Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Does anyone win now?

All you guys seem to be in downswings to varying degrees.  I'm down a ton for the last several months and feel like no lead is safe.  I am (and it sounds like a lot of you are too) the guy on the table who supports the poor players who make bad decisions and get paid off (only to predictably dump their profits to someone else on the table). 

To be fair/honest, I am putting nowhere near as much effort into analyzing my game, reviewing my sessions, posting hands, watching vids, etc. as I used to.  Or what is needed.  So, I definitely don't feel I should be killing the games or anything.  But I've still managed to put myself in some great situations, to no avail.  Situations where I'm getting the money in against guys who routinely hit their outs, even when it looks like I'm coolering their made hands (or maybe their treating their underpairs as a draws?).

And I can tell from the reading that I've been doing that I'm not alone.  Granted, for a number of reasons, we don't spend as much time writing about the good luck we have, and it's not as cathartic to chat about our suckouts as to lament about theirs.  So, I don't think the sky is falling or the sites are rigged. But man, I wish it would turn around for us already.  Based on the play I see, the games are plenty good enough to beat.  Maybe not crush, but through 400NL there are still a good number of weak players.  And now that I've dropped down and have started to play some 100NL, I'm reminded how much worse the regs are there than at 400NL overall.

Bottom line, I'm not enjoying poker all that much these days.  That means I'm not as eager to work at it, and with a lot of other things clamoring for my attention, it means I don't work at it too much.  Which means I don't play as well.  Which means my results are relatively worse.  Which means I don't enjoy it as much.  And you can see where the cycle goes.  That said, I continue to play minimal volume, so that I don't go completely out of touch.  And I still do a minimal amount of work off the table, so that it doesn't disappear completely.  I've gotten over hating the game while running bad.  I just don't love it.  But I think that I will again at some point.  So for now, I'm playing at a stake and in a mode where I can kind of tread water until I'm ready to proceed with more enthusiasm and effort.  And that'll have to do for the time being.

2 comments:

Ian Little said...

great post, I likey

Poker Player said...

I've just played 45 poker tournaments in the range of $5 to $50 and I only cashed twice. I've been getting the cards when I need them, but My set of aces gets crushed by the quad jack on the river. Are we supposed to keep playing?