Losing My Way

Tonight there was a hiccup. A big hiccup. The kind of hiccup that sneaks up on you in the middle of your little sister's dance recital just as she's about to begin her performance of Swan Lake and the whole audience is silent, when all of a sudden . . . HICCUP!!! And everyone looks at you with disdain.

I had a bad night at the poker table. Like, a really bad night. Like, I've only lost this much in one session when it was a WSOP buy-in.

Granted, tonight was just a $400 loss, not actually a whole lot, and the WSOP buy-in was $1500, but it sure felt like that much. I sat down after the session and wrote down my thoughts on what happened and why I lost and I came to one realization: It was all my fault.

The loss tonight was 1/5th of my bankroll; a bankroll I've been diligently building since the start of 2012. I've studied the game, I've worked on my mental strength, I've been crushing the local $1/$2 game over the last six weeks, and tonight it all came crashing down.

Okay, I suppose that's a little dramatic, but it certainly felt like it. And that's probably a good thing.

Like I said before, I sat down to write down my thoughts on the session, a practice highly recommended by Jared Tendler in his book The Mental Game of Poker, and one of first practices I adopted after reading the book. When you write about each session, you get to instantly analyze how things went: what you did well, what you did poorly, what you observed about others, and, most importantly, what you observed about yourself. In the middle of writing down my thoughts, I realized I hadn't done this very thing in a couple weeks. Why not? I think the very obvious answer is that I just didn't think I had to anymore. I had been successful enough in the previous month or so that I didn't feel like I needed to take the time for such an arbitrary practice. I much preferred to make my way back to town to have drinks with my friends and celebrate yet another winning session at the poker table. My confidence was getting the better of me.

And my confidence has definitely gotten the better of me at the poker table. Tonight I found myself overplaying some hands that I knew I shouldn't be overplaying, but I think I thought I was entitled to it. More than a couple times I found myself being stubborn when the flop missed my hand and I was sure I could outplay my opponent. No, stupid, he just flopped top pair with top kicker, it's okay to fold your hand. But I wouldn't. I started playing the but/if game with myself: but if this happens on the turn; but/if this card comes on the river . . . etc, etc. That's probably the worst thing I could let my brain do.

With my overconfidence, I started opening up my range of starting hands. Even worse, I started opening up my position at the table for that same opened up range of hands. All of a sudden I was playing poker completely backwards. As I learned from reading Annie Duke's Decide To Play Great Poker, the main thing you want to do is make your own decisions easier while making your opponents' decisions more difficult. All I was doing by opening up my range and starting position at the table was making my decisions more difficult and those of my opponents easier. It was complete idiocy.

While I was writing down my thoughts about the session I realized that I had been steadily moving in this direction for the last week or so, I had just gotten lucky a couple times, and it hadn't come back to bite me in the ass. Well, this session took a big chunk out of my backside.

Good.

This setback is going to force me to get back to the basics. I had stopped focusing at the table and concentrating on what my opponents were doing and how they were playing. Instead I was Facebooking about my success or Tweeting about a recent hand or texting friends about what was going on later that night. No more phone at the table.

I haven't cracked open a poker book in at least three weeks. Well, I obviously haven't absorbed everything I needed to, or I wouldn't be having this talk with you. It's time to get back to studying the game. I have enough down-time during the week that this shouldn't be an issue, I just have to do it.

Most importantly, I have to ingrain in my brain (unintentional rhyming) that this what I want to do for a living. This is how I'm going to pay my rent. This is how I'm going to afford to go on dates. This is how I'm going to eat. So I owe it to myself to make sure that I'm totally focused on the task at hand every time I sit down at the table. I know a lot of the people I know don't see it that way, and I've succumbed to their whimsical attitudes towards poker. But it's my responsibility to make sure they understand that this is going to be my job, and just like any other job I can't just call out whenever I feel like it. And if they can't, or refuse, to understand that then they have no place in my life.

This is it, kids, this is the dream. So I have a responsibility to myself to make sure I'm prepared each and every time I sit down at the poker table.

Let's get back at it.

Decisions, Decisions...

I know it's been a minute since I've written a blog. I'd tell you that I've been really busy, which I have, but there's no place for excuses. I've been working what has been a not-so-set schedule at the bar, playing poker twice a week on my days off, reading any poker book I can get my hands on, watching my 49ers get bounced in the NFC Championship, and now shopping for a new car.

My poker play is continuing to improve and every time I sit at a table I learn something. I'm staying humble and making good decisions. Out of the nine cash sessions I've played this year, six have been winning, two have been losing, and one was a marathon break-even. Probably the most important thing I've learned is that if I sit down and play a good, solid, straight-forward game I will make at least $200. This is perfect. If I want to play poker for a living I need to make $650 a week, and making $200 a session will make that achievable. Obviously, there will be times when I make more or less than that, and I'll need to open up my game a little bit to have bigger nights and make up for the inevitable downswings, but for right now I'm encouraged by my consistency.

I've also gotten some outside interest in a couple of blogs I've written, which is something I can hopefully parlay into more of a full-time gig. Plus, it's fun to be on the verge of being able to call myself a published writer. I truly love this game and I'm fascinated by everything associated with it. If I can make a living not only by playing poker, but also by writing about it, I imagine I will be truly happy.

All this is leading me down the path towards a question that I suppose was inevitably going to be asked: Do I move to Vegas?

Right now I'm consistently winning at poker here in Colorado. But is that going to change? Will my time and success at the poker tables lead other players to not want to play with me? I've already identified half a dozen players I don't like being at the same table with. We don't have the tourist flow that Vegas does, and in the month since I've increased my play I already recognize the majority of the players in the poker room when I go play. As of right now there's no reason to try and move up to the $2/$5 game from the $1/$2 game in which I currently play, but will that change if the action dries up at $1/$2? My goal isn't to play against good players; my goal is to make money. It wouldn't make sense to move into that game and sit at a whole table of sharks. Vegas provides the anonymity and player pool to be able to take advantage of the fact that most people that sit down at a poker table, while understanding the basics of the game, aren't all that good.

In regards to my writing, I think the answer is actually more clear: Vegas would help. I can write all I want about being a $1/$2 grinder and the experiences I have, but to truly be involved in the poker community, well, there's only one place in the world for that. This summer I want to go to Vegas for a month during the WSOP. This is a task that is complicated by having a "day job." I don't know that my employer would be okay with me leaving for that long. Additionally, I'm struggling with the time-frame. If I go out for July, I get to be there for the Main Event but miss the bulk of the tournaments. If I go out for June, I'm there for the bulk of the tournaments but miss the Main Event. Easy solution that's not so easy: go to Vegas for two months. If I did that, I guarantee that I wouldn't have my job when I came back. But I think being in Vegas for an extended period of time during the WSOP is vital to continuing to develop my writing career.

My goal is to have one year's worth of expenses in the bank before I quit "working" altogether and play poker for a living. Right now I'm 1/33rd of the way there, so losing my job to stay in Vegas for two months to write about stuff I'm probably only going to be posting on my blog doesn't seem very prudent. Granted, I'm also going to be playing a ton of poker, but what if I go on a losing streak? Then I'll be stuck.

The comforting part of all of this is that I do still have my "day job," Vegas will always be there, nothing is going to stop me from writing, and we're still four months away from the beginning of the WSOP and a TON can happen between now and then.

It's something I need to keep on the back burner and be ready to move to the front burner if the opportunity presents itself.