Playin' High

Although that could also apply to some portion of the poker I've played in my day, the title of this post actually does not refer to my mental state when I'm playing this game lately. No, instead, it refers to something I think I figured out about myself and my poker play at some point on Thursday evening.

I've been playing too high lately.

It's not a financial wherewithal thing. What I mean is, I've never even considered playing poker at levels that would actually have a demonstrable effect on my financial condition. I know some people do that, in fact I know plenty of people who kind of rely on doing that just to get that "rush" to satisfy their gamblor urge, but personally that could never be me. Gambling of any kind would immediately cease to be enjoyable for me whatsoever if I knew that losing in a particular game would mean actual financial pain to me. I don't mind pushing the limit and moving up or even taking a stab a little higher than I might otherwise have been playing of late, getting out of my comfort zone, yaddayaddayadda, but never ever close to the point where I would have any semblance of a financial issue if I lost. You'll never find me playing at that level, it would not fill any kind of a need in me, and in fact I would seriously hate it. I'm shuddering here just thinking about playing that way. So it's not like I've been risking my family's financial situation or anything resembling that of late with my poker play.

That said, I'm not totally blind to the amounts I'm playing for either. And lately, I think I've been playing a bit too high.

As I mentioned yesterday, recently I've been going through another one of those rippingly horrible streaks of luck. I could not begin to count the number of suckouts I have taken lately at the tables. Probably more than 100,000 per week if I had to count them all up. It's been disgusting, it's happened before, and it'll happen again. And again. And again. It's just something I've always had to deal with. I get in ahead when the money goes in a lot, and the inevitable result is that, while I win a lot as well, I lose in that situation more than you could probably imagine, and more than many people could handle. Even me it seems, as the past couple of weeks have seen me flipping out in the chatbox at random dickheads at an alarming rate. I mean, I just haven't been able to keep my mouth shut after taking my fifth or sixth 80% hand for a suckout-elimination midway through an mtt in the span of an hour after some nutmonkey just had to call my allin reraise for 10 times his preflop raise with his 22 and then runner-runners the wheel to beat my pocket Kings. I've called people all kinds of names, I've wished ill on them, I've invented hundreds of new and often highlarious ways of insulting their play. I mean, I haven't just tapped on the glass, guys. I've taken a sledgehammer to it, shattered it into a million pieces and let the fish pour out all over the floor to flop breathlessly and die like we're watching a "Faith No More" video or something. I'm totally embarrassed about my behavior, and yet at the same time I can totally understand it as well. No matter who you are or how calm or unaffected you think you are, you would have to withstand the string of beats that I have in order to know how you would really react in my situation, and while I am quite sure many of you would not lose your cool as much as I have, I'm equally sure that most of you would lose your cool a heck of a lot more than you think.

Anyways, I've spent more and more time trying to figure out why I keep doing this lately even though I know the suckouts are inevitable and nobody is making me play the game at all let alone play it as much as I do. And the answer, it finally occurred to me yesterday, is the level at which I'm playing. I was thinking it over, and while I haven't exactly been pleased with my nightly donkeyfucking in the $26 buyin 35k guaranteed mtt on full tilt or the $27 25k guaranteed mtt on stars, the bottom line is that those beats simply don't set me off nearly as much as when I get 1-outted in the $100 buyin 1-rebuy 1-addon tournament, and certainly not like when some masturbator monkeypusher button-mashing window-licking assclown dicksniffer sucks out like a little bitch in a $220 heads-up sng as I enjoy playing from time to time. And it occurs to me that it's the money involved that's the difference.

Like I said, none of the amounts I'm playing for are going to bankrupt me or my family, or ultimately have any real financial significance to me at all, and I wouldn't play anywhere near that level under any circumstances. Shit, I go out yearly to the WSOP and drop a couple large on just one poker tournament, and I don't care financially if I lose that one either, so a hundy here and two hundy there really isn't a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things, especially after the hugely profitable last several months I've had playing this game. But it has dawned on me this week that losing my buyins at a $200 and $300 per game clip, and getting monkeysucked out on to do it, definitely pisses me the hell off. A whole heck of a lot more than those $26 and $28 suckouts. And I have finally decided to do something about it.

