What say we get this party started?
Having taken off from blogging the past couple of months, it would be nice to come back with some grand revelation, some bit of truth to make it all worthwhile.
Sorry to say, that's not going to happen.
However, I have had some time to reflect on things and I have come to some conclusions. Chief among these is that I just don't think I'm ever going to become as good a poker player as I had hoped to be. If anything, the past year has seen my game deteriorate to the level that I often find myself the biggest fish at the table.
Funny how it's worked out that way. When I began this odyssey, I would have thought that the more time I put into the game, the better I would get. Instead, I now find myself playing in the ever-elusive hope of hitting the home run, making the big score. As I've found out, as I've really known all along really, poker does not lend itself to finding much success that way.
Poker is a game of patience. Long-term success, as far as I can gather, is contingent upon being satisfied to win small pots, only occasionally taking down the big monster. It means, for example, sitting down to a session with $100 and being satisfied to walk away with $105 or $110,
if that's all the cards will reasonably allow, rather than being disappointed in
not winning enough. Or it might mean walking away from the table with a small loss,
if that's all the cards will reasonably allow.
Taking an honest look at my game, I can now see that I've only been successful in maintaining that discipline for short periods of time. I can start small and be satisfied to win small, but only for a little while. Over time, however, I begin putting pressure on myself to win more and more. I begin saying to myself, "I've won about $10 a session the past five sessions. That is not successful, because I need to win more if I hope to someday make a living at this game." So I start setting goals of making $20 a session or $30 a session. Then I'll hit one of those jackpot sessions where all the cards fall my way and I end up making a couple hundred over a short period of time, and I'll begin expecting myself to duplicate that success every time I play.
It's just not possible. During a brief, lucky run, it might be possible to play correctly and catch the right cards to give one's bankroll a huge surge. In order to continue having that level of success, one would have to seek to constantly play big pots. However, playing big pots means taking more risk, and taking more risk means losing more often than you win, and losing larger sums more frequently. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you lose larger amounts more often than you win, you're losing, period. "Trying harder" to win -- by making bigger bluffs or overplaying marginal hands -- isn't going to solve that problem.
In most things in life, setting goals leads to success, as long as you set reasonable goals. If you're goals are unreasonable, however, you are doomed to failure, both in perception and in reality. Ever since I fell in love with this game, it has been my goal to be a winner at it, and to win enough to someday make a living at it. That goal may have hurt me more than it has helped, because as time has passed, I've felt more and more urgency to make it come true.
Anyone could tell you that it is ridiculous to deposit $50 in a poker site and expect to begin immediately winning enough to make $50,000 a year. That is an unreasonable goal, and while it is not one that I have ever voiced in those terms, it is one that, in a sense, I've been trying to accomplish. I'll deposit that $50 and begin thinking to myself, "Okay, I'll start out playing the 0.10/0.25 stakes. Once I double it, I'll start playing 0.25/0.50. Once I double it again, I'll start playing 0.50/1.00. And I'll just keep doing that until pretty soon I'm playing 100/200 and making piles of money." Simple, right?
Well, actually, it isn't.
The sad part is that I know all of this, yet I've not found a way to maintain the discipline needed to continue building upon short-term success. I can do it for a little while and slowly build my bankroll. But eventually I'll start swinging for the fences every time I play again. I'll become dissatisfied with getting the consistent small wins and look for the larger and larger wins, risking more and more until I risk it all and eventually have to start back at square one. And I think every time I have to begin again, I have even less patience than before and more expectation to win faster so that I can "get back to where I was."
So, realizing all of this and seeing the problems I'm having, I should be able to fix it, right? Honestly, I don't know that I can. I'm beginning to suspect that this tendency to snatch ultimate failure out of the jaws of initial success is such an integral part of my character that I might not be able to change it. Perhaps I am just doomed to be a long-term loser at poker. If that's the case, I'll have plenty of company.
So what does this do for the five-year plan to become a pro? I'm seriously beginning to think it's all a pipe dream. I might be smart enough and skilled enough to play successfully for a short time, but experience has shown me that I haven't been able to maintain the patience and discipline over the long haul. That doesn't mean that I'm giving up the game, because I still have fun playing. As a hobby, it beats stamp-collecting. But maybe it's time to set aside the notion that it will ever be anything more than that. Maybe someday I'll be old and wise enough to conquer the demons that prevent me from reaching the level of success I would like, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
Damn ... this post is ending on kind of a downer, and that's not what I intended at all. In fact, things have been looking better than ever for me lately, but I've rambled on so long about this that I don't think I can just switch gears and start writing about the positives. Instead, I'll just let that wait for the next time. That way, at least I'll know I have something to write about.
Was surprised to find a $10 razz SNG tournament today with Chris "Jesus" Ferguson sitting at the table over at Full Tilt Poker this morning. Was even more suprised to find seats open.
