Sensei Wanted
liquid's YTD: $374.00
January was the proverbial rollercoaster, but relatively light on the exhilaration and heavy on the vomiting. It seems like my few big wins have been off of morons, which is never terribly satisfying. Coin flips and other marginal situations have ended in disaster. I've alternated between weak-tight nut-peddling and loosey goosey leaking, seldom finding myself in my comfort zone.
So I had an epiphany. I have a basic psychological shortcoming when it comes to poker. There are times when I feel like I'm playing well, being selectively aggressive, building pots when I have a chance, enjoying bigger wins when the cards go my way, and not getting too upset when I miss. The problem is that after a period of good play, I start doing mental accounting of how much I'm up or down for the session, and how that figures into how much I'm up or down for the day.
If I'm up a healthy chunk, I feel myself shut it down, protecting the win. Usually I just quit if this happens, which is why I'm never the guy sitting with 500BB.
If I'm down, I tighten up and resort to fancy play syndrome to avoid committing myself to a pot until I'm sure I've got a huge edge. Needless to say, such situations are faaaaaar in between in pot-limit Omaha. Worse is when I finally stumble on that perfect situation after three hours of waiting... only to get smacked down by a gruesome beat. COMMENCE WILD MONKEY TILT!
Too much is driven by where I'm at for a session or for a day, instead of just playing each hand on its own. Easy to say, easy to identify, difficult to change.
Part of it is I just like playing with numbers. I keep meticulous records of each session. I enjoy pouring over PokerTracker stats. I check my rakeback numbers daily. I like staring at my YTD graph, especially when it's going up. Even if I'm not looking at the numbers themselves I'm sorting them out in my head. It's hard for me to avoid doing these things.
I need a poker sensei to smack my head into shape.
January was the proverbial rollercoaster, but relatively light on the exhilaration and heavy on the vomiting. It seems like my few big wins have been off of morons, which is never terribly satisfying. Coin flips and other marginal situations have ended in disaster. I've alternated between weak-tight nut-peddling and loosey goosey leaking, seldom finding myself in my comfort zone.
So I had an epiphany. I have a basic psychological shortcoming when it comes to poker. There are times when I feel like I'm playing well, being selectively aggressive, building pots when I have a chance, enjoying bigger wins when the cards go my way, and not getting too upset when I miss. The problem is that after a period of good play, I start doing mental accounting of how much I'm up or down for the session, and how that figures into how much I'm up or down for the day.
If I'm up a healthy chunk, I feel myself shut it down, protecting the win. Usually I just quit if this happens, which is why I'm never the guy sitting with 500BB.
If I'm down, I tighten up and resort to fancy play syndrome to avoid committing myself to a pot until I'm sure I've got a huge edge. Needless to say, such situations are faaaaaar in between in pot-limit Omaha. Worse is when I finally stumble on that perfect situation after three hours of waiting... only to get smacked down by a gruesome beat. COMMENCE WILD MONKEY TILT!
Too much is driven by where I'm at for a session or for a day, instead of just playing each hand on its own. Easy to say, easy to identify, difficult to change.
Part of it is I just like playing with numbers. I keep meticulous records of each session. I enjoy pouring over PokerTracker stats. I check my rakeback numbers daily. I like staring at my YTD graph, especially when it's going up. Even if I'm not looking at the numbers themselves I'm sorting them out in my head. It's hard for me to avoid doing these things.
I need a poker sensei to smack my head into shape.
posted by liquid at 9:47 PM
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