Take Your Beating Like a Man

I "played" in a $5,000 Freeroll tournament at "The Office" on Sunday and got the elite distinction of being the 3rd person out.

Usually you would think sitting down and finding QQ for your very first hand of the tournament would be a good sign...well that's what you would think. The problem wasn't lack of hands during my brief 23 minutes stint in this event, it was plain old bad luck and lots of it. I actually got a disproportionate amount of premium hands, the kind of run you hope and dream about, and here's the part where I say, "but the odds were against me today", but then I would be totally lying.

You see sometimes, the odds are WITH YOU and you still lose, sometimes somebody else does something that costs you money, and sometimes you just get unlucky, cause no matter how much skill you think you have, there IS still luck and random chance involved.  "Sometimes shit don't go right."

I won't bore you with the play by play details of my contrarian defeats but here are the hands I received IN ORDER and the results:
QQ(w)
1010(w),
JJ(L-This was the crippler and left me with only $1,100 chips, on the third hand of the tournament!)
AA(w)
KQ(l)
KJ(l)
55(f)
KK(l)
OUT!

The point of all this isn't to write about yet another bad beat story, it's to write about something else entirely,
Losing.

You can pick up a ton of books that talk about how to win, what to do when you win, how to win more, but none of them really addresses the worst and one of the hardest parts of the game; taking a beating like a man.

I truly feel that besides natural skill and reading your opponents, being able to handle beats is absolutely vital to your success at the tables. If you can't routinely shake off beats, (bad or otherwise), and if you can't handle the many, many ways you get screwed over in this game (often through no fault of your own), then you should probably just stop playing right now and go play kickball or something. 

If you can't handle losing, then your going to steam off all your money, go on tilt or try to "Get that Jackass back" by playing back at them when you have the worst of it. Or your going to fall victim to what I have always had trouble with; becoming totally distracted by endlessly pondering how someone could possible play that horribly, or why god hates you. (Trust me I'm working on it.)

It is only when you can accept the weight of the the fact that even if you are the best player, even if you do everything correctly, even if you are statistically the favorite to win, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. Just take a deep breath, blow it off, slug down that cocktail, and get ready for the next time it happens, cause trust me Brother it won't be the last.

Today's Hourly Rate: -$55.28hr

That's all I got,
raychihasspoken

Ticket Maker App From Daily Racing Form

Just like they say, "There's an App for that." Well guess what they ain't kidding.

I just downloaded the new Ticket Maker App for my Iphone from that goddamn genius and personal hero of mine Steven Crist of The Daily Racing Form, and man I think it's going to make my next day of handicapping a WHOLE lot easier.

So lemme tell you how it works, you know all those chicken scratch scribblings you see me doing, after I've dissected that days races and I'm trying to put together my betting ticket? YEAH THIS DOES IT FOR ME!
I just plug in the possible contenders as "A's, B's, C's or X's", pick the kind of wager I want to make, (of course it does multi-race wagers), MY BUDGET, your betting unit, and it formulates all of your possible ticket combo's for you!

GOD IT RULES! Not only does it save me time, which is vital, but it also makes it easy to save tickets, email them to yourself (or your trusty parlay partners), AND GIVES YOU A CALL OUT SCREEN SO YOU CAN JUST GO TO THE WINDOW AND READ IT OFF TO THE TELLER! I swear to god if this App could put ice and bourbon in a glass and hand it to me I'd probably marry it.

So anyway, it's definitely not as life changing as the first time I saw Lisa Hutchins jog across the soccer field in her pink angora sweater back in 5th grade.....but it's up there.

Check it out race fans:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ticketmaker/id367643869?mt=8

There is also a version you can use just on your home computer: http://www.drf.com/formulator/ticketmaker.html

That's all I got,
raychihasspoken