Poker Perambulation

The other day, I talked about the need to be willing to fail in tournament poker. It is something that goes against the grain. So much of what we do at the tables is affected by our reptilian brain. It’s that part of the brain that is pure reaction. It is the part of the brain that the Kumbiya crowd ignores when they are putting flowers into the muzzle of Guardman’s M-14 or other silliness to bring about World Peace. So, much of what we do is hardwired and one ignores that at their peril.

I started playing poker at PokerRoom. It was a very clubby site. It had active forums and a lobby chat and you could even start your own/exclusive/private forum to meet with like minded individuals with barstools being the only missing ingredient. It was about as close as online poker gets to the ambiance that the casino setting can provide. Two of the posters in our forum were part of that scene. I probably know them as well as one can know an online friend that he’s never met in the flesh. But, I want to talk about some others.

One was a multi-tabling grinder. Did it well and showed a consistent profit. Got a lot of rakeback/point rewards based on the substantial amount of rake they were sending the site. But in all that the person knew how to show a consistent profit. Played a lot of hours.

The next was a married with children guy. He’s one of those guys that is your friend even if you’re in need. He talked a hell of a game and played middle and occasionally high blind NL. Seems a good player and guy – what’s not to like?

The last I’ll mention was an underage kid. That came out after he parlayed chump change into a near 5-figure roll. And, he was a nice young man who did volunteer work. Yeah, he had an ego the size of the roll but basically he was still a nice kid.

The first one went through some life changes and quit the play that brought in nice money each month. Still played a bit and even hit on occasions but got away from bread and butter poker. The consistency was gone but managed to get their poker fix another way. Booked a tournament win that beat a year of grinding.

The married guy seemed to roll right along until one day he showed up on IM to chat. He was the one that needed the friend. Come to find out, he was losing his ass online. It was affecting his family and his wife was about ready to boogie. We talked about stopping and Gambler’s Anonymous but he couldn’t. He had the image and the need to play big. His last remarks was taking the current paycheck and running it up as the way to get out of trouble.

The kid that could do no wrong hit a dry streak. I ran into him the other day on a site looking for backing. It parallels a lot of successful players. It also parallels a lot of folks like Negreanu who went bust a number of times in Vegas and had to go back and work it back up to try again. Others never make that transition and are only left with some good stories to tell at the bar. There are far more of the latter.

There were a bunch of others I know less about. The girl from Hawaii with a DJ business was a nice person and darn decent player. A lot of Brits were on the site and we’d laugh about our difference while being so alike. Pretty good players and people. Just how profitable any of us was could be debated but I do know we had some fun. For most of us, that is what poker is about.

Risk:Reward is often couched in terms of dollars. If you think of it as a profession, you can’t look at it in any other way. But, we unwashed masses have a lot of varied rewards. One guy is happy dumping a buyin if he can bluff a few pots with trash; it makes his evening to get a moment of domination. The next might spend more time looking at his pokertracker stats than he does playing. The next just might be happy just getting away from the real world for an hour or so. There are a lot of healthy rewards that we mostly ignore or discount. No matter what reason brought you to the game, you’ll occasionally drift off your original path and that can trouble you.

If you don’t have a gambling problem. If you still remember why you play. The game is working for you. It is that simple.

All the people I’ve described are part of the mix and part of the pack. We’ll never distinguish ourselves without a shining moment. Just remember that our profitable play isn’t necessarily calculated in dollars. Then we’re all winning players. I’d rather have that kind of a win than those with cash profit or momentary fame that Linda often encountered like:

You can view the rest of that train wreck here. Rest in Peace, Sam – two time WSOP bracelet winner.

ADDENDUM:

Is George going to pull us out of Iraq in a huff? As one with total disdain for those who like a bit of gamble, he can’t be happy that a casino is opening in the Kurdish capital. He can be a bit radical on any number of subjects and overreact. He just got done bashing EU courts over the Microsoft decision that has to have our Dept. of State wringing it’s hands. He’s abrogated our treaty responsibilities because of gambling which pretty much does in all our free trade standings. It probably isn’t that big a reach to pull the troops.

You can listen to an interview of the Russian who’s opening the casino here. Based on what I heard, I don’t think I’ll run down to my travel agent to book a junket for now.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Journal, Poker Philosophy. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.