“if I could start my life all over again I would make the exact same choices that I’ve made”
WTF does the video have to do with poker dude?
Not much.
BUT it does have a pretty decent remake of the Bob Seger classic, and it has Ginger Lynn in it.
True it would have been much better 20 years ago when she was smoking hot, you kinda have to be old school to even remember her and she is certainly past her prime in this video but I think I will always have a bit of a bit of a crush on her no matter what.
What’s your point dude?
Oh yeah sorry.
The point has nothing to do with the video, or maybe it does.
Playing a lot of cash games lately I mentioned, mostly because of the Take 2 promotion on Full Tilt Poker. I would put in an hour a day or so after work while I ate my dinner and lock up some extra Full Tilt points and some bonus cash which for a low roller like myself can make the difference between building the bankroll and just staying alive.
I had pretty much stopped the cash games as I just didn’t have the juice. Poker is a game of confidence and once you take a few bad beats, catch a run of cold cards and coolers it can really seem like nothing is ever going to go right.
You start playing wrong, making bad moves and doing things out of frustration, you put bad money in after worse and just compound the problem, chasing draws that even when they seem to hit may having you drawing dead. You are as the saying goes “On Tilt”. You stop making rational decisions and you try to react instead of taking charge. Next thing you know you are felted. And again. And again. You look down at a pair of ladies and can’t fold them even though you know your opponent has Aces. You hope upon hope you are going to hit the two outer but it never happens.
What do you do now?
Well its not easy but eventually you have to push away from the table and realize there is no way you are going to come out a winner. This takes a long time for some people to realize because its a game you love to play and the other players have so many tells in their game you can’t believe you are losing to them.
But you need to push away.
Get up from the the table.
Cash out for a while.
Go sit at the bar and drown your bad luck in whiskey, beer and cigarettes.
Watch the strippers twirl around the pole in wonder that they can even stand in heels that high.
Go back and examine your game.
“Read a book you donkey!”
Review your hands, this takes some soul searching on your part, were you playing bad or was the other player?
Did you get your money in good?
Was that suck out really a suck out of did they have odds?
Did you bet enough? Too much? Too little.
Should you have slow played? Played more aggressive?
This takes some time and you have to be off Tilt before you can really do this effectively.
Most people do not want to step away from the game in order to do this but you need to do this before you go bust.
Eventually you are ready to take a seat at the table again.
How do you know?
Tough to say really, everyone is going to be different. For myself it came to me in a dream. The subconscious mind knows more that the conscious mind in my opinion. It processes a lot more information and for a poker player you can think of it as “that feeling” you had that made you call the all in bet on the river with bottom pair weak kicker. Did you see something? You can’t remember, but you certainly felt something.
I started dreaming about playing ring games again, only this time instead of always coming up second best and getting rivered I was waking up with big pairs all the time. I was getting action on all my bets and when I got it all in I was raking the chips at the end. People were pushing at me with bluffs when I flopped the nuts and I was doubling up all over the place, my pocket pairs were improving to sets and I was even playing two tables at a time here and there.
This kind of confidence builds on itself and soon you are sitting there with a smile on your face instead of looking like a player already beat. You have a big stack of chips in front of you and you start to bully the table. You raise from the button all the time, you check raise with nothing and take it down, your draws all seem to get there and you slow play hands like a Sensei, its like the other players have their cards turned over and you can see their hands and yet every time you throw your chips in the middle you are getting action.
Poker can be very hard on the soul at times, but it is a game we love to play and for some of us not matter how bad of beats we take, the game always draws us back to it.
If you keep getting it in the middle with the best hand, sooner or latter good things are going to happen, don’t be afraid to buyin if you are playing well because even if you only pick up a tell in a losing hand, that is going to payoff later in the game.
