How I learned to stop worrying and love poker addendum

So since I love poker, I've got to, I've got to say I watch poker. And so as the matter is I don't watch poker as much as I used to, partially because I got stuck in re-runs of games over and over again. However, but I have players I like better and players I like less, and because I love the game I like to see those who love their game as well (that's why it's always a little painful to watch Phil Helmut, he looks miserable while playing). So here's some of my favorite players.

Phil Gordan

Jackie Chan

Daniel Negreanu

Gamblor's complaint or How I learned to stop worrying and love poker

I do love poker. Am I good at it? Well, I've addressed that question in my session "There's a reason why they call it a gutshot" and a session before that called "Playing your hands as the hands blaze". Basically, overall I've concluded I'm a mid-range player at least right now. I won't go into a full analysis of that sentence because as I've said I've done two sessions about that already. It's possible for a middling player not to lose that much money. The key probably would be when you hit a high note on a hand, just hold on until you can cash out. But that's not my style. Even in cash games I tend to play until the end or until time forces me to leave. An alternative strategy is not to play people who are better than you, but I tend to play whoever I can get. It doesn't matter. I'd like to some day be capable of winning money consistently but when I play poker I tend to play not to win money but to win games. But actually I can't even claim that happens much, honesty really I play not even to win but just for love of the game.

Poker in the end to me is a game more than it is gaming (heh, heh, you get it?) And it's a game I love. It's a game of skill surely. There's a real probability angle to it that some of my friends excel at. Off the top of their heads they can quote you the odds of any hand. There's also a people person skill to it. On the one hand you have to read your opponent, on the other hand you have to be read. Now you can try to throw your opponent off with misinformation, but heck they can do the same to you. And of course there's luck. Even the best players can be beat on the river. But I've always also seen it as a game of strategy where you surely but slowly try to knock everyone else out.

Still that doesn't give a real picture of the game. The viseral thrill of gambling is part of its appeal, but not most of it. The real core of the game, is the focus. You draw your entire self into the game, you fill your mind with analysis of every factor knowing you're leaving something out, the people who surround you become the entirety of society, and every hand becomes a lifetime. And then your win becomes a perfect victory, and then a loss becomes a tragic loss. Every commitment to a hand is a rollercoaster and a damn scary one at that.

But does that capture the game? No, not really. So what is the game? What makes it special?

It's poker damn it, and that's good enough for me.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

There's a reason why they call it a gutshot

It's easy to be seduced by the gutshot straight draw (for you non-poker players out there that's when you have all but one of the cards for a straight, but you're missing one in the middle, thus there's only one (although perhaps in several suits) card that can complete your straight, but if you get that straight you can beat any pair or any two pair). It makes for an immensely dramatic win of course, but it's actually pretty rarely satisfied. And yet it's so easy to go all in on it, just hoping for a spectacularly lucky fall of the cards that'll give you a legendary win.

But you can't depend on legends.

I think perhaps one of my problems in my poker playing is a matter of lust. A lust for that suddenly, utterly perfect win. But perfect wins are rare. You need to make do with imperfect, stuttering victories that sometimes just scrape the bottom. You can't depend on legends.

On the other hand, you can't be afraid of the cards either. You can't expect to lose whenever you let someone into the hand. You have to be willing to risk a loss sometimes, so you can take in a greater win. You can't let a lust for an easy victory undermine the greater more difficult one.

I think those two demons of lust are what undermine my poker playing. While keeping them in mind will deflate them, the ultimate cure of this dilemma is just playing through them until they are defeated. Because in the end, someone who lusts after poker will be destroyed by that, but one who carries a simple love of the game will be enriched by it, even if he never wins a pot (although chances are he will win more often as well).

So that's my thoughts about that. Sorry that my posting's going to have to be scarce over the next couple days (most likely), but school's a drool and I've got to be going at it.

So anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

A matter of clouds

I, I the man of the Rand and the Rand of the man, persevere in spite of attempts by giant fish to stop me. But no giant fish will defeat me, for I am John!!!

But let that matter be discarded. I remember in about 4th or 5th grade I still liked school. Perhaps I didn't admit it because of peer pressure, but overall I enjoyed being at school. It was only with middle school school really started to bug me. Perhaps that was because with the dawning of my hormones my anxiety problems got kicked into to overdrive.

After that, minor social anxiety blossomed into full on social paranoia (I use paranoia here in a very loose, ultra-loose, barely hanging on to the threads of syntax loose sense (basically any rapid-fire depressing, self-hating, fearful thoughts)). Basically my mind exploded. And any sense of social satisfaction I got from school evaporated. And so I had school work. But investing myself in my school work put such intense performance stress on me that it almost killed the alien embryo that I'm raising in my stomach. Or maybe it just gave me anxiety attacks, either one.

So I had to choose whether or not I wanted to attach my worth to my grades. And all my upbringing, my experiences, my culture, etc. suggested to me in the end that while grades were good and an accomplishment, they were not a measure of worth. But let me caution, I presented here a relatively linear process of an intellectual trend, but the mind doesn't work that way, it don't, my friend, it simply don't. Another factor to my disconnecting my sense of worth from my school work was my disconnect from the idea of school being its own universe with teachers having a natural, if not always welcome spot at it head, to it simply being a tiny piece of the universe with teachers being just people without an inherent superiority to me. Suddenly doing well by their measures seemed submitting to an unnecessary (and by my then reasoning automatically unjust) authority. Teenage rebellion, et. al. I suppose. And then there was my religious journey which led me to conclude that earthly authorities must always be subject to heavenly authorities. Etc. So there were a lot of factors.

