First I have to give a shout out to reader Ryan and pal (so sorry - the name has slipped from my feeble memory - Jason? Maybe?) - I was at the Newcastle poker room last night, Peter Gabriel on the iPod when I felt a tap-tap on my shoulder. I looked up, pulled the earphone from my ear and turned around to see two young men behind me. "You're a poker blogger, aren't you?" I was a little taken aback, my brain trying to put into context the question.
"Uh, yeah," I answered tentatively.
"I thought I recognized you," he said. He then went on to tell me he was from St. Louis, was part of the St. Louis poker contigent with Chilly, et al and had recently moved here. And, he said he was in Vegas for the December gathering and we'd even sat at the same table. Doh. I plead graying hair and dying brain cells.
Anyway, that was way cool - more folks for the Okie-Vegas contingent. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Which reminds me - Gary is working hard at organizing an Okie-Vegas gathering in early June. On tap is a tournament and partying at the lake, as well as visits to local poker rooms. And if I can get it together, I hope to host a part of the gathering for a backyard feast of some of Oklahoma's best bar-b-que. Get over to his site for more details. Ya'll come if you can, y'hear?
And which reminds me even further, April has taken the bull by the horns and is organizing the next Vegas gathering - check her blog for ongoing details. And if that weren't enough, she's also organizing a poker contingent gathering during SXSW in Austin. I would kill to be able to go to that, but, alas, unless I have a monumental upswing on the poker front SOON, it's not going to be financially possible.
And, I recently found out a WSOP circuit event will be taking place at the time my presto birthday rolls around in April, putting me in quandary as to what to do about that beyond the current plans of throwing myself out of an airplane....
So....
After I got home from playing last eve, I read something that gave me a tiny bit of encouragement. You see, since December I've been on an incredible downslide. My bankroll hit an all time high in November, then December, Vegas, poor results at the cash games online, Tunica and bronchitis-donkey poker online managed to take the biggest bite out of the bankroll I've experienced since beginning this great adventure.
Last night I made a stab at rebuilding. I actually did a good job at holding my own and played fairly disciplined poker at a loose-passive table. There were your typical players who play almost every hand and with whom I had a difficult time getting an edge. I made one rebuy and brought myself back to even with a big pot on a flopped straight and then eventually was up about a half a buy-in.
At that point, I ignored the little voice that was telling me it was time to leave. It'd been a struggle all evening and, invariably, when I'm in a game like that where the made hands vs. suckouts ratio leans heavy on the suckout side it's best to take what little gain I've made and head home. Heather recently wrote about this very thing - when to leave. Again, it all comes down to discipline. Experience will teach you to heed that inner voice - especially when you don't want to. I hope I do next time.
I lost what I'd gained plus nearly a full buyin by the time I left. With but a pittance now remaining, I'm essentially back to kindergarten, bankroll-wise. There is no cash online, leaving me only with frequent player points at Full Tilt with which I can attempt the freeroll sit-n-gos for tokens.
And this is a good thing, actually. Because my time for a while will be filled with another passion of mine.
I'll be extending my break from playing while I refuel my stake with some web-site projects that have come my way, thanks to our good pal Joe at VegasVegas. When I have the time, I'll be hopping on Full Tilt and playing for the tokens, and who knows, perhaps I'll get to the money in the 15k guarantee.
In the meantime, I'll continue to study and to evaluate the state of my game thus far. Obviously, I have some major holes in it. And I need to get back to playing within my bankroll. Admittedly, much of the leakage is due to playing at levels which were beyond my bankroll. Hank's recent post was also very timely, for that matter.
And then there was what I read last night after I got home. I leave you with some food for thought from Michael Craig's The Professor the Banker and the Suicide King (an excellent read, by the way). First, Craig states:
...good poker players are more likely to be the victims of luck than the beneficiaries.
Then he quotes Bobby Baldwin's take on the vagaries of luck and poker:
If you are an excellent player, people are going to draw out on you a lot more than you're going to draw out on them because they're simply going to have the worst hand against you a lot more times than you have the worst hand against them.
And then Howard Lederer caps it with:
One of the things I focus on when someone shows me a ridiculous hand is, 'Okay, that's why I'm here.'
Precisely.
Keep those cards in the air!
