It's My Blog and I'll Cliche If I Want To...

"You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time for countin'
When the dealin's done."

I played a 3/6 last night and ran up a $100 buy-in to $260 in a matter of 25 minutes. I did it by just brute force and superior hands. I had a erstwhile student of sorts at the table, and he was truly marveling at the Shark's way of running a table over. I've done this before, many times before, especially at the 3/6 game on Stars, and I continued to play for about another hour.

Losing every penny.

I know it's no big deal at the grand scheme of things, and I recouped my losses at other tables I played (2-tabling each 3/6 and 5/10), but damn, 40+ BB is a long way to fall. The thing about poker that frustrates me to death, and is truly my weakness, is that I can play with great cards (anybody can), I can play with okay cards, I can play with mediocre cards, I can even play with bad cards. But there are times that it's like the poker gods look down upon you, feeling all good about yourself, and decide it's time to remind you that THEY are the ones in charge. They smite--and they smite hard.



They let you make great hands, like AK on a flop of A-K-2, and the give your opponent a hand like 22. They let you make the nut flush, then pair the board to give another player a full house.

At what point do you look at your swollen stack and say, "Let's get this wad off the table...?"

When do you walk away? Last night, I didn't walk away quick enough, and I let a $200+ win turn into a break-even session by playing my ass off on the other tables.

This can't be a +EV way to play. Anyhow, I donked it up playing $50 PLO enough to register a cute little profit, so all's well that ends well...

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On the baby front, nothing new to report. The legend of the full moon is definitely in my mind (an old hospital wives' tale that says that OB admissions and deliveries spike during the full moon--and it's actually true, for some not-known-to-medical-science reason), so I don't personally think that the Mrs. is going to make it through the weekend without popping out a baby Shark.

Remodeling is officially finished as of today. The last of the rugs were put in, so I've finished my basement, re-did the baby's room, re-painted the entire house, and re-carpeted the entire house. My ass is dragging, and that should explain the lack of posts...It's been over the last six months, and now we have from tomorrow until the baby's born to adjust to our new-found normalcy, before the baby comes to flip our lives completely upside down.

And I'll love every minute of it.

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I'll finish tonight with a post that was linked on 9-2 Offsuit, and written by a guy named Tommy Angelo:

Betcha can't turn your computer off.

See. Told you.

Oh, you weren't ready? You didn't know there was a challenge coming?

Okay. Take your time. Time's up. So, what'd you decide? You don't want to take the dare? You just want to keep your computer on and have me go away?

I'll be gone, soon enough. But first, let me tell you the prize, so that you will know exactly what it is you are about to say no to. Turn your computer off, right now, and you will increase your poker strength.

On three.

One . . .

Two . . .

Three.

Still here? What, you don't want your poker score to go up?

If you want to get better at poker, then you have to get better at stopping. If you want to get better at stopping, then you have to practice stopping. Here's how. Take something you are doing, anytime, anywhere, and stop doing it, for no reason.

For instance, let's say you are walking. And then all of a sudden you stop walking. Technically, that would be stopping walking. But if the reason you stopped walking is because you arrived at a destination, well, sorry, that's not good enough. In order for your stopping to count as stopping, it has to be done intentionally intentionlessly. That's right. I said you must stop on purpose, but with no purpose. And if none of this makes sense to you, that's only because you haven't started stopping yet.

Okay, let's try something. A practice stop. I'll do it with you. Here's what you do. Close your eyes. Wait. Not yet. First you have to finish reading the instructions. Okay. On the count of three, I want you to close your eyes, close your lips, take your mouse hand off your mouse, take your other hand off whatever it is on, put both hands in your lap, and inhale, then exhale, and keep track of your breathing for three breaths. Think of this as a gift from you to you. Okay. On the count of three, we are going to stop and count to three. Here we go.

One …

Two …

Three.



Nice.

Okay, where were we?

What's that? You want me to go back to the part about getting better at poker and explain just what the hell I am really getting at here? Alright alright, you deserve that much I suppose, whether or not you did the stopping thing.

The surest way to get better at poker is to get better at everything and have poker rise with the tide. Let's say you wanted to get better at listening. Or you wanted to get better at not getting upset. Or let's say you wanted to get better at knowing what to do when you get checkraised on the turn. What gets in the way of your listening? Your thoughts do. Why do you get upset? Because you think thoughts that are upsetting. Why do you lose focus at the poker table? Because your thoughts are streaming by, taking you with them, into the past and future.

The thing to do is to learn how to stop your thoughtless thinking, whenever you want to, in order to clear room for something better. If you want to be as good as you can be at poker, you need a mind that is so strong it can stop itself.

Wanna know how to get one? It's real simple. And real hard. You have to think of your mind as a muscle, and then put it through resistance training, over and over, like at the gym. Let's try that beginner's exercise I showed you. Okay, here we go. Hands in lap. Mouth closed. Eyes closed. Three breaths. Ready. Go.

At this point, all readers of this article can be broken into two groups. Those who did the stopping, and those who didn't. I have a closing message for each.

To those who did not stop, it's okay. You will have infinite opportunities to start stopping.

To those who did stop, you really do deserve something special, especially if it was your first time. So I am going to give you a very, very valuable reward. It comes in the form of another challenge.

Betcha can't do it again.

Nice hand, sir. Nice hand.