Motivation

Before the meat of this post, thanks for the feedback on the hand from last post.  I thought there were some good arguments presented for differing points.  I'm convinced that you could make a good case for playing the hand in the first place, and that raising preflop with the context I provided is OK.  The flop may be a bit more murky, but betting cannot be a terribly big mistake....if the rest of the hand is played smarter than I played.  Yeah, it will cause me to commit a lot of chips on a marginal hand, but the reward is pretty big too.  The problem, once again for me, was overplaying on the turn.  Even if I made a mistake on the earlier streets, it would pale in comparison to the mistake on the turn.

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Been doing a bunch of reflection on my poker game lately.  I'm on a big cooler, well at least for me.  I'm not sure that's a widely used term, but cooler seems to be about the opposite of heater, and that's where I am at.  In the last 10,000 hands or so, I am down 4 BI at 200NL and 16 BI at 100NL (but currently 2 BI up from the bottom!!!).  The cooler started off at 200NL and continued to 100NL in somewhat brutal fashion, but my play seemed OK in the big and medium pots.  However, my play has also sucked, especially the last few sessions for some reason.

LOL, been writing this post off and on all day, and just came back to read it, and decided to delete everything except that first paragraph.  I had written a crapload, but it amounted to the fact that I better not feel sorry for myself, and that my emotional game isn't as strong as I would like it, or as strong as I believed it was before I started coolering.  If it were stronger, I wouldn't hate this downswing as much as I do.  Not that I should be thrilled to lose (duh), but my emotions are influenced by the results way too much, rather than being dominated by the quality of my play.

Trying to find a silver lining, it's not 100% terrible to experience this.  If you have to experience a DS, better at small stakes than larger...and not that it won't happen at higher stakes, but playing -- and improving -- through it will help handle the next one better.  And I think for almost everyone, you tend to critique your own game more on a downswing than an upswing (maybe for good reason).  Certainly there are a number of things I can do better.  Not only technically, but also in how I approach each hand and the game as a whole.

One thing that really pisses me off is making an effort at something and still failing.  This cooler wiped out all my playing profits for 100 NL, which were not astounding to begin with LOL.  It took me 40k hands over 5 months to get 20BI and 10k hands over one month to give it back.  All I've got to show for 50k hands is rakeback and experience.  The rakeback has pretty much been spent on video memberships, coaching and books, so what I really have for the last 50k hands and 6 months is knowledge and experience.  And in the end, I think that's supposed to be more of a success than whatever buy-ins I could have made....true I'm at a stakes standstill for now, but in the long picture of a career the knowledge and experience acquired now should have a multiplier effect, and as long as I'm learning and improving my foundation, I should be pretty satisfied with it.

I came up with another source of motivation, but it kind of contradicts itself.  I was thinking that Full Tilt is a generally tough site to play...lots of regs at the 100NL and 200NL tables who are, if not world beaters, at least not total fish.  Would it be worth it to play elsewhere?  From an EV standpoint, almost assuredly yes!  But I'm finding the competitive (OK, stubborn) drive to want to stick it out and beat this frigging 100NL level.  It means something to me to be able to say that I did it, now that I've gotten beaten back.  On the other hand, I'm still going to be diligent about seat selection, so I'm not exactly looking to beat the toughest game or outdo the best players.  It's more just like Full Tilt in aggregate. 

I've put enough work in, have identified some problems, want to work with a coach to make sure my blind spots aren't too terrible, and want to continue to improve.  Outside of my actual job and family time, I devote far more time to poker than probably all my other personal interests combined.  My Tivo is hopelessly backlogged (1GB storage upgrade FTW) and my Blockbuster subscription is a total waste.  I read like one non-poker book every six months.  My golf game has gone downhill because I spend no time at the range.  Hell, I probably could have found a ton of side projects at work, but instead I'm reading, chatting, thinking poker....just to get better...maybe just to prove to myself that I can, I don't know.  I wonder what the bigger factor is:  love of the game or will to succeed at something I've already invested a lot in.  (Maybe in a microcosm, that's why I find it hard to fold once I've raised :P).

Geez, this ended up being long, even with deleting all that stuff.  If you're still here, thanks!