Complaints Dept.

I don’t ‘Gamboool’ much when I play poker. This is partly because it just isn’t my style, partly because – and I don’t care what you say! – I am just not a lucky player. Usually when I do gamboool (as I did last night with the rubble that once was a bankroll) I discover that my hand is actually in far better shape than I thought – because so many players are idiots – but I still lose anyway.

There was a classic example last night as I frivolously threw my shrapnel into the pot, intent on either going to bed quickly or spinning it up into something that would at least reduce the size of deposit to be made today.

I flopped an extremely non-nut flush draw, a pair and a sort of gut-shotty straight draw of some kind (the details are hazy). Having put my chips in and been called, I assumed that my flush would be no good if I hit it and/or that my single pair was also beat. In fact I was way ahead against a guy with bottom pair and no draw, but the turn promptly paired to give him trips, no flush arrived, and 89TJ’s head hit the pillow ten minutes and one cigarette later.

I’m just not lucky. In poker.

In life, I probably am. I’m physically and mentally healthy, seem to be at least passably good-looking (based simply on calibre of girlfriends), tallish, intelligent, modest… I can’t complain. But I will anyway, from time to time.

Modish idioms

‘I get a check on Friday, but its already spent’ – Huey Lewis & The News, Workin’ for a Livin’

Why don’t 6.5 hours of sleep leave me feeling 80% as rested as 8 hours?

Are 3 cups of tea by 11am too many?

Why do I always read 3 books at once? Currently; a book about betting exchanges, Allen Carr’s classic giving up smoking primer plus a biography of snooker legend Alex Higgins (who knows both betting and smoking pretty well).

As for the poker, I had a lovely session of PLO8 on Monday night in which I hit a few cards, played with admirable patience and discipline and made a key bluff for a big pot (position, let me count the ways I love thee). It seemed I might have staved off the need to make a deposit.

Last night I sat down with that slightly recovered bankroll and proceeded to play like a dick. First, I got involved in some needle. I wanted a guy with a decent stack to stay at the table when he was promising to leave any moment, got under his skin slightly (good) and proceeded to let the needle spill over into paying him off when I shouldn’t have (bad). Then I continued to pay other people off when the river went bad, throwing chips away like spent bus tickets because I refused to accept the cards could have gone against me so bad – that’s tilt on one level or another.

I lost the exact same amount I won the previous night, leaving me needing to make a deposit after all. I did get unlucky too; I got involved in a large heads-up pot with a genuine idiot and had a nice freeroll on him when we went all-in on the flop. Unfortunately he hit his slim draw for high so I only got half.

The two contrasting days have illustrated the effect my results can have on my mood. Yesterday, having gone to bed on a great win, I felt alive and the world seemed bursting with possibility; ‘yay, I know how to play and one day I will build the bankroll for a few months and give going pro another shot’. Today, having played like shit and seen more evidence that I am never going to be one of those super-lucky players you do come across, I feel trapped forever in mundanity.

My plan now is to deposit quite a large amount (for me) into my account this week and go for it – play with guts, raise more, make sure I don’t leave chips on the table; shit or bust.

My other plan is to somehow cure my country of the linguistic disease that has infected so many people of the generation now in their mid twenties. They end every sentence on an up-note? Like it’s a question? And it irritates me beyond belief. I have no such problem with many other modish idioms - I’m so, like, whatever – and I think what bugs me about this one is that it seems to convey a total lack of confidence on the part of the speaker. Every statement seems to be in doubt; the speaker appears to be desperately seeking approval and validation for every single thing they say.

Finally; my beloved Patriots made the Superbowl again. Three times in four years. I have suffered enough pain as a sports fan to know that sequences like this come along once in a lifetime and you have to make sure you enjoy every minute. Now I just have to inveigle a friend with satellite TV into letting me commandeer their lounge for four hours on Sunday week.

Why did the blonde stare at the orange juice?

Its been interesting to read a few posts recently about online poker as addiction – or at least, people trying to fathom whether it is an addiction. Clearly it takes up a lot of many people’s time, and I have written in the past of my sympathy for people trying to fit poker around having a wife, a live-in partner or even – god forbid – children. I know that online poker didn’t exactly help when my own seven-year relationship was heading slowly, inexorably onto the rocks. The question of whether I am glad it finally hit those rocks is one that has vexed me quite a lot recently, whereas at the time there was nothing but a great sense of relief and release.

Aside: I miss my ex greatly and don’t think I will ever (allow myself to) feel so deeply about anyone else again. Yet the fact remains that for a long, long time I wanted my freedom from that relationship very badly. It would be great if life made sense occasionally.

So, is poker an addiction for me? There is no doubt it is something I spend a lot of time doing, at the expense of other things. I think poker is an ideal form of escapism, actually. It sucks you in and takes over your senses and your mind, while you are playing (OK, not entirely, as I will discuss in a moment).

When I play snooker or pool its wonderful how life and its troubles retreat into the shadows around the lit table, and the world is reduced to simple, bright colours – red, yellow, black, white, green baize. Likewise, when your attention is focussed on a poker game, the world is reduced to simple variables – chips and baize; bet and fold; clubs, spades and diamonds. (Maybe not hearts – too complicated).

However, if poker were an addiction I don’t think I would have just happily spent four days not playing at all. Nor would I have played my new football manager strategy game for about 25 hours of laptop time over the past month.

What I normally tell concerned friends and over-concerned family members is that it is an obsession but not an addiction. If I were losing money and still compelled to play, then I might call it an addiction. But the fact is, I win money at it and therefore probably play a little more than I would sometimes like. It truly is like a part-time job to me, only it is more flexible and pleasant than the bar-work that I have found myself needing to do in the past.

All of which reminds me that I need to work a bit more, and a bit better, than I have over the past fortnight (only 13.5 hours and a truly disappointing -$87) I do think that its about bloody time I had a real monster session, but that will come as and when it comes. In the meantime I really do have to concentrate more when I play, it is that simple. I cannot be emailing, chatting, surfing at the same time as playing, even less so now that I always play multiple tables.

Why did the blonde stare at the orange juice? Because the carton said 'concentrate'.