Poker Perambulation

When I started to understand the game a bit, it was easy to make decisions. The world was black and white. My writing vehicle then was forums. My ego was also ramping up a bit. These days I guess the Blu-blockers kicked in. Things are more Technicolor.

Now it seems to have reached psychedelic. I’ll be at a table and see this play. Based on the cards poker is binary – win:lose, black:white, smart:dumb and so on. But, poker is actually an analog game. And the more I’ve played it the wider the bandwidth gets.

I could was poetic about incomplete information and all the crap colorful words we’ve invented to describe poker or a West Texas cattle drive. The poker ones are there as an attempt to explain the inexplainable. And thinking we can be “poker bloggers” may be the last bit of arrogance in the land of words. In the end, text revert to making it a binary experience. You can get the egghead version of what I’m talking about over here.

Why all this transcendental crap?

Too early, you are stuck reading more introduction. Online poker isn’t very personal. At best, it is a will-o-the-wisp part of living. As herd animals we work to get around that. In past times I was a Wargamer. It was a precursor to blogger tournaments. Those are ways to add fun and some humanity and a whole lot of bad jokes to the table. The rules for all this are unwritten but strict. Again, a binary masquerade of analog activity.

What happens then is we mix our very human stupidity with our ‘incomplete information’ or just hurt feeling and go beyond the pale. Been there; done that; got the scars. Poker defies the rational. At least it can at times. All of a sudden our poker blogs – including some ‘respected’ ones – become worse than an off color chat box. We’ve turned analog into digital again.

To confuse further:

I just watched the last of High Stakes Poker for this season. It was entertaining. It also may have been better poker than in the past or worse. Again, I can’t really say. It was far more aggressive because of a single player – Durr. Some savvy players made some really dumb moves from my godlike stance of seeing all the downs and discards. KK against the perceived loose cannon pushing a reasoned overbet all in on a big hand was either total stupidity – and people don’t play long at those levels with that game – or a read gone wrong. Binary hindsight makes it the former. But, then, I am still stewing about my particular play of KK back in those ancient Wargame days. That is a five year old piece of angst.

No solace here at the end and clarity won’t be offered:

I’ve never dumped chips. But, I sure as hell looked like I have at times. And let he who plays perfect poker dispute that.

ADDENDUM:

Well, that 18-bucks I’ve played on FullTilt since the first of the year remains alive but barely. I was down to less than a buyin and managed a winning session to stay alive. If you’ve followed this, I’ve overplayed that minuscule bankroll for 4 full months at mostly quarter-half stud. The graph of all that could make a roller coaster look tame. It may be on of the most satisfying experiences of my ‘playing career’ to date. Or just a lucky bit of donkey poker – which it surely was at times. That isn’t an apology or solid fact. It is just what worked out over many thousand hands.

Related posts:

1. It is my Party