Toujours la change
Aug. 30th, 2005 06:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAhh, well, it's back to work, very depressed. Not much change in life. Some days the only thing that matters is that you don't have a drink, and yesterday was definitely one of those dark dark days when absoutely nothing wanted to go right. In the words of that great philosopher B Springsteen "one day we will look back on this and it will all seem funny", although sometimes I doubt the sagacity of these words.
As with last month, I spent many days getting back to a position where it actually looked as if I would be in profit, only for a day near the end of the month to kick me in the teeth (last month the 30th and 31st, this month the 29th). You sometimes wich that all months were February.
I know that it's all "one long game", but what the Sklansky/Caro geeks miss is a fundamental facet of human nature. It needs structure. I know that you can't try to win every hand, because the way to profit is to play correctly, which sometimes entails folding. I know that there is volatility in Hold'em, so there will be losing sessions. But the human brain has to impose artificial structure somewhere, else he goes insane. For me, it tends to be months.
The other reason for the depression is, of course, that the loss of yesterday severely damages the overall profit per 100 bets, leading me once again to worry that I might not be god enough. In a sense, this is the worse feeling. While I'm happy continuing at 1BB per 100 bets (when two-tabling), I'm not too happy doing so at 0.5 of a BB. One minute the stats are telling me that the former is the most likely state of affairs, and a few hours later the stats are telling me the latter. That kind of thing can get you down.
And, on top of that, I don't think that I played well. Which is the worst of all. I need a break, but I have nothing to have a break to. This is clear clinical depression (or the onset thereof), and the though of that, er, depresses me, if you know what I mean.
Still, struggle on through this blackness we must. I sometimes really wish that the cheerful in life knew what this was like. Not so that they would be miserable, but so that there could be some flash of genuine empathy, rather than puzzled sympathy and, in the main, utter bemusement.
As with last month, I spent many days getting back to a position where it actually looked as if I would be in profit, only for a day near the end of the month to kick me in the teeth (last month the 30th and 31st, this month the 29th). You sometimes wich that all months were February.
I know that it's all "one long game", but what the Sklansky/Caro geeks miss is a fundamental facet of human nature. It needs structure. I know that you can't try to win every hand, because the way to profit is to play correctly, which sometimes entails folding. I know that there is volatility in Hold'em, so there will be losing sessions. But the human brain has to impose artificial structure somewhere, else he goes insane. For me, it tends to be months.
The other reason for the depression is, of course, that the loss of yesterday severely damages the overall profit per 100 bets, leading me once again to worry that I might not be god enough. In a sense, this is the worse feeling. While I'm happy continuing at 1BB per 100 bets (when two-tabling), I'm not too happy doing so at 0.5 of a BB. One minute the stats are telling me that the former is the most likely state of affairs, and a few hours later the stats are telling me the latter. That kind of thing can get you down.
And, on top of that, I don't think that I played well. Which is the worst of all. I need a break, but I have nothing to have a break to. This is clear clinical depression (or the onset thereof), and the though of that, er, depresses me, if you know what I mean.
Still, struggle on through this blackness we must. I sometimes really wish that the cheerful in life knew what this was like. Not so that they would be miserable, but so that there could be some flash of genuine empathy, rather than puzzled sympathy and, in the main, utter bemusement.
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Cheerful? Moi?
Date: 2005-08-30 07:26 am (UTC)I think both of us are actually quite fortunate compared with most people in the world. OK, you could say this just indicates how awful the human condition is; but certainly your situation and mine could be a lot worse than they are. This may not induce outright cheerfulness, but it perhaps suggests that the state of maximum depression should be saved for some time when it might be more appropriate.
As for poker, I have a fairly good opinion of myself, but also some sense of my own limitations. I don't really believe I could make money playing poker, and I don't believe I'd enjoy trying, so I don't play it. It's not my kind of game, and gazing from a distance at the logical contortions you go through to find the right strategy doesn't entice me at all.
I can't tell you whether you should go on playing or give it up. I really have no idea what's best for you. I can only make my own decision on this.
"I need a break, but I have nothing to have a break to." You mean you can't think of anything to do other than the things you spend your time doing already? I'm not the best person to advise you, as I probably suffer from the same problem myself; but this seems in principle like a failure of imagination rather than a genuine lack of possibilities.
-- Jonathan
Just think happy thoughts!
