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The right mental attitude
Mar. 12th, 2006 09:42 amThis has all the makings of being a rather long post, mainly because I just wrote down a list of all the things I have to do in the next 12 hours, and it's a very long list indeed, and I don't want to do any of them. So, writing this puts it off.
I was trying to work out what made me shift up in limits this week. Specifically, I was wondering this last night when at one point I was $800 down for the day. But then I thought about several other bloggers and blog entries (or, in some cases, non-blog entries) over recent weeks, and I realized that, in the grand scheme of things, $800 was not that much. OK, so it put me several hundred dollars down for the month. I could have carried on playing $2-$4 and accumulated a fairly regular $1,000 a month. But, was this what I really wanted? In other words, my move up in limits was probably generated by a "none of it really matters" kind of feeling. From one angle, this might appear to be depression; from another, apathy; from a third, serenity. You pays yer money....
As it happens, I worked my way back to $330 down for the day -- still my worst day of the year, but, pro rata, only 30 big bets over 1,000 hands. And I don't care what John Feeney wrote in Inside The Poker Mind, I feel a lot better when I get $500 back to finish $300 down than when I go from $200 up to $300 down.
My general feeling was, "well, let's see how it goes". Maybe my rate at $5-$10 will be worse than at $2-$4. But I'll only find out if I give it a reasonably long-term go. So, we'll throw in a stop-loss of $2,000, and see how it goes until the end of the year. If I end the year more than $12,000 up, then the move up was correct. If I don't, then I should have stayed at $2-$4.
So, what entries helped me to this "since it doesn't really matter, let's give it a go" state of mind?
Chris Fargis's entry "I am A Winning Poker Player" from a few weeks back was a definite help. Last night I got some horrendous cold decks against me (KK on button, raise, KQs reraises me from SB. I cap. Flop comes QQx rainbow. Called down to end. A few hands later, my AA loses to a fish with KQ on a board of T9xx ... J. You get the drift). So long as you are losing to hands like this, you know that you are just being unlucky, not outplayed. So, the mantra that "the tide will turn" is very helpful. http://twentyoneoutstwice.blogspot.com/
Eric at Three-bet posted his performance graph for the month of March so far. This showed how horrible Limit can be to play and why a lot of pot-limit/no-limit players crack under the strain and swear that the game is one of perpetual suck-outs. If Eric can go through stuff like this over many many hands, then, damnit, I thought, so can I. http://threebet33.blogspot.com/
Other helpful matters were less charitable on my part. It was "look at how many people have failed recently". Maudie lost her bankroll, steadily built up over several years, and had the guts to write about it. http://www.kebzweb.com/2006/02/requiem.html
Then Pauly referred to losing more than a third of his bankroll and not having a winning month for three months.
As for Pokergrub, well, the guy is a gambler and a blogger, not a poker player. His writing is entertaining and informative, but I do sometimes feel like saying to him: "do you realize why you get all those comps from the casinos?" (http://www.pokergrub.com/#112190622670934504)
Negative EV (http://foolandhismoney.blogspot.com/) freely admitted to flying too high for his own good, and recounted the experience of sitting at a table on Full Tilt where all the money at the table was less than the size of the average pots he had been playing in 10 days earlier.
Finally there is Eston B (http://eston.blogspot.com/), another player in his mid-20s who moved too far too fast. One day recently he reported losing $8.3K and his latest entry simply reads "sigh, that's all".
In other cases the evidence of the problems are more in the silence than in the writing. How many poker bloggers actually survive longer than a couple of years regularly posting their performances? Not many. It's easy when things are going well, but to record a car crash day-by-day cannot be easy.
I suspect that this was one reason that I was sticking to lower limits. I knew that I would be recording fairly regular profits month-in, month-out. At the higher level you are likely to see serious volatility from month to month. I wasn't sure that I would have the courage to report in gory detail a month where I had burnt two grand. But, if I warn you in advance, then it's okay, isn't it? I can afford that volatility. I may have some months where I'm $5K up. And, when the bad months come, I can recite the Chris Fargis mantra.
And there are other blogs and players. The Justin Zee site (latest headline from November 2005: "Justin Wins $137,000 in the Sunday PokerStars Tournament") is not very mysteriously silent. Hubris, hubris. Not a few other regular bloggers from last year are less than voluble this.
It doesn't take much perception to realize that this is a tough world and that in Pokerland a lot of people fail. From this point of view, my risk aversion is not so much cowardice as plain common sense. But my apparent risk aversion is deceptive. I'm playing at $5-$10 now. This is 10 times the level at which I was playing five years ago. Doing a quick bit of compound interest in my head, I make that something like 50% growth year-on-year. In ordinary business terms, that's a phenomenally fast rate of expansion. It's just slow compared to the loud noises that you hear around you. Does this remind you of anything? Yep, dotcom mania. Slowly slowly catchee monkee..
I found an interesting post from another player who seems to think in a similar way to me, even though he is a lot younger. The Sportswriter is a young Swedish limit player who has been trying to summon up the courage to move from $5-$10 to $10-$20. His plan is inked here. (http://www.stoxpoker.com/poker-blogs/moving-up-031006).
This is just about the standard "taking a shot" plan, but I don't think it works for me. I really have to be in a particular frame of mind (as mentioned at the beginning of the post). I think that I have achieved that state of mind now (last year it was late May before it happened, and then only after some serious mental doubts along the way!). Sportswriter is putting a stop loss of $2,000 on his $10-$20 foray, whereas I have a stop-loss of $2,000 at $5-$10. Maybe this signifies my realization that limit is more volatile than people think, or maybe it's because my bankroll is a few thousand dollars more than Sportswriter's.