Then if school (and let me include college here (although college does differ from primary and secondary schooling in some theoretical points which I won't get into here)) wasn't a measure of worth, then what was it supposed to be. More or less a stepping stone, a tool. Intellectually that's how I view it. But emotionally, it's hard to see it as less than confinement. Perhaps that's just a manifestation of my wanderlust soul. Or in more charitable terms an imposition. It's hard to stand that, and perhaps that's a reason why I have such trouble sticking to my classes. But in the way I think about things I actually have less care for school than work. At least when I'm working I get a feeling that I'm building some organization or something, but with school it feels like all my effort is going to nothing except satisfying the expectations of others. Perhaps I can say that when I'm in lecture there's the satisfaction of learning but with tests, projects, and essays, etc. (although occasionally I do feel satisfaction from projects and essays since they involve some creativity, it usually is as much or more giving a feeling of burden). In the end, I just can't take a great deal of satisfaction from school, at least as long as I keep on looking on it as a burden.

Perhaps a better way of looking at matters would be to see school as a game. And the whole matter becomes a competition when it comes to grades. Now many people dislike that analogy because it puts too much stress on kids and undermines their feelings of friendship. But that's only if you look at it as an immensely important game. But let's take this as a pretty important game, not hugely important, you can rebound from bad grades, but it's still got some gravity to it. And there is some fun to it with the learning and all. And then there is some accomplishment to getting a good grade. But it isn't the accomplishment of say a medal of honor, or something that suggests quality in a person (even if a person's true quality is a matter hidden in the brain, personal, and in my mind moreover a matter of how they view the world instead of what they accomplish, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah). Rather a good grade in school is like a victory in football, or soccer, or Magic: The Gathering.

And when it comes down to it, it isn't really a victory over your competitors, they rather are your fellow-travelers in the game, a victory in a game is a victory over its rules, its obstacles and your own limits. Perhaps, if I looked at school like that, it might become palatable again. Stranger things have happened.

Anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Playing your hands as the hands blaze

I'm not a terribly good poker player. That is not to say I'm a bad one. When I'm honest about it, which is occasionally, I am a middling-poker player. But I like poker, heck I love poker, if there is a sport for me, it is poker. All this could logically lead to the conclusion that I belong in small, friendly games away from big money pots. But those games aren't the same, in the same way a baseball game among friends isn't the same as a professional game, even in the minor leagues. Still, I try to be careful not to indulge my taste for the game too much, except on exceptional incidents, including one rather spectacularly unsuccessful trip to Atlantic City. But I do like the game, and I can't say that it's merely an idle passion as I might be able to say for other sports I enjoyed, such as soccer and frisbee.

Like I said I'm a middling poker player, but the frustrating part is that I have moments of greatness. I have moments where I hold my own against top-notch players and even triumph over them. And I'm not talking about moments of luck, although I have plenty of thrilling stories of those, the real pride of a poker player is not winning on the river, but carefully constructing a win based on knowledge of the cards and your opponent. And I've had moments like that. However it's more than moments of greatness, overall I think I have some potential. My mid-game, and lately even my early game has been rather good lately, but I have yet to successfully master the late game. And even though my early game is improving it still occasionally leads me to folly. The key to my skill, I think, is aggression when I have something, but playing conservative when I have nothing. I try never to bluff with absolutely nothing. If I adhere to this strategy, I play well. The particular odds of cards come into play, the particular characteristics and behaviors of the players come into play, but while those are key to the big win, they cannot distract from the core strategy. At least when it comes to me, I have known spectacular players who have other strategies.

And yet I get cocky and/or I get sloppy. It's so easy to do. To bet because you want to see the cards, or because you think it's too late to back out. To feel invincible. To underestimate your opponent and overestimate your ability. To force away the real knowledge of what your opponent's hand really is. It is just so easy. And so utterly frustrating.

So the key to this, is giving up poker, or working on my technique. Giving up poker is an option, but although that Atlantic City incident may suggest otherwise, in general poker is not a very expensive habit for me and provides me with a lot of entertainment and satisfaction. The Atlantic City incident is actually the exception that proves the rule since trips to high gambling places are likely to be such odd occasions in my life (unless my game improves, and I mean not just luck-wise improves, but skill-wise improves). Thus the choice falls to improving my game.

But there is another frustration. The terrible frustration of not being able to find a good game. And my awful really, organizational skills hampering my own creation of games. Thus I am confined to irregular intervals, the distance between which often impedes my learning process and leaves me perpetually rusty. It's highly annoying all and all. But there is such a beauty to the sport. It is a contention of fate mixed with a contention of minds. And the best players can beat both. Poker comes down to knowing the sport and knowing people, and the sport is certainly enjoyable, at least from my angle, it's got hope, despair and suspense mixed in with the fellowship of the table, but this combination of skills it requires makes it thrilling, especially since when perfected, it defies even destiny.

Ah, but that's the romance of poker. It is I think a sport for me, but let me say not for everyone. Some are not good with it, and some are good with it but not good enough with it. Even though they might win and win repeatedly, if a player can't stop gambling, if it becomes a need that dominates his life, well, then he's lost already. I've seen such things happened, and to be honest, I've enabled such things. That's my shame. But it is a shame of not being a good enough friend, not of the sport itself. The sport itself remains beautiful in my eyes, even if I am a bit ugly in its eyes. But who knows? With a nice hair cut, some good clothes and a charming presentation, perhaps even I can clean up to the World Poker Tour. Poker is all about defying destiny after all.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!