The State of the Poker Game
(Warning: The following post is heavy on poker content. You have been warned.)
From a more innocent time (Credit: Bill Rini)
It has been a frustrating year for poker. I’ve been playing along with my buddy Duke and doing nothing but losing. I’ve been concentrating on playing tournaments and SNG’s because I think it’s where I do the strongest, but I can’t shake the bad beats and seem to take them at the worst time.
There has seemed to be a few phases of this cycle of losing, which seem to mirror the 5 stages of grief:
1. Denial. “How the hell does he call there? 80% of his stack with Ace high and I’ve only showed down winners!”
2. Anger. Like the kind where my wife starts to question whether I actually enjoy playing poker because she hasn’t seen me celebrate a cash in a few weeks and I only seem to curse the cards I’m dealt.
3. Bargaining. Maybe if I only play *these* tournaments. Or am I not playing enough? Am I not paying enough attention? How about if I just play straight ABC poker because nobody’s paying attention anyways?
4. Depression. Straight ABC poker didn’t work. Clearly people can’t be on a cold run for this long, it’s obviously because I’m a donkey and shouldn’t be winning anyways.
5. Acceptance. Because online poker is rigged anyways.
Duke, bless his heart, has witnessed or listened to every bad beat that I’ve taken during this time and still offered words of encouragement or disbelief at my bad luck, while he himself has skyrocketed through an upswing the likes of which I’ve never experienced. At the beginning of all this I thought we were of similar skill level, and while he still believes it, I don’t. The worst feeling of all of this is that I have played poker and studied the game ravenously for five years now, and I seem no closer to any kind of breakthrough than I did when I first thought that starting a blog about the freerolls I was playing seemed like a good idea.
I’m starting to think that my primary weakness lies in the fact that when I first started to play, I played fearlessly out of ego or a simple faith in the mechanics of fold equity, and I lost a lot of money that way because I never slowed down when the signs told me to. Somewhere along the line I found the right balance, won a good bit of money, and then became far too conscious of the value of the chips in front of me and could not play the game the way I needed to. Now, my playing style is the very bad combination of understanding the math behind aggression, but being unwilling to carry through with it unless everything screams that doing so is a safe bet. The problem with this is that this becomes extremely predictable, and I get snapped off because everyone and their mom can see that I can make that move with any two cards.
Second, my hand reading ability is crap. It’s better than it used to be, but it’s definitely nowhere near the level that I should be able to conjure up when in a tough situation. I blame this on my multi-tabling, which pretty much demands an emphasis on playing the two cards in front of you rather than betting patterns of your opponents unless you’re able to take a copious amount of notes in the chaos.
I’m back to re-reading books that I’ve finished off in the past, hoping to reconnect with some of the advice that got me to where I was before. But any kind of tournament win would also probably do some good. The swagger from my game is currently missing in action, the kind of confidence that you have to have in your game in order to survive a large field. We shall see where things go from here, and I’ll be sure to share the good news should such a breakthrough occur.
Hell, you won’t be able to shut me up for a week after it happens.
The Gbucks will rain from the sky my arctic friend! You are of equal skill, I have no question in that, you just need to get your mojo back! Mojo equity!
I’ve been about even lately. I play a multi-table once a day or so, but I stick mostly to 9-man SNG. It’s not big money to win, but winning money is easier. Being in the top 33% to cash-in instead of the top 10% works for me.
I hope things turn around for you soon.