So on Thursday night, I didn't play that 33k guaranteed tournament at 7:30pm ET nightly on full tilt -- the $100 1 rebuy 1 addon event I've been killing lately until the inevitable suckmonkey 20-80's me and then finishes me off by calling my preflop allin with his 76o and 40-60'ing me to send me home. And I didn't play either of the $200 nightly satellites into the $2500 FTOPS tournament coming up on Saturday, a satellite I have had significant success winning in the recent past. I also didn't let myself get talked into playing the $216 stud FTOPS tournament at 9pm ET, even though I am highly confident that I play stud better than pretty much everyone in that tournament given the action I watched go down over and over and over again last night in that event. And I stayed away from the higher-buyin sng's as well, which have probably been the source of my best ability lately to get in hopelessly ahead and yet end up unbelievably behind. Instead I stuck to the $26 and $27.50 buyin mtt's at 8pm ET on full tilt and pokerstars, and the highest I played on the night was the $30 rebuy that I've played so profitably over the past few months on full tilt.

The result? I still got monkeyfucked, so gheyley it's hard to even describe. In the 25k on stars, I busted about two-thirds of the way through the field when I raised preflop with 87s, flopped two pairs, bet and got called, and proceeded to turn a boat which also completed the flush draw that was present on the flop. I strung my intelligent, kind opponent along like the nice little man that he was, got him all in, only to find he held overpair Kings, which was great until a third King hit the river to give this nice, nice man a higher boat courtesy of that 5% shot that I have come to know all too well. I busted early from the 35k on full tilt after chasing two unfoldable straight-flush draws early at good odds and missing them both. And in the $30 rebuy I destroyed the field redonkulously to the point that I was in 3rd place out of 200 some runners at the end of rebuy hour, only to see half of my stack disappear halfway through the starting field when my pocket Queens got called allin preflop by pocket 7s and the cute little guy across the table flopped a set of 7s, a blow I could never recover from as I busted about 50 players from the money. It was a brutal night of poker to say the least, and in reality no different from what's been happening to me almost nightly lately, other than again the level of buyin I was playing at.

But you know what? I didn't wish brutal, painful death on any of my opponents -- in front of other family members or otherwise -- and I'm pretty sure I didn't even swear at anybody in the chatbox at all as I recall. No doubt I couldn't resist commenting on a couple of these people's play in the chatbox -- you gotta give me some time to come back down off the ledge, especially given some of the stuff I saw on the night -- but it wasn't the same that it has been lately for me, and for the most part I didn't do or say anything that most of you out there would not have done either. So I think I learned a good lesson about myself after a couple of weeks of playing higher than my true comfort zone. Just because I know I'm better than the regular caliber of players at a certain level doesn't mean I should automatically play regularly at that level. If my psyche -- for whatever reason -- can't handle the regular swings and in particular the inevitable downswings, suckouts and just general horrifyingly poor play, then my job needs to be to move down to the point where I can.

Guess I'll see you in the $1 mtts on stars tonight!

Donkin on a Monday

Wow, boredom set in in an awful hurry for me in the BBT4. This was even quicker than in previous series. With the attendance at the weekly tournaments dropping noticeably here in just the early third week of the 13-week challenge, I must say that without even realizing it, I am just part of the herd losing interest in the series, and in actually trying to play well when I do sit down to play.

