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

Playing the Rush and the Perfect Storm

What's up? I had an EPIC day on Wednesday! It was the kind of day every gambler loves; I went on a huge rush and made a bunch of money.

After being unjustly knocked out of my daily a.m tourney by my arch rival "Smokey B", who out flopped my AA v.s QQ with a Q for all my chips...it was time to sit down a make some money the hard way.

It was the "Perfect Storm" that made the rush happen. The most important aspect was, I woke up with a positive winning attitude, then the game had the perfect mix of players; loose AND aggressive, some horrible, and very importantly some skilled, (i.e. they had the ability to lay hands down when they were beat or at least thought they were), combine that with a run of some good cards that connected with the flop,  mix in some getting lucky and BOOM! Money.

There are three very important things to remember when playing a rush, and years of not listening to myself has me dropping some bullet points on y'all for the benefit of your wallets.

• First of all do just that, PLAY THE HELL OUT OF IT. The entire game I was reluctant to give in to it and still played my semi-normal style, throwing away a long string of winners that I should have capitalized on, but didn't because they weren't in my normal range. BOOO! 

• KNOW WHEN THE RUSH IS OVER. When it's over, it's over, and overplaying your rush can have serious detrimental effects to your bottom line. Sometimes when you are in the heat of battle, you forget to take into effect the changing composition of the game, make sure to notice if the mix of players has changed, tightened up, or gone broke, so you can adjust your flow accordingly. You want to hammer it when it's there and hit the bar when it's over.  

• DON'T KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE. Try not to be a dick. It sucks to lose money and these people are doing it right now. You've gotta keep the game light and laughing, maybe check the river with your total lock, buy a drink or two, pretend to misread your hand or something, who cares! Just keep them there, all of them. You want to do anything in your power to keep the rush going, just like this, forever. Besides if you piss people off, they'll try to kill your rush and break your spirit by calling down every hand out of spite, and that you don't want.

Well I overplayed my rush and got knocked out of my p.m tourney early for playing like a jackass, but all in all a great day. It would probably help if I listened to my own advice. Well I better get this money to my landlord....

Today's Hourly Rate: $42hr

That's all I got,
raychihasspoken

AND WE'RE OFF!

Hi. My first real post for this so let's cross our fingers and hope I don't get mocked off the interweb. Pipe Dreams On Paper is going to be all about me, (so I can think of at least ONE person who'll LOVE IT)  my strong opinions, ruminations and rumblings, and continuous self reflection and diagnoses of well.....
JUST WHAT THE HELL I DID WRONG.

 How horribly did I really play that last hand? What was the reason I didn't box the three horses I liked all along in a easy $12 Trifecta that ended up paying $2,337.40? How did I so miserably fail in that last tournament by busting out on the bubble again. Seriously.

Why, you may ask? Well probably because I'm a glutton for punishment, a "kick-me player" (look it up), a life-long self-saboteur, but mostly because I'm just a narcissistic bastard who isn't satisfied just listening to himself talk anymore, now I have to read it too.  Sheesh!

While all that may be true... the real reason is to learn, because if you don't learn from your mistakes you are doomed to repeat them...forever.  Hopefully, if we can figure out why exactly something went the way that it did, we can prevent it from happening again in the future and then improve, get better, grow, and ultimately win.
Cause that's what it's all about isn't it?  Win everything.  


 There's a modest Pick 6 carryover at Belmont Park tomorrow, I better hit the books.....

That's all I got,
raychihasspoken