Some time off (again)

Since my last post Iv played a combined total of 112 hands in which Iv lost about $500. So Iv had a few days off from it, and tried not thinking about poker at all. That's the trouble with downswings, your probably not playing great and are probably not really wanting to play but your stuck a whole bunch so you feel like you have to play. This is what I was like a couple of weeks ago and I did play and it didnt go too well, so i felt that maybe some time off will help. Right now Im kinda thinking I wana play a bit so I might start a session after this blog.

Iv just read a blog from a high stakes player. He's a top player and he's obviously very intelligent and his post really made me think. Here's a chunk from it;


Well, since I last updated, a lot of shit has gone down – mostly me gaining back momentum, getting on a run, and then getting bludgeoned over and over. I finally was back on a roll until yesterday I played Isildur1 at 50/100 NL and 100/200 PLO, losing about $500k to him. I ran 400k under EV. I ran really, really bad. This is by far the worst losing day I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve never felt as much shock in my body as I felt during that match. It felt like I had just gone through a car crash. It bore down on me like an enormous mental weight, my body felt weak and tired, and my mind was too cloudy to couldn’t think of anything beyond the hands I was playing. I’ve never reacted that way to poker before. These last few months have been unfriendly, but yesterday the poker gods stretched my mouth wide open and took a huge and inglorious shit straight down my gullet.

So, since I’m a wannabe pseudo-intellectual, of course I have to rationalize this series of events. Poker sucks. I can’t run good. Randomness, variance simulations, survivorship bias, the people who tell the stories about poker are the people who've run good enough to seem to be worth listening to, blah blah blah. I want to write about that shit but who cares. Fuck that, fuck me. This is what I signed up for. Of all the hundreds of thousands of grinders who have tried to climb the mountain of poker, most of them have felt this moment before. Not everybody wins at poker, and for some the mountain is insurmountable.

I feel like it’s unfair. I look at the people around me who run good, who are rewarded for their efforts, for whom the good run and bad run come in equal shares, for whom their luck gives them room to breathe and remember the direction in which they’re climbing. I resent poker for pushing upon me this bad luck, even though I know the randomness must exist. I’ve seen the simulations, I’ve read the posts, I’ve even meditated on the idea countless times to myself. I’ve always known that if poker wanted to bury me, it could bury me so deep that I could never get out. I acknowledged the God of poker, and I’ve feared it, I have loved it. But I still put in my time. I still put in the hours playing, the hours studying, the hours coaching, the hours getting coached. I’ve done my share. I have been faithful, I have loved, and I have feared. I feel like it’s unfair.

This is what I feel.

But nevertheless, here I am. Buried. Buried so deep that I’d have to be the son of fucking God himself to get unburied. So since I am here in my grave, the only true way to unbury myself is to realize that there is no such thing as a grave unless one chooses to call it a grave. Where I am now is not a grave, nor is it above ground or anything in between. Where I am is where I am, it is my moment. From here, I begin to rebuild and reformulate. This is all there is. It’s time to start over. As much as I would like to think I am buried – as much as clinging to that idea makes me feel like what I have done in my past life defines me – I am not buried. I am here, I am alive; my hands and feet are alive. So I will climb.

That’s all I’m going to write in regards to that. Writing only does so much. I need to reset my mindset and reconstruct my narrative, and although writing can make it sound definite, it doesn't make it a part of my psyche. I guess what it'll take is time and work.


Anyways Im off to see what the poker gods have in store for me.

Jamie