Date: 2005-08-30 08:49 am (UTC)It's irrational, pointless and counter-productive. And completely unavoidable. It's like a headache or hayfever, you just get through it. If you look at some of the other things you've written (even recently) you can see it's just pessimism writ large. All that stuff about never missing trains because you allow the extra time for a potential delay speaks to the same thing. The optimist expects things to turn out OK or good and allows no extra time. You 'waste' the extra 15 mins you have to allow to ensure you're early.
So it is with a bout of inferior numbers at poker. The pessimist in you sees it as confirmation that things will go wrong and will look for reasons to hang this on (I'm a crap player). An optimist will be rambling on about bad beats. A realist will lay out the stats from more than just a 2-3 month period and see what the averages are.
Are you in the red over the last year? If you're in the black long-term then fine, stop fretting. If you are in thr red and it's a small amount, then treat that as the cost of your hobby. If you are losing big-time then just dial back the level you're playing at and don't take it as seriously.
Oh and you should get out more! Widen your gym stuff to include something like a team sport, even if it is low-skill 5 a side.
But these are all just coping strategies and you know really you're never going to be a glass-half-full sort of person. The trick is to get over it.
Re: Just think happy thoughts!
Date: 2005-08-30 10:23 am (UTC)Reduce the measuring periods, lose the inertia: measure on a weekly basis. You will still try to hang on to a profit or wish the new week to start, but it will impact you less.
chaos
Re: Just think happy thoughts!
Date: 2005-08-30 11:58 am (UTC)In general, though, I look forward to a new week, accounting period, because it reinitialises everything. It make you more competitive: when I win, I'm not winning a bit more than alot; when I lose I'm not losing a bit less than a lot - I'm trying to win, trying not to lose and decisions I make have a very good chance of altering that win/loss' state. At the end of the week, the decisions I make are less liekly to change that win/loss state.
I've certainly felt the influence of not wanting to blow a good week, or hoping that a bad week will soon be behind me - and it isn't a constructive influence, I could only imagine that the thing would only be augmented by an increased accounting period.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-30 11:14 am (UTC)Sorry to hear that you have been depressed. Since I play for a living, I also get mildly depressed when I have a real bad run. I always examine my play during that run, and although a lot of it is due to variance, especially in plo, some of it also is that I simply made mistakes. Since I have an extremely good grasp of fundamentals and math, my mistakes usually involve making a wrong raise or call based on the player in question, or trying to be too aggressive in pushing an unknown player off a marginal holding when they have already shown stubborness on early streets.
I am always reading and constanly trying to improve my game, and think about the game a lot when I don't play. I love the game and besides the fact that I depend on it for my livelihood, I also simply want to try to become the best player I can be, though I have no desire to try to play the very best in the world for the highest stakes imaginable. In fact I am always seeking the softest spot where I can make the most. Game/Table selection. I don't know if you have read Zen and the Art of Poker, which was derided by many on 2+2 because of a controversial section on "cyclical luck", but it really is helpful in showing the correct psychological stance one needs to maintain all the time. I recommend it to you. I would also highly recommend making an improvement program for yourself that constantly changes. Mike Caro in his 7 Days to Holdem/Stud Success bookelts, has the player being on a "mission" everyday, and concentrating on one thing. Maybe one day it is pot odds, and another how you play early positions or various hands out of position. This is a very good regimen to help you improve.
But I have a question for you. I know that you have a day job and don't play poker for income, although you do want to be a winning player. So do you play poker as a diversion/therapy for other things in your life that depress you? If so it would seem that poker might not be great therapy for someone who seeks perfection and not merely a pastime, since it is in fact a winning/losing game in which you measure yourself, as opposed to being an amateur ornithologist for example. If the answer to the previous question is yes, then perhaps you need to add other activities to your life that don't entail the pressure and self-measurement that poker does. This might help you to better weather the vicissitudes of poker.
Even though playing online is done with players from all over the world, it is essentially a lonely activity unlike B&M play, and is no substitute for a social life, not that I am one to talk in that regard, but just that I know this is true in my own life. I wish you the best in dealing with this and in becoming a better player if that is what you wish to continue to do.
BluffTHIS!
Thanks guys pt 1
Date: 2005-08-30 01:06 pm (UTC)I'll try to address most of the points raised here, since that it only common courtesy, and if you can make the effort to write in response to what was little more than a whinge, I can make the effort to reply!