Of course it didn't help that I got riversucked out of four sitngos in under and hour on Monday night heading into the Riverchasers tournament. I stopped playing the sngs when I got a bit short in one ring sng, picked up KQ in the small blind and raised two preflop limpers. To my mild surprise, both called. When the flop came K22, I pushed my last chips in on the flop on an overbet to the pot, knowing this would appear like I was pushing short when weak. Again, to my amazement, the first player called, the second pushed allin, and the first insta-called. When the first guy flipped up KK for the flopped overboat, I just chuckled. I did not even see the other guy turn over his pocket 2s for the flopped quads vs. flopped overboat until after the hand was over and I was eliminated, when I noticed all the chips in the other guy's pile and wanted to replay the hand to see what had happened. A good rule of thumb I try to live by is when I've been riversucked four times and then run KQ on a shrot stack and on a K22 flop into KK and 22, it's time to hang 'em up.

By this point, unfortunately, the Riverchasers had already started, and I was feelin' tilty. I quickly dropped down to around 2500 chips from the starting stack of 3000 on donkish stabs at pots with nothing and on silly resteals for little chips early. Basically I was pissed off and wasn't into the tournament and thus was just trying to push shitty cards and steal somebody's stack on a suckout or something. Stoopid. Eventually I allin overbluffed on the river against someone for about 4 times the current pot, and got called down instantly by a pocket pair below top pair. That one definitely surprised me, but I guess I just have to be happy with someone making a play that I will double up on 98% of the time. It was actually the second time I had been called down on a big bet with nothing in my short time in the Riverchasers on Monday, both times of course with me hardcore bluffing with nothing. I guess I was giving off the vibe that I was feeling inside -- that I should not have been playing, that I did not want to be playing, and that I was just going to make stoopid bets and raises with no rhyme, no reason, and no plan for the hands I got involved in. That worked about as well as you might expect from reading that description.

Needless to say, I didn't last long and I didn't stick around any longer than I had to on the night. After making the points and nearly final tabling the first three events of the BBT4, I stopped giving a crap any more than I did right before the series started, and it severely shows in my play. In my last four BBT tournaments, no money, no final tables, no points, no good play at all. Well, except for the Mookie last week when I got two-outered after the flop by someone who spent the entire previous week bitching in his blog about how unlucky he is and how great everyone else runs. Running bad at this game just fucking blows.

It's gonna be at least a few days before I get the bitter taste of last night out of my mouth. You might want to call me down in the HORSE tonight in the skillz series, because I'm going to be calling and betting with absolute shit and just hoping to donk somebody out early. Bitches.

Big Night of a Different Kind

Wow did I have another big night earlier this week in online poker. Even though I managed to record a 2k+ swing on the day, it was completely different from every other big night I have ever had. Let me explain.

So as I've mentioned here recently, I've got a lot going on in my life right now outside of the poker world. Most urgently just now, I am in the unenivable position of needing to find a house to live in in the suburbs of New York City. Actually, that would be fine, but the problem is that I basically have only a couple of weeks to do it. How I let myself get into this situation is a loooong story for another day, but suffice it to say that literally with every passing day, the pressure on me to figure something out quick about a huge decision like this grows exponentially.

Anyways, long story short, earlier this week was a baaaaaad day. We thought we had this place, then we didn't get it, and then some events ensued that led me to some serious life tilt. I mean, top two or three days of life tilt since I started writing this blog some time ago. I was flipping out, as my friends from the girly chat could attest to. I had completely lost it.

And this is where my big day of poker comes in. In the olden days, I was having such an awful night, the old me would have gone and lost $2000 at the online tables over a short amount of time, and the sickest part is I would have enjoyed doing it too. I know -- I've been there before. Few buyins at $400 nlh (or higher!), not even giving myself a chance, betting the pot with every possible draw and stacking off with bullshit in my hand, plus throw in a handful of auto-donks at $110 and $220 sitngos to boot, pushing every ace-rag or sooted bullshit just like a good blogger should. Trust me when I say, I know from experience, that night was a $2000+ loss just waiting to happen. My roll can handle it, especially after last weekend's $T explosion for me, and I know how these nights have gone in the past. There just would have been no stopping me.

