Life Shouldn't Be A Fuckin' Grind

I will never be a poker pro, but my lifetime poker ledger is positive and I think that's something to be proud of.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Putting Things in Perspective

After a tough day of poker on Tuesday in cash games and my rough beat in the 8k guarantee I went down to Winchester KY on Wednesday and played a couple of NL SnGs with friends. In the first I played well and was doing pretty well until I flopped top with 84o out of the BB, I bet it and got a call from the tightest player at the table who was in the SB...the board was 865 with 2 clubs, I believe...I put him on an 8 or a flush draw. The turn was another 8 giving me trips and he checked and I bet out almost the size of the pot, he thought for a while and called and put him on a flush draw. The river was another club and I feared the worst. He checked, and I checked behind figuring that there weren't very many hands in his range I could safely value bet against; he flipped over the 9c7c and took down a big pot. From there I didn't play too badly, but the blinds were getting big and I was forced to move in from the button with J9o, I got called by A9 and was done.

In the 2nd game I won a huge race early with JJ against AK and had a pretty formidable chiplead 3-handed, then I completely blew it. I raised on the button with 33 and the BB re-raised small, I pulled a Matusow blow up and moved in (a huge overbet of the pot) and he of course called me with TT and pwned the hell out of my 2 threes. It was a horrendously played hand and I never recovered. It was at that moment that I realized that poker definitely was not going my way. Not only was I not running very well overall, I was also making egregious errors at key moments. So, I haven't played at all since Wednesday night.

Tonight I was watching this week's WPT episode on my DVR and things really got put into perspective for me. I saw J.C. Tran lose to a 1-outer on the river that literally could have cost him as much as $2M in real money and I realized how insignificant my beat that cost me as much as $2k really was. Bad beats happen at all levels and it really is how we take them that defines us as players. A great player will get up off the mat after a terrible beat and get back into the ring slugging, and that's what I need to do. I took a really bad beat in a tournament on Tuesday night; it may have effected my frame of mind when I was playing the home game on Wednesday, but at any rate I made a huge mistake in that game. That's ok, it happens...I can't be perfect all of the time. I need to get back into the ring and start slugging. I need to persevere at 3/6 6-max. 8k hands is insignificant in 6-max when it comes to variance. I need to find some way to forget about my winrate and concentrate on making good decisions and check back when I've reached like 20k hands and see where I am then. If I'm still only winning marginally, then maybe it will be time to really re-evaluate my skill level, but until then I need to keep on grinding and just keep trying to make good decisions. I need to spend some time after my sessions evaluating some of the hands that I do poorly on and I need to learn from my mistakes, but most of all I need to NEVER give up. I'll play again the next chance that I get and I'll concentrate on nothing but making the best decisions I can.

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