On Bluff's points. I think that the Caro "seven-day mission" is a good point. In fact, I keep saying that I will do various work on stats to assess certain plays, and I know that I should, but I always end up playing a couple of hours instead :-) Caro is a bit of a loop, but he does come up with some staggeringly perceptive points that he puts across well.
I haven't read Zen and the art of Poker, and perhaps I should.
Now, your question on why do I play poker rather than, say, go birdwatching. As you say, it's probably not the best choice, and the question opens up a whole can of worms about the interior me. I was probably born with some kind of chemical quirk in the brain that made me the way I am, and that was a problematic way. Booze got rid of the problems created by this genetic quirk (or whetever it was), but eventually booze becomes "your greatest enemy and your closest, indeed your only, friend". I have desperate difficulties coping with most of the human race.
In retrospect, I am amazed that I beat booze, and it takes several years for the cobwebs to be blown away so that you start thinking clearly again. But the intrinsic problems remain, and the danger is that poker becomes "your only friend".
Now, poker has a lot of plusses over booze, particularly if you are a winner (or not that much of a loser). First, it doesn't kill you. Second, it doesn't bankrupt you. Third, it doesn't make you a complete pain in the arse, loud, or cause you to lose your balance.
It also has minuses. First, it's intrinsically lonely. Second, it makes you a bore. Third, even when you are winning, it doesn't make you very happy. In other words, as potential addictions go (at least in my case), it's a fairly minor problem. It remains a substitute for life and relationships (and a means by which to escape them), although it's been a long-term substitute and it's been far less damaging than alcohol.
On chaos' point, in as much as I think I understand it (reading chaos' posts is always something like a crossword puzzle), I do not adjust my play according to accounting periods (if I did, there is no way I would have been two-tabling at $5-$10 having just got myself back into profit with three days of the month to go). What I meant was that I "measure" things by months, and seeing the red figure pissed me off, especially given all the work I had put into turning it black. My style of play does not alter (or, at least, if I see my style of play altering, then I stop playing for a short while). My following para that I was more concerned about the overall win rate, rather than the monthly figure, should have made this clear. The monthly setback was a minor matter in the overall depression (even the loss in the morning was not that significant, since I had felt the same way the previous night, when I was up $800 in the previous three days).
Re: Thanks guys pt 2
Date: 2005-08-30 01:07 pm (UTC)Part of this problem is having nothing to escape to. I can't play team games -- I'm just far too intense, putting everything into it and expecting everyone else to do the same, until one of them says "It's just a GAME, for god's sake!" The good thing about serious stakes poker is that you don't get many people saying that. So, returning to Bluff's point, this "pressure" suits my attitude to any kind of game -- fiercely competitive and not afraid to show it.
As Jonathan says, I am probably suffering from a lack of imaginiation. I suspect that I am also suffering from a lack of courage. For someone seen as a "gambler", I have actually been seriously risk-averse when it comes to making life-changing decisions (it comes down to that pessimism, again, as Geoff says). I approach something new, if it can have a significant impact on me with trepidation (to be avoided) rather than gleeful anticipation (to be embraced). I can gamble $2,000 on the turn of a card (if I think I am 55:45) because I know that, if I lose, I will have made the right decision and it won't particularly change my life. Sure, if I lose I'll be mightily pissed-off for a day or two, but I would still be willnig to take the gamble. But talk to me about moving countries or even moving towns, and I start getting frightened. As you may have noticed, I have lived my entire life (apart from my years at college) in South London. Basically, I'm a seriously shy scaredy-cat, using this "blank page" as my psychotherapist. Perhaps, actually, with some success.
Re: Thanks guys
Date: 2005-08-30 02:50 pm (UTC)I suppose if you want "a break", maybe what you really want is something you could quite enjoy for a while without getting obsessed with it. Easier said than done?
You might expect me to write in favour of moving countries. I've been doing it all my life, on the whole it's been a positive experience, and I don't regret it. I've enjoyed life out of England rather more than I enjoyed life in England. But then, I never had any roots anywhere to start with, so I had nothing to lose. I stay in different countries more or less as other people stay in different hotels. For people with roots, the situation is different.
-- Jonathan
Re: Thanks guys pt 1
Date: 2005-08-30 02:35 pm (UTC)‘reading chaos' posts is always something like a crossword puzzle’
As I’ve said to you before, you only have to ask – I have little ego tied up in my powers, or lack of, of explanation.