But instead, the other night saw the new me trump the old me as far as bankroll management. I 100% realized the mindset I was in, and I consciously forced myself to stay away from anything that could possibly cost me any significant piece of my very hard-earned roll. Instead I took a suggestion from a fellow blogger in the girly and played just one table of $10 buyin PLO, trying as hard as I could to lay one of those typical PLO bad beats on some cocknose as my way of dealing with the life tilt I was experiencing. And you know what? It worked! I felt much better after maybe half an hour of chasing every inside straight draw and bottom-two pair bullshit.

Grand total from my 30 minutes of blowing off steam at the poker tables? A loss of 55 cents. Adjusting for the rake I probably lost about a quarter while I got the exact same release that I used to get from blowing hundreds and even thousands of dollars, over basically the exact same period of time.

It was a 2k+ swing for me last night, trust me. If i had a screenshot to show the two grand I saved on the day, I would most definitely post it for posterity's sake. But believe me when I say, the next morning it feels fucking good to gaze at the ole full tilt balance and like what I see.

Work Tilt Update

Well, I'm still tilting off my ass today from my work situation. I berated the shit out of my boss like I was chatting to him in the pokerstars chatbox yesterday, which felt great in a way but also highlighted just how disgusting my work situation has become. I do appreciate everyone's thoughts on the topic, most of which I agree with 100%. And FWIW, I have been looking and will continue to look for jobs, which has not proven too difficult for me to do thus far thanks to a solid resume and a lot of experience in my field, so something will happen for me I'm sure. And believe you me, you all will be among the first to know when it does.

I've done the most amazing thing this week with respect to my poker game, something which definitely shows the first concrete signs of maturity with respect to tilt that I have ever really shown before. While I've been so everloving work tilted, it has been very, very obvious to me that I cannot play even close to my optimal poker game. I come home from work in a piss-poor mood, I can't even really help putting the kids to bed because I know my temper is super short and they do not deserve to bear the brunt of that (and those of you with young kids will know how impossibly annoying putting them to bed can be sometimes). I just don't have the temperament for it, and so I've been avoiding it, to good results.

Similarly, when I sit down to the pc, I have actually made the smart fucking decision not to play so much poker. I can feel it in my bones that I am on perma-tilt right now, and there is no way I can play poker at even approaching my normal level. There have been a few blonkaments that I've wanted to play despite the rage I feel swelling up inside, so I have sat down for them, but otherwise I have pretty much stayed away from my normal mtt routine that I have gotten used to for this year. Lately I've been satelliting in to the 5050 on both pokerstars and full tilt, in addition to some other nlh, omaha or other tournaments and some sitngos on each site, for total nightly buyins of probably around $250 or more on average. But for the last few days, I haven't spent much more than a fifth of that on any night, playing just enough to get me into the nightly blonkament of my choice plus maybe one or two other smallish tables just to keep me occupied during my normal ubertight play (ha ha). This is honestly the first time in my three years plus of playing regular online poker that I have consistently and purposefully reined in my play based purely on my being on tilt even before I sat down at the pc. And I have to say, it's definitely a good idea, and more than that, I feel good doing it. I feel smart doing it.

So who knows when I will be back to my regular poker routine. Right now things are all messed up at work -- my boss and I, who are normally quite close, have not spoken a word in two days, and as far as I'm concerned that can continue forever because I am enjoying it and I can physically see it eating him up inside. This guy fucked with the wrong marine as far as I am concerned, and I have nothing but coldness and pitilessness for his plight at this point, knowing that as usual he has no one to blame but himself. It will all work itself out, but in the meantime I just don't quite know when my game will be back to being itself. But I do know that I'm not going to go and tilt off 2/3 of my roll while I wait for that to happen, and that if nothing else is a nice improvement from the previous times I have been on non-poker-related tilt.

And btw, those of you who play on pokerstars will note that a quick email to their support has corrected my address from the mythical Toronto to the true and correct New York City. Sorry for any confusion.

Don't forget the $1 rebuy donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "donkarama". I may or may not be there, I guess it depends on how much shitsucking my fragile psyche can handle tonight. If I'm a man, I will play. I guess we'll see.