« Chat | Main | Link Exchange »
 | |
| Latest poker news |
July 26, 2005
Bad Day
I had my worst day of poker ever today, losing almost 150 big bets as the 2+2ers would say. Of course they say that to disguise the fact that they're playing $.5/$1 so people don’t laugh at them. At my game that's $9k for the mathematically impaired. I'm really not very upset about it though. I played well and lost with one huge favorite after another. When people cap every single hand at you on every street that just has to happen some days. Good bankroll management means I can take days like today on the chin and keep on going.
The good news is that it almost can't get any worse than that. I would guess a day like today should happen a few times a year on average. And for each one that does there should be a day where I win almost $12k. I have yet to experience that, but I haven’t been at it long.
Some day I'd like to collect all of my hand histories for all of you so you can see what I go through in a day of this stupid game. Maybe I'll roll them all into one file and zip them up, disguising all hands that I didn’t show down (can't give away all my tricks) so people can see what it's like. I think most people would be amazed, especially ones who play lower limits. I know I would have. Back when I was playing $5/$10 I never would have imagined that people at a $30/$60 game could play so badly.
I think a lot of people would be amazed at how many bad beats there are, even on good days. I'm really of the opinion that someone with even a marginal win rate, maybe something like 1bb/100, who had excellent bankroll management skills and emotional control would make a fortune on Party Poker just because of that. I doubt most people could withstand half of the beats I take on a good day without steaming, let alone the bad ones.
I guess my key to emotional control is just not caring. Honestly I think I'm so far removed from the concept of money that losing is the exact same as winning. All in all money is just a number, and whether it goes up or down doesn't really seem to change anything. If I had won $10k today I'd be a little happier, but in the end it wouldn’t make any difference. Granted I'd have an extra Toyota Camry, but who needs one anyway.
You have to be that way to play poker for a living I suppose. Barry Greenstein talks about that in his book a little. Which, by the way, I need to get a review of done sometime soon. Suffice it to say for now that it was largely useless and way over-hyped, but I'll give more detail on that later.
Anyway I will be taking at least tomorrow off to go to the island with Vicki and her family. I'm going to try to set something on auto-post for tomorrow, let's see if it works.
Posted by themaroon at July 26, 2005 2:34 PM