I didn’t read your post thoroughly -I was guilty of interpolating between them. I recall you making a comment on BDD’s blog a while back alluding of your to your guilt in doing something to lock in a black period – I believe it was not playing on the last day. If this was the case then this is, quite clearly, adjusting your (high-level) play to accounting periods.
That adjustment is only a switch – on or off. I can’t imagine that the likelihood of a ‘pissed-off’ state lurking around the corner isn’t going to influence my low-level decisions in someway, especially in the murky world of LHE decision-making. Since you put less effort into a week, it is obvious that you will be less pissed off at the lack of reward for it. In the end, you will hopefully be less sensitised to it and it will seem more like noise.
Since if (as you’ve admitted before) caring about your session win/loss effects your low-level decisions, then it seems unlikely or illogical that caring about your monthly profit/loss leaves no trace on that aspect of decision-making.
As for win rates, it is best to try not to care about them (easy to say), instead to care about the things that influence them, but not the numbers themselves. There are few things I can think of that would unhinge me more than frequently re-evaluating my win-rate or reassessing whether or not whether or not I can expect to be a winning player: I’ve been there.
As gamblers, we want answers to our questions - we need security - but statistics are unlikely to ever give us what we need. Even if were to obtain a silly number of hands that we can accept as being statistically reliable, then insecurity is likely to draw us into thinking, ‘but the game is different now then it was before’, ‘I’m a different player now’ – ‘the data is invalid’. PT is never going to give us the answers, it’s not a calculator, but a compass.
As for a pick-me-up, Seneca ‘On the shortness of life’ did it for me a few months ago. Though I think it is something I should read periodically.
As has probably been suggested a new hobby can be a boost, since it is hard to elicit the reward inherent in step-size-changes in anything you’ve been doing a long time.
Re: Thanks guys pt 1
Date: 2005-08-30 03:25 pm (UTC)a) if I have decided to leave a game when it gets round to my big blind, and I get a "marginal" hand (which sometimes I might raise with, sometimes I might fold). I am guilty of tending to raise with it when I am a long way up, or down to any large or small degree, but folding with it when I am marginally up. However, since the opposition do not know that I am about to leave, these decisions fall within the correct strategy for such marginal hands. (I could go further into this Abdul-style line, but basically, if you hardly ever limp, then you have to raise with some hands and fold the same hands to maintain your correct likelihood of winning when you enter a pot). In other words, that I let my financial position affect my decision does not affect my long-term earnings, no more than, say, taking a random point on a clock would.
b) If I have been playing for a couple of hours (the time that I have allocated myself to play), and the game is good and I am up, I have a tendency to leave, unless I am a VERY long way up, in which case I tend to stay until the easy money goes broke or until I lose a certain amount of my winnings back. If I am down, I have a tendency to stay until the easy money goes broke. Now, I know that this is a bad habit and it's one that I wish I didn't have. Leaving the game at the allocated time is okay, but staying because you are down is bad for long-term mental health.
Re: Thanks guys pt 1
Date: 2005-08-30 04:12 pm (UTC)That aside, I believe accounting periods can be very important. It's perhaps best not to have them at all, except you wouldn't know if you were had a losing game til the cheques bounced. As Im sure it is for many gamblers, losing part of your on-line roll, often your winnings, never hurts as much as money direct out of your bank account - winnings that have been 'cashed in'. I get a little annoyed with myself if I tally-up and give more than a passing thought half way a good week or even a session, since I know that I am performing some sort of mental cashing-in - assigning a refernce point to that state. Then of course you give yourself a point from which to beat yourself up on if things go wrong.
A similar effect probably has greater impact(disasterously) in sports betting. If for example, in some sporting event, I have a position which shows a very nice profit on one outcome, then I'm drawn into thinking 'if that player/team wins then I'll win this', so I've assigned a profit to that outcome. This, of course, creates inertia and therefore makes it harder to change position or reduce exposures when require. It's part of the reason why I don't think SB , the stock market is my forte. In poker, such reference points have far less influence over decisions.
chaos
Aaargh
Date: 2005-08-30 04:01 pm (UTC)I'm organising a boardgames weekend (sort of mini house-con) for either 25/56 Sep, or 8/9 Oct (date to be determined by responses I get in the next week). You'd be most welcome to come along.
How's the video card?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 12:35 pm (UTC)