Poker & Life
It is a mental exercise we perform at the tables constantly. From that
come other questions like: Would you rather
get your money in first (regardless of what you are holding) or call
behind with Aces?
That’s a question asked by a blogger who shall go nameless. I’ve
mentioned him so much of late that doing it again might cause the
rest of you to draw little rainbows over and around my persona.
At the tables we talk in code. We use thing like read, range of hands,
tendencies and all that to make us folks with an A-game or delusions
of same — managing complex ideas with our shorthand terms. Poker humbles. It does it with the impeccable timing to happen
at the worst possible moment. They become images as grand and
permanent as Mount Rushmore. I can recall a SnG hand played on
PokerRoom a half-dozen years ago. Hell, I think I could come up with
a dozen from then. All of them train wrecks. Blood covered the
landscape. My blood.
I just played a little $3 rebuy over on Ultimate Bet. I mentioned in
another blog that my aces were cracked. I’d played about 1.5 hours.
The cards were cold but I managed to hang around with an undersized
stack. The guy with the KK saw his two outer on the flop. The flop
held nothing of promise beyond that K x x rainbow. Pot committed
after making the right bet against the blind sizes, I banged all-in
on the turn. Disappointing but not that bad a beat. The only thing
that makes it into more was the time invested playing darn good
poker.
There are 2,598,960 possible combination in the deck. We do a good job of
sifting through that to come up with possible outcomes. We discount
wrong at times. We let our testosterone take control at times. We
use circumstantial evidence. We try to come up with the best answer
that our incomplete information can provide. Doesn’t always work.
And, when you now throw in two nasty words, implied odds, you can’t
really separate the goats from the sheep.
In tournaments it is all over; turn in your ticket. At ring there is
another interesting poker term for it, reload. The good players
can/must consider it all as part of the ascent. The trail is a bit rough
or on a switchback. The hand history is unforgiving of the instant.
But, it is also totally lacking in real information. When we ask
questions like the one above, we are letting the moment determine far
too much.
All this is both joy and reason we are amateur players. That is a gift
that the real gamblers don’t have. They can embrace serious variance
more easily than many of us. My strength, if I have one, is that
the funds I put in play won’t impact my lifestyle one iota. But,
what that also means is that my ego is invested and that is
significant at times and under odd circumstances. That’s my real
bankroll to manage. Most of the time, I can. Other times I asked
the wrong question or reach the wrong conclusion.
Hell of a game. Love it. Warts and all.
ADDENDUM:
Here’s the cartoon I reminded you-know-who of. It was a while back and in a comment in his missus blog. (And if you have gotten who at this point…) Says it all about life/poker/insecurity.
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