I've lost that lovin' feeling - and the job...

I got a part-time job working at the Open Door Children's Home here in town. I work 25 hours a week for an organization that really does provide a great service. So far I'm enjoying what I'm doing and there is a lot of potential for the job to develop into something I love doing and that's fund raising for a great cause.

The home only takes kids over about 10 years old so there is mostly just teenagers since it's hard find foster home placement for them. It's pretty sad seeing all the teenagers who've been through so much in their short lives. It pretty much puts my petty woes into perspective.

On another note, I played a few MTTs tonight and I really didn't enjoy it at all. I haven't played any since my "I'm quitting" blog entry. I've been doing some reading, The Mental Game of Poker 2, which is great and Easy Game and I'm really enjoying both. I hope my love of poker hasn't gone away for good. I really hope to play again soon but I just have zero desire right now.

If anyone has been through this before and was able to get their love of the game back please let me know how you did it. I really don't want to give up the game after all the work I've put into it but I want to want to play and enjoy it again.

Mad World

I've made it one week. A few times I've had the desire to play but lost it pretty fast. I've been watching the WSOP coverage all week and even that hasn't motivated me to play. I thought about playing a little today but Sundays are way too soul crushing when things go badly so I decided against it.

I have however discovered Open Face Chinese Poker and I definitely see what all the buzz is about. It's a great fun game. I've only been playing on the Android ap but I really can't wait to play for some real money. That is after I get it figured out. It's some sick fun though.

I'll be doing some serious job hunting this week. I'd love to find some really good temporary fill in type work because I really don't want to be tied down to a regular job. So hopefully I can find something that suits me.

I might try to play a bit this coming week and then again I might not.

Good luck to everyone playing the WSOP main event.

I Dreamed a Dream...

Almost five years ago I discovered poker and fell in love. Like too many loves in our lives things don't always go as we hope. We fall in love but who or what we love doesn't love us back or things just go wrong or we fall out of love. Sometimes we have to know when to say goodbye and when to hang on. I fear the time is coming for me to say goodbye to poker, at least for a good while.

When I first started playing I felt I was better at poker than anything I'd ever tried in my whole life. I studied and worked hard and things were really going well for awhile. Black Friday happened and everything changed. I ran so good on PokerStars and there were so many opportunities to make money. Since Black Friday it's been a constant struggle. A struggle to get paid, a struggle to find decent games to play, a struggle to even beat the games available. 

About a year ago I got my first backer and overall the experience was a great one. I learned a lot from the other players in the stable and it was an experience I'd recommend to anyone serious about their poker game. My backers were the greatest and I couldn't have asked for a better situation. I was with them for ten months but after a couple of bouts of runbad, and maybe some playbad, it just didn't make good financial sense for them to keep backing me. I didn't really lose much money for them at all, everything considered. Probably not even much over $1,000 but they didn't make money from me and that's what they're in business to do. We parted with no hard feelings on either part and I'd go back to them in a heartbeat. 

Since losing my backing, and looking at other offers that I just haven't found appealing, and trying unsuccessfully to play on my own dime for the last 5 weeks or so I've decided it's time to give it a rest. I can't begin to tell you how much I hate giving up on my game but it just seems inevitable right now. 

I wish I had the money, and/or backing to play live, it's so much more fun and live is so much easier than online. There is just so much information available as opposed to online and the fields are generally softer in relation to the buy ins but alas that's just not a financial option right now. 

One of my favorite quotes is "You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible, the difference in a winner and a loser is that the later thinks they don't deserve it". It's certainly not about deserving it, it's just part of the game. You weather the storm as long as you can and when for whatever reason you can no longer weather that storm you get the hell out of it's way. 

I'm hoping to find a part time job soon, wish me luck - I need it, and spend sometime away from the game. Maybe sooner or later I'll be back, maybe not, who knows at this point. I can't imagine giving up the game completely even if it may actually be the best thing I can do. I hope I can find my love for the game again at some point down the road but for now it's time to say goodbye. 