I had a couple of interesting hands to post, but I've gone on long enough already, and now I have to write about insurance in the far east. Joy.
I was trying to work out what made me shift up in limits this week. Specifically, I was wondering this last night when at one point I was $800 down for the day. But then I thought about several other bloggers and blog entries (or, in some cases, non-blog entries) over recent weeks, and I realized that, in the grand scheme of things, $800 was not that much. OK, so it put me several hundred dollars down for the month. I could have carried on playing $2-$4 and accumulated a fairly regular $1,000 a month. But, was this what I really wanted? In other words, my move up in limits was probably generated by a "none of it really matters" kind of feeling. From one angle, this might appear to be depression; from another, apathy; from a third, serenity. You pays yer money....
As it happens, I worked my way back to $330 down for the day -- still my worst day of the year, but, pro rata, only 30 big bets over 1,000 hands. And I don't care what John Feeney wrote in Inside The Poker Mind, I feel a lot better when I get $500 back to finish $300 down than when I go from $200 up to $300 down.
My general feeling was, "well, let's see how it goes". Maybe my rate at $5-$10 will be worse than at $2-$4. But I'll only find out if I give it a reasonably long-term go. So, we'll throw in a stop-loss of $2,000, and see how it goes until the end of the year. If I end the year more than $12,000 up, then the move up was correct. If I don't, then I should have stayed at $2-$4.
So, what entries helped me to this "since it doesn't really matter, let's give it a go" state of mind?
Chris Fargis's entry "I am A Winning Poker Player" from a few weeks back was a definite help. Last night I got some horrendous cold decks against me (KK on button, raise, KQs reraises me from SB. I cap. Flop comes QQx rainbow. Called down to end. A few hands later, my AA loses to a fish with KQ on a board of T9xx ... J. You get the drift). So long as you are losing to hands like this, you know that you are just being unlucky, not outplayed. So, the mantra that "the tide will turn" is very helpful. http://twentyoneoutstwice.blogspot.com/
Eric at Three-bet posted his performance graph for the month of March so far. This showed how horrible Limit can be to play and why a lot of pot-limit/no-limit players crack under the strain and swear that the game is one of perpetual suck-outs. If Eric can go through stuff like this over many many hands, then, damnit, I thought, so can I. http://threebet33.blogspot.com/
Other helpful matters were less charitable on my part. It was "look at how many people have failed recently". Maudie lost her bankroll, steadily built up over several years, and had the guts to write about it. http://www.kebzweb.com/2006/02/requiem.html
Then Pauly referred to losing more than a third of his bankroll and not having a winning month for three months.
As for Pokergrub, well, the guy is a gambler and a blogger, not a poker player. His writing is entertaining and informative, but I do sometimes feel like saying to him: "do you realize why you get all those comps from the casinos?" (http://www.pokergrub.com/#112190622670934504)
Negative EV (http://foolandhismoney.blogspot.com/) freely admitted to flying too high for his own good, and recounted the experience of sitting at a table on Full Tilt where all the money at the table was less than the size of the average pots he had been playing in 10 days earlier.
Finally there is Eston B (http://eston.blogspot.com/), another player in his mid-20s who moved too far too fast. One day recently he reported losing $8.3K and his latest entry simply reads "sigh, that's all".
In other cases the evidence of the problems are more in the silence than in the writing. How many poker bloggers actually survive longer than a couple of years regularly posting their performances? Not many. It's easy when things are going well, but to record a car crash day-by-day cannot be easy.
I suspect that this was one reason that I was sticking to lower limits. I knew that I would be recording fairly regular profits month-in, month-out. At the higher level you are likely to see serious volatility from month to month. I wasn't sure that I would have the courage to report in gory detail a month where I had burnt two grand. But, if I warn you in advance, then it's okay, isn't it? I can afford that volatility. I may have some months where I'm $5K up. And, when the bad months come, I can recite the Chris Fargis mantra.
And there are other blogs and players. The Justin Zee site (latest headline from November 2005: "Justin Wins $137,000 in the Sunday PokerStars Tournament") is not very mysteriously silent. Hubris, hubris. Not a few other regular bloggers from last year are less than voluble this.
It doesn't take much perception to realize that this is a tough world and that in Pokerland a lot of people fail. From this point of view, my risk aversion is not so much cowardice as plain common sense. But my apparent risk aversion is deceptive. I'm playing at $5-$10 now. This is 10 times the level at which I was playing five years ago. Doing a quick bit of compound interest in my head, I make that something like 50% growth year-on-year. In ordinary business terms, that's a phenomenally fast rate of expansion. It's just slow compared to the loud noises that you hear around you. Does this remind you of anything? Yep, dotcom mania. Slowly slowly catchee monkee..
I found an interesting post from another player who seems to think in a similar way to me, even though he is a lot younger. The Sportswriter is a young Swedish limit player who has been trying to summon up the courage to move from $5-$10 to $10-$20. His plan is inked here. (http://www.stoxpoker.com/poker-blogs/moving-up-031006).
This is just about the standard "taking a shot" plan, but I don't think it works for me. I really have to be in a particular frame of mind (as mentioned at the beginning of the post). I think that I have achieved that state of mind now (last year it was late May before it happened, and then only after some serious mental doubts along the way!). Sportswriter is putting a stop loss of $2,000 on his $10-$20 foray, whereas I have a stop-loss of $2,000 at $5-$10. Maybe this signifies my realization that limit is more volatile than people think, or maybe it's because my bankroll is a few thousand dollars more than Sportswriter's.
I had a couple of interesting hands to post, but I've gone on long enough already, and now I have to write about insurance in the far east. Joy.
