Hey all, welcome back to your poker fix. It's been a little while since I last posted so I wanted to catch everybody up on the goings on in my life. Both on and off from the poker table. Without any further ado, the blog...
After a long decision, I finally decided yesterday to not attend tonight's off-Friday poker game. Nothing against the game, because I do like the format, I just needed to get my mind off competetive poker for a least one week. Playing every week is not only grueling on your mind, but your wallet as well. And we all pretty much know my bankroll is non-existent at the moment, so I am using my all purpose money to feed the demon that has become my poker obsession. Ok, so maybe it isn't that drastic at this point, but I still needed a break. Constantly playing, no matter how high the stakes are, is tough on your mind and taxing on you physically and mentally. A lot of times when you sit down to play, you have a bad beat you're still thinking about in the back of your mind. Sometimes, you're lucky enough to a point where it doesn't change the way you play. More often than not, especially when you're playing the same players over and over again, you play differently against the player who laid that beat on you. You try to overcompensate in a hand so that he / she doesn't suck out on you again, and you end up hurting your game because of it. If you played against a different group, I guess it would be different, who knows. All I know is that playing the same players every week, wears you down. I think I was at that point a few weeks ago, and it really hurt my game. I was playing mediocre hands against a mediocre player and getting beat by raggy flops. I thought to myself, "ok, X, you've got to open up your game otherwise you'll end up blinding yourself out." And that is true to a certain extent. I was limiting myself to only the very best hands. That's fine, but when you do play a hand, you usually get beaten by vastly inferior hands or the absolute nuts. The problem is you don't really know what you're up against and it is harder to fold say A - K whent the board reads A - Q - 10. This particular situation happened to me and the player I was up against had pocket A's and had flopped a set. Now I'm drawing to any one of the remaining jacks in the deck. There just happened to be three jacks left in the deck, as one was folded. But this was the thing that kept happening to me constantly over the period of several months. I wouldn't fold the hand and end up going broke. Last week at Kurt's, I opened my game up a little and it did pay dividends. There are some situations that I know what to do, it's just whether I have the stomach to do it. I find it really hard to revert back to my previous style knowing what I know now. I can't play like I used to, so instead I need to find newer and, better yet, more effective ways of changing up my game. I do change my game up well, I think. I personally think it is hard to put me on a hand most of the time. I don't bluff a whole heck of a lot, but when I do, it's usally effective. I generally do it to the tighter players who don't like getting involved with average hands. At this point, I definitely think I am a decent player who has good instincts. I just have to follow my instincts and not let bad beats get to me. I still have a lot of work to do until I reach my goal, but I think for a guy who three years ago didn't know a damn thing about poker, I've done a pretty good job.
Anyways, the WSOP Main Event just finished up being televised on ESPN. It actually had ended in mid-August. For poker players who take the game seriously, this is the mecca of poker. I think around 8,500 people showed up this year. Back in 2000, three hundred or so players showed up. It's really amazing how poker has grown over the course of six years. This year's Main Event winner, Jamie Gold, took home $12 million for his efforts. Actually, I should correct that. There is litigation going on currently between Jamie Gold and another player who said that Gold would split the winnings with him if he won. If his complaint is upheld, Gold would only get $6 million. It's sad that it has gone this far. Hopefully, this ugly situation won't permanently marr the way the WSOP and Harrah's does business.
Ok, I think I've done enough blogging for one day. I'll blog again when I have something about poker that I want to talk about. Later
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