I'm sure I'll still blog occasionally, hopefully about my adventures back into the work-a-day world but until then adios. 

...and just to be clear this isn't a poor, pitiful running bad me post, I'm serious. 

Parting Ways and Staking...

I'm no longer with imawhale staking. Overall it was a great experience and over the ten months I was with them I met some great people and learned a lot. If feel my game has improved significantly over this time. Basically I want to be with a staking group that can provide more player development, mentoring, coaching and support. While Shane has a good staking group none of those things are really provided for the players. 

Poker is so tough these days and players need every edge they can get. I really hope to find a backing group that really does what's necessary to help their horses be the best they can be. 

One thing I learned while being with imawhale and while looking for a new backer is how haphazardly so many people apply for staking. Shane would get applications with tons of spelling and grammar mistakes. I read threads from backers on Two Plus Two and Pocket 5s stating exactly how to apply and then see people posting doing completely the opposite. 

Applying for staking is the same as applying for a job. If you write a resume you always make sure it's properly formatted and grammatically correct with no spelling errors, why would you not do the same when applying for staking. Since so many people don't seem to get this I thought I give some advice here:

Most backers post threads on popular poker forums like those linked above. They will state the information they need from you and ask you to send this to them in a private message. Most staking groups also have websites with staking applications. When you fill out the application or message the backer make sure you provide all the information asked for in a organized manner. Be sure you double check your spelling and grammar. Be sure you give them all the information they need to check your poker statistics and results. 

Stakers get numerous applicants and if they get messages and applications that are a disorganized mess they aren't going to bother to read more than the first sentence or two. If you can't follow simple directions how are you going to keep spreadsheets or data for them to keep up with your play and results if they back you. 

Do something to make your application stand out or make your results easy to access. I created a Google presentation document with information about my playing history, links to all my stats and screenshots of my tracked SharkScope results and graphs. I set it to share with anyone who has the link. I can use it to link in private messages or applications and on Twitter or forums if I'm selling live action. You can view it here for an example. 

Most importantly make sure you have good references and don't do things to hurt or destroy your reputation in the poker community. If you roll on a stake or play things you aren't cleared to play or other sketchy things you're going to have trouble ever getting backing again and these days serious players need backing. 

If you're new to the poker world get active on either of the above linked forums and post and be active. When it comes time to take your game to the next level and apply for staking or sell live action if you haven't been active on the forums you're going to have a problem. 

As for me I have one offer on the table and possibly one or two other good possibilities. I'm trying to take my time and be sure I go with the right group. For now I'm playing on my own dime, which is actually no fun. I hate having to worry about bankroll management and those things playing on your own dime require. I'll be so happy when I have another backing group in place.

Procrastination

I'm so awful at updating this blog. It's not that I have nothing to write about because I do. Lots of things have happened since my last blog. So much that it'll probably take 3 blogs to write about it all. So why do I never write in this blog. Well it's obviously because I'm such a huge procrastinator. Why do today what we can put off until tomorrow.

Maybe it's because I have several things to write about and I can't decide where to start. Maybe there is so much in my head that I can't sort it out enough to get it written down. Maybe I'm ridiculously unorganized. Maybe other things are more fun to do than writing a blog. I mean really, had you rather write a blog or get sucked out on a minimum of three hundred and fiddy times in under two hours. Now that's just too fun to miss. If that's not good enough I can rail the assclowns who got it in horribly bad when they make the final table of the tournament they busted me out of. I mean nothing is more fun than watching a completely incompetent moron win lots of money with the chips he won off you when he called your 21BB reshove with 67o and hit trips, right?

No seriously, I've just been on a pretty brutal downswing and haven't really been motivated to write. Especially since I vowed not to write whinny blogs. Tonight however, I was pretty down and disgusted after another particularly brutal Sunday grind. I was on Skype talking to a friend and said I was beginning to wonder if I was even capable of beating these games. He's coached me a good bit and knows my game better than anyone and we had a session the other day. That session was really enlightening because I saw so many things I had reverted back to doing. I had basically gone back to many of my old nitty ways. I ask him if he thought I was capable of being a winning player. His response was if you'll get back to way you were playing a few months ago and not the way you're playing now, yes you are. That's when it dawned me...

