Choosing to be Victorious!

First thank you to my friend Kelly for posting this on Facebook. By my last bust of my first WSOP trip I was feeling all these negative feelings. I was feeling totally defeated and had decided I could never be good enough to beat this game of poker that I so love. After getting home and having time to rest and reflect I realize that I spent a lot of time "saying" I work hard at poker but do I really?

What is working hard? Is playing a lot working hard? Do I even play a lot, or nearly as much as I should? Do I spend enough time reviewing my game and looking for reasons why I lose?   Do I spend enough time studying and watching videos or reading to learn new ways to approach the game? The answer to most of these things is no, I don't.

So instead of blaming my losses on variance and other things it's time to figure out what I need to do to win. Time to stop talking and start working, really working. Time to realize I do have what it takes to beat this game if I just spend more time playing my A game and a lot less time on auto pilot playing my C game.

We all play our C game at times but the real winners play their A game much more than their C game and as we improve our A game our C game improves as well so that those times when we slip into our C game we are still playing a winning game. Right now my C game is not a winning game. My A game is but I don't play it often enough. I'd venture to say that I play my A game about 30% of the time I play and the rest of time I'm playing my B or C game. Then I complain about running bad when in reality I'm just not playing as well as I'm capable of. 

In Vegas I really did get the bad end of the cards a lot of the time but made plenty of mistakes and some times I just totally spewed. I do the same online and I've gotten to where I play much too loose in the wrong spots. So instead of giving up and feeling defeating I hope to turn this experience into inspiration and use it to get my game where it needs to be and end victoriously. 

Vegas and the WSOP

Well I don't want to spend time blogging about how god awful I ran, even though I did. I bricked everything, the only cash I had was chopping a $125 sit n go for $540. I could do nothing right, constantly ran good into better, rarely got even my best planned bluffs through and just generally couldn't have run much worse. Of course I made some mistakes as well but nothing huge that I could put my finger on. 

I played 21 tournaments and/or sit n go satellites and had only that one small cash. It was discouraging at best and soul wrenching at worse. My game obviously needs lots of work. While I truly don't seem to be able to win flips where it counts most. I truly believe no one can have the bad results I've had for the length of time I've had them and not be doing quite a few things wrong. 

I'm sure at this point my total lack of confidence in my decisions is having a huge impact on my overall game but I also think I just have some leaks I'm not seeing. 

The time has come to step back and re-evaluate everything. I don't know if I'm even capable of beating this game anymore to be honest, at least not without a lot of work and effort. 

Vegas was fun, I got to meet a lot of people I'd only known online and they were all the greatest. We had several fun nights and overall that part of the trip was really fun. 

One of the best things was seeing a friend from online make two really deep runs in two bracelet events, one of which was the Millionaire Maker where he finished 7th for over $211K. He later finished 3rd in a $1k buy in event for another $204K and chopped a daily deepstack for $20K. I can only imagine how he must feel. He's a very good solid player so combining that with the cards just lining up and things going right for him must be an amazing feeling. Maybe some day I'll get to know how that feels, right now it seems so unlikely. 

I got to meet my backer, who is a great guy and I really appreciate his support and backing for this trip more than words can say. He's the best backer anyone could ever ask for and I feel so bad that during the whole time I've been with him I've never been able to make a dime for him. Luckily he understands variance and how truly brutal poker can be. 

What now? I'm going to take a break from everything poker for a few weeks. No watching it, reading it, thinking about it, talking about it. No poker forums, no poker conversation on Skype. Absolutely no poker at all for a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks. I just really need to remove myself from it all together for awhile then come back with a clear head and spend the next few weeks doing nothing but studying and reviewing and maybe getting some coaching. I'd like to find someone who will take some hand histories and really spend the time breaking them down and seeing what I'm doing wrong. Unfortunately most coaches just seem to want spend time going over a hand history or two that they've never previously looked at and this has just done little to really get to the bottom of the issues, whatever they may be. I'd also like to get someone who specialized in live coaching as well, since live truly is a different animal than online. 

Good luck to everyone still in the main event and to everyone still grinding it out online.