Thinking Different / Slowly Rebuilding...

Things were good for a while.. then.. not so much. I took a some time off and attempted to mentally prepare myself to completely rethink my attitude to the game. I looked back at the past few months and thought about what made the game suck and what made the game fun. The obvious top choices for the two are losing and winning, right? If that’s what you think, I would tend to bet that you are a results based player. That is a part of myself I hope I have now left behind.

I’m not focusing on results. I am now focused on making correct decisions.

Suckouts. When a hand significantly behind in the odds gets a lucky card to win. Suckouts WILL happen. If someone hits a 4 outer or less to beat me, well, that would mean than my hand is supposed to lose at most 9% of the time. That means that I did make the correct choice, but that was the time my hand was going to lose. In the same exact scenario, my hand would hold up more often then not. Playing in a field of more than 200? Most likely you will suckout to win on the road to claiming the tournament title. Your opponents will try and hide information from you, or trap you into thinking they have nothing when they have the nuts at that time. Suckouts are a part of poker.

No more boo-hoo I didn’t cash. Most people who play will not cash, that’s just a cold hard fact. Most of the time I will not cash.

It’s all about making correct decisions.

I took my account balance down really low, just enough to start off playing a $1.25 SnG, in fact the bankroll was $1.49 after my leave of absence. I want to start off with just about nothing and see what I can build it up to. Once my account reaches below $1.25, it’s game over. At the same time, I need a goal to hit. I’m not Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, I’m not going to set a 10k goal, that’s unrealistic. But I want to turn the $1.25 into $125.00, so that is my current goal. So far, playing patiently and trying to make correct decisions along the way, have started to strengthen my game and I have built up the bank roll up to $9.79. Not even enough to buy a nice lunch, or a spider roll from my favorite sushi bar. But a nice start.

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Congrats to F-Train for taking down 33rd place in the Razz event at the WSOP!

Much thanks to Dr. Pauly for covering the WSOP and keeping me in the loop.