I'm a huge fan of Jared Tendler's The Poker Mindset, in the book he talks a lot about conscious and unconscious competence. Being that unconscious competence are things we know so well they are second nature like folding 72o and things like that. We don't really have to think about a lot of plays we make because they are very basic and we've made them so often we just do them without thinking. Conscious competence are skills we've learned but we have to think to utilize these skills. When our emotions reach a certain level it becomes really hard to make our brain function properly and we tend to revert to the things we do without much thought. This is what happens when we tilt really bad, our brains go on some kind of overload and all we can manage are the things we just do but don't have to think through. What I think is going on with me is while I'm not tilted in the obvious sense of the word, the emotions from a prolonged downswing have accumulated and cause me to have trouble doing the things that I've learned but haven't mastered and I've reverted back to the those things I don't have to think about. So I'm going to have a couple of poker free days and get my head straightened out and come back and do some reviewing and studying for a day or so and then get back to poker with a clear head and better attitude.

...and in my next blog update, which I promise will be soon, I will talk about my first WSOP circuit event and my first tracked live cash. Until then remember "You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible, but the difference in winner and a loser is the loser thinks he doesn't deserve it". No idea who said this but it's all too true.

"Tied To The Whipping Post"

I guess you can tell by the title of this blog that March hasn't been so marvelous so far. I have 9 days left this month and after sending the most stupid email ever to my backer and getting his quite to the point reply I've had a long talk with myself and pulled my fish brain back to reality. I thank him for his "you're being a fish reply" because he was right I was totally being a fish and I'm embarrassed by stooping to sending the email I sent him. No, I'm too embarrassed to tell you what it said but believe me it was total fish thinking. 

Runbad sucks but it happens! When we're dumb enough in the first place to choose to play MTTs we have to learn to deal with variance and playing mid-stakes in the US just makes it worse. I've hit a rather rough patch of runbad but honestly I've been through a lot worse and come out of it so I'm not sure why this time had such an affect on me as it did. I think it's a combination of a few things, I had a really nasty flu a couple of weeks ago and I'm having trouble getting over it and I've let some silly things bother me that I should have been able to just blow off and deal with. I also have been pretty slack about getting in any decent volume and the combination of those things are a recipe for disaster.

So hopefully now that I've dealt with my attitude and stupid fishy thinking and embarrassed myself royally it's time to move on and win some money. So here's hoping to a much better end of March! 

March is without a doubt my favorite poker month. All of my very best cashes have happen in March. Every March since I started playing has been better than the last one. So I have high hopes and great expectations for this March. Maybe March is always so good for me because I expect it to be. Positive attitude does go a long way but I really have no idea why I've always seemed to do so well every March for the last four. Below are my best March moments.

March 2009 - My first real money cash for $645 on Players Only in the $250K guarantee where I finished 49th out of 909. I was such a huge fish back then. I went through this hand history awhile back and found it hilarious.

March 2010 - My first MTT win on PokerStars in the 1000 cap $4.40 4 max 2K guarantee. I talked about this one a bit in this post. Again I was still quite the fish but not quite as big of one as the previous year. I made some more money this month and made my first withdrawal in early April.

March 2011 - My first 4 figure cash and large MTT final table on PokerStars in the $11r $50K guarantee for $1541. It was all uphill from there and finished the month with my biggest profit ever which I believe was at least $4K. Unfortunately two weeks later Black Friday happened :(

March 2012 - My biggest cash and most profitable month to date. I finished 3rd out of over 2600 runners in the Poker Maximus Event 23 for $6,600 and had a profit of over $8K by the end of the month. 

March 2013 - TBD, stay tuned but I'm really hoping for that first 5 figure cash...