Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Another big fish got away on Tuesday night but I still managed to double my buy-in once again. Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a karmic payback in poker once you've accumulated a ridiculous number of beats in one location. I had pocket kings and got my pre-flop raise called by Rob. Flop came Queen high with two spades, all the money got in and Rob turned over 64 of spades. He had bottom pair and the draw, I had the King of spades. Rob was favored and so I simply asked the dealer to put two spades on board as nicely as I could and wouldn't you know it, spade-spade. Who knew it was that easy? I think I might have to start just asking for my cards everytime.

After the session spent about ninety minutes talking poker with Don covering some of the interesting aspects of your regular game. Don is a very solid, tight player and brought up an intriguing difference in how players approach the two of us. I'm a very agressive player, playing a lot of pots with lots of raises. I also show a lot of hands, anything from 52 offsuit raised from early position to the stone cold nuts. As such, I get a lot of action in some of my hands but still manage to move people out and pick up a lot of pots with nothing. Don, on the other hand, believes he is universally cursed to get sniffed out when he's making a bluff. Of course the flip side of that coin is that he gets paid off on his good hands nearly every single time, and more often than not, a good hand is exactly what he has.

I spent the last day or so trying to figure that out but I can't really come up with a good reason. Logic would seem to dictate that he would be able to pick off more pots because of his tight table image and I would get called down because of my tendency to show more bluffs. The only discernable thing I could come up with is fear. I think I may have ingrained in these players that on any given hand all my money might be going into the middle and if they want to sniff out a bluff they are going to have to pay everything to find out. All in all, it's something interesting I'll be paying more attention to in the next few weeks.

I also went back and re-read my posts from the beginning which was an interesting look at my poker development. Although a prolonged losing streak from the end of March through the beginning of May prevented my World Series trip, my more long term goal of my first $10K bankroll is nearly a third complete. There is a trip to Atlantic City upcoming which well also hopefully be a boon to the bankroll, so the goal for the end of year I think is going to be getting it up to $6K. My game is still improving at a good pace but it's also bringing me to another critical decision time.

For all intents and purposes I have been playing poker for a living for about five months now. Originally I was out interviewing for jobs but it was a tough haul at first with that and now the interviews are not even on my radar. I love playing this game, getting better at this game and challenging myself to compete at a higher and higher level. But I've basically gotten to the point where I either have to start heading back towards that "real world" or give up all pretense of anything else and devote myself to being a poker player. And if that ends up being my decision, do I want to be an "internet pro" with a few regular live games or do I take the plunge and head somewhere where the live games are always available? There's still a lot of improvements to the game that need to be made before I would ever consider moving but it's certainly something that wasn't really even on my radar and suddenly is.

There's no doubt that this life is certainly not simple and the truth to the adage that it's a hard way to make an easy living becomes more apparent with each session. When you start to realize that one of the keys to success is the monotony making you so numb that AA feels the same as 26 offsuit, you begin to appreciate just how much love you need to have to keep plugging away. Of course a few of these guys I've been playing with for these months are in similar predicaments to me, so maybe we'll all just say the hell with it and move to Vegas together. Move over, Crew... well, I shudder to think what name would apply to us, so we'll just leave it at that.

A few more hours until "work" but I have some things to sort about Norman Chad in tomorrow's post. So nice to have the 2005 Series on now...

I'll leave you with the following bit of advice: Go see Wedding Crashers now.