Hella Hold'em

Remember the episode of Diff'rent Strokes, where Arnold is meditating in the closet going, "Hammmmmm-burger..... haammmmmmm-burger...."? Yeah me neither.

Where the hell did that come from?

Oh, cuz I was thinking of the Zen poker book, and you know... derailed train of thought, meditation, hamburgers - actually it started as "Aww, hamburgers!" which Butters says on South Park and Randy finds absolutely hysterical. And it turned into Arnold meditating.

So, the Zen thing I was thinking about last night when I went to bed... part of the Zen and the Art of Poker book discusses how to lose in Zen-like fashion. No, the poker gods do not hate you. There are no poker gods. (Well, maybe there are - I don't want to piss them off by denouncing their existance if in fact they are sitting on my shoulder right this moment). But, poker is not divine. It's a game of statistics, a game of cards which fall in random order. If luck falls to the wayside, as it will do, detaching emotion from the experience keeps everything neutral - everything on even keel. And that is good, because the cards will eventually fall back in your favor. So I went to bed thinking that the poker gods don't hate me, and that I'd try again tomorrow (today) - which I did. It was very helpful to read that book before bed after those beats. (Sorry, AlCantHang, for contributing to the masses of bad beat stories today! I felt guilty after reading your post...)

I've realized something about my relationship with the NL cash tables: if I'm not on my oober-tight game, I am not winning. My most profitable nights fall in the 18% VP$IP range. The highest I've seen profitability, at least for how I play, is 21-22%. Even that is a stretch; my good nights are usually under 20% hands played.

Wow. And here I used to think I needed to loosen up.

Well, there's a time and place, I'm realizing - and limit is a completely different beast. 18-20% in a low limit ring game is breakeven for me at best. 25-28% is my sweet spot in limit. But I'm typically not quite "comfortable" playing that many hands, unless I'm feeling like gambling, which isn't often. More often, I feel like winning and playing proper poker, which in most cases go hand in hand (except for the occasional visits from the Beat Down Fairy).

I'm happy to report that I sat down tonight and placed 2nd in a $20 SnG on Full Tilt. I also nearly doubled a buy-in on a $25NL table, leaving with $45. Glyphic will be glad to hear that I am finally buying in for max buy-in at the NL tables, though I find that I feel more comfortable at the $25 table as opposed to the $50 right now. I've made slightly more money at the $50 tables than the $25 tables, but that includes a couple bad nights and lost buy-ins on the $25 tables. It just feels more forced to me at the $50 table - I haven't yet found a way to think in units instead of dollars on the $50 tables. Somehow I don't have that problem at $25. So I think I'll hang around the $25NL tables a little while more.

(Well, and I also sucked $300 out of Full Tilt last night and deposited it into my WPBT Vegas fund, so $50 looks much bigger relative to $283 than it did to $583!)

At any rate, tonight's profits brought me up $47 to $330.

I'm happy. That was done in the time span of just over an hour, which is incidentally probably more than I make in an hour at my day job. Ha! Not that I'd leave my day job. Can't beat a teaching gig, neither with stick nor wet noodle.