Scared money

My petulant outburst in the last post led to a couple of comments. Felicia called me a scrooge. Well, I hate small talk and small children, but Scrooge is not all that apt; I like Christmas and am a spendthrift. In fact, being a spendthrift is the biggest weakness in my entire life. I hear Ebeneezer Scrooge had excellent bankroll management skills but was a little weak-tight.

Anyways, the comments – proof of life! – were very welcome. I don’t like asking for links is all. I hate to feel like some new guy at the blog party, pulling on coatsleeves and pestering people in order to become part of the crowd. And I still have this ambivalent attitude, ‘cause sooner or later someone I play against is going to read this, work out who I am, and torture me with all my weaknesses! (More on my weaknesses later). And that could cost me, jeez, twenty bucks or something!

The other comment came from 'Cheap Thrills', whom I have never linked before but enjoy reading a lot. In an excellent post about keeping records, he quoted me just after Tommy Angelo - which is one of the most flattering and gratifying things I can imagine. (The other most flattering and gratifying things I can imagine are extremely rude, naturally). Tommy Angelo is a genius, viz this typically spot-on snippet:

“I make a living at poker by choosing when to enter a game and when to leave it. These options give me the freedom to choose my state of mind, and to choose my opponents. My betting decisions are of small consequence, comparatively.”

Tommy's site is worth a visit to read all his articles. I have been meaning to order his CD for about eighteen months, without ever getting round to it. I really must hear his song ‘I’m running bad’. Because yes, I am running bad.

I have been recovering slowly from last weekend’s debacle - until I added another, fresh debacle late on Saturday night. I couldn’t get dealt a hand nor hit a flop, my cards were as dry as an astronaut’s lunch, and ultimately I got pissed off and tilted. Combine that with a couple of very unkind rivers and you have a recipe for a very bad night’s sleep.

I think I am going to stop keeping records again. I could come out with a load of baloney reasons, but frankly its just too damn fucking depressing at the moment. I have definitely got back into letting results affect the way I play my next hand, but that’s less to do with records and focussing on the short-term, than with simple pain!

I actually find it harder than some people to stop recording my results, because deep down I am somewhat of a stats freak. That’s one reason I have always liked American sports, most of which lend themselves so well to mountains of statistics. Gridiron is my favourite, with its pass completions, third down conversions, field goal percentages, punt yardage, punt return yardage, sacks, yards per rush, interceptions, tackles, penalty yards… and so on.

But at the moment I could live without knowing that I have suffered about five horrible losing Omaha sessions out of seven or eight, that I have missed the money in four consecutive PLO Sit and Goes, that my five card stud winnings have tailed off horribly… About the only positive lately has been the headsup no limit games, where I am winning more than my share. I’m even 1 of 1 at the $20 level. Must’ve been drunk.

I gotta try to stay positive. Or rather, resume being positive. I have still won a tidy sum of money over three months, starting from the shrapnel remains of a bankroll. The problem is that I am back at a bankroll level where I am playing scared money – at least in pot limit Omaha – and scared money is only ever about five minutes away from being somebody else’s money.

Yet one step further and you have shell-shocked money, which has gone beyond fear and doesn’t care if it lives or dies. Thank heavens for that stuff, as it enabled me to double through in a scary PLO hand which otherwise would have finished me off completely.

Anyways, I have to steer clear of PLO until me and my money have the guts for it again. Back to five card stud.

You know, I have found it next to impossible to find any writing on five card stud, anywhere on the internet. Which is great, and leaves me to continue trying to work the game out for myself. I saw a guy playing a whole different way last night. He raised and re-raised virtually every hand, often on every street, often when he was quite clearly behind, sometimes when he could not even beat his opponents’ boards.

Yet he won quite a lot of money. He did hit some cards on fourth and fifth street, that’s for sure, and when he did he was still in there fighting for a big pot when people with better hands had fallen by the wayside. He upset me bitterly when he and another guy went raise-crazy on fourth street while I had split Kings, to the extent that I was convinced that one had hit trips and one had paired an Ace. I folded, and the hand was won by a pair of 9’s. He upset me even more bitterly when I had split Aces, grinned my way through his raises and re-raises, and then almost cried when he hit open Aces on the end with a better kicker than mine. I won in the game, a little, but those two hands cost me pots worth almost $80, which at the moment is a big deal.

I have pondered his style a fair bit since leaving that game. One thing he was certainly doing was ensuring he got paid off – and paid off BIG time – when he did have a hand. But what about all the raising when he was, to put it mildly, drawing slim? Was he simply trying to make the pot large enough that it was almost always correct to keep taking the next card? If so, surely that applied to all players. I can’t quite work it out – but I do know that while he got very, very lucky against me once (winning a $30 pot that he had no right to) and also donated heavily to me in another hand, the most significant thing he did was win a large pot with a pair of 9’s when I folded Kings! Now, if you do that once or twice in a session then your results should be okay.

For all that, I see no particular reason to alter my own style, which has been bringing in the money steadily. I simply made a mistake in that ‘Kings’ pot, as I should have called fourth street and seen a showdown due to the size of the pot – and I was unaware at that point that the second opponent was as bad as he proved to be.

That hand came down to what I wrote about last time: The other two guys didn’t believe that my King was paired, because they would have raised and reraised as I was even without the pair. And I believed that they had tripped up or paired an Ace because I wouldn’t have played like they did unless that were the case. Each of us assuming our opponent approached the game the same way as ourselves. Once again it bit me in the arse!

Perhaps my biggest weakness as a player is that I am too much of a ‘believer’ (eg. Believing my opponents have a hand/some sense). I suspect it is not quite as expensive as being too much of a ‘non-believer’, but when I am wrong it does feel pretty bad.

Oh well. Overall it was a frustrating session of stud. And the PLO Sit and Go I paid was even more irritating. I was down to four players in second place with a nice stack, and felt confident that I was the best player at the table. I couldn’t see myself coming worse than second. Shortly afterwards, I was bubbling out in fourth. I stuck a chap all-in on the turn when I made the nut straight with flush re-draw, but his set filled up on the river and I was all but crippled. I played aggressive from there to get back into some sort of contention, but got unlucky on a flop where my opponent and I had almost the exact same draw but he hit a two pair with his otherwise useless fourth card. A very, very frustrating failure to cash in a tourney where I truly felt I played the better than anyone else by quite some margin.

Enough for now. Final note about links: I simply don’t know how to set up a list of links at the side of my page like many people do. If I could, I would!