I don't think that the pair of attitudes are, as you claim, equally wrong-headed.
On that point, I would be less condemning of someone who had a rigid stop-loss principle, no matter how good the game, for reasons elucidated by Bluff and John Fox.
PJ
Re: Meta Game Again
PJ
Re: Meta Game Again
(Anonymous) 2006-05-14 08:04 pm (UTC)(link)gl
dd