Zen

Poker good, life bad. Hey, its better than both being bad, right?

Life is bad for all the usual reasons, topped with the current wave of depression and tearfulness which I still cannot explain, nor shake off. It is probably just the accumulation of ways in which I feel trapped; living somewhere I don’t want to live, doing work that doesn’t interest, inspire or motivate me, having several albatross-worth of debt around my neck.

The weekend was mixed. Friday night was a drunken blast, although I felt like I was going to throw up in the taxi (yikes, not very cost-effective) on the way home. Saturday night I met friends again but felt miserable and tearful. Sunday was quiet apart from a monster snooker session.

I played a moderate amount of poker. Just a couple hours once I got home on Saturday night, and about three hours last night. I won’t go into great detail, but I won another $10 sit ‘n’ go which was most pleasing and ensures I certainly won’t be dropping back to the smallest tables.

Cash play was fine. Last night was interesting actually, for two reasons. First, I sat at a full ring game after numerous sessions of six-max. Boy, was it boring! I definitely threw off some chips early on by trying to boss the table, which is WAY harder to do than at a shorter-handed table, unless you are far more of a bully/gambler than I.

It felt like I was out of position for aeons at a time, and had to fold so many hands that I would have been happily playing in the short game. It probably didn’t help that I went about an hour and a quarter without winning a single hand. That certainly tests one’s patience. Mind you, even online you don’t get THAT many hands per hour (I must check the hand histories and see just how many) and it makes me shudder to imagine playing Omaha live… All that dealing; lots of players in each hand; trying to work out who the hell has won at the showdown… eesh, no thanks!

Anyway, not winning a hand in well over an hour obviously meant I was losing. I was down eighty or ninety bucks for quite a long time (I did lose one rather big pot), and I have to say I was really pleased with my patience and lack of tilt, albeit assisted by playing the sit and go at the same time due to my boredom. I still felt totally in control of my game, and was not playing on because of a burning desire to ‘get even’ but because I really felt there was value in the game.

My patience was rewarded ultimately, with a little burst of big hands that enabled me to quit almost seventy dollars to the good.

It seems a slight shame that I seem to have got myself quite ‘centred’ in my game just at the moment that I finally ordered ‘Zen and the Art of Poker’ by Larry Phillips. Still, I am intrigued to read that book (it should have turned up on Saturday really, curse you Amazon) since it has had ‘mixed’ reviews and at least promises something a little different.

Oh, I played a multi-table tournament last night just for a change, $15 entry, 150 runners. I folded AK suited to a huge preflop raise and call on the third hand, after much deliberation, only to see the flop come all my suit. I took the blow of having missed out on being chip leader fairly well, but it was quite galling! (The two guys had AQ and JJ by the way). I played okay after that, stole a couple of reasonable pots, then failed to take a nice one down that was sitting there begging, and then sat on my hands far too much and became a relatively short stack. I exited in 69th, but it was quite fun and I reminded myself of a few lessons forgotten from not playing one of these for a while. I’ve cashed a few times and still believe I could make a decent score sooner or later if I decide to play them more frequently.

HDOUBLE’s post trying to find poker lessons in ‘Groundhog Day’ inspired me to get my DVD out at last. I watched the fairly good documentary and might watch the whole movie tonight. I am so emotionally raw at the moment that I suspect it might make me cry!

Finally, I think I have sussed out how to add a list of blog links over there on the right of the screen. Its not as straightforward as I would like, but I’